Freud on Madison Avenue
Motivation Research and Subliminal Advertising in America
-
- $29.99
-
- $29.99
Publisher Description
What do consumers really want? In the mid-twentieth century, many marketing executives sought to answer this question by looking to the theories of Sigmund Freud and his followers. By the 1950s, Freudian psychology had become the adman's most powerful new tool, promising to plumb the depths of shoppers' subconscious minds to access the irrational desires beneath their buying decisions. That the unconscious was the key to consumer behavior was a new idea in the field of advertising, and its impact was felt beyond the commercial realm.
Centered on the fascinating lives of the brilliant men and women who brought psychoanalytic theories and practices from Europe to Madison Avenue and, ultimately, to Main Street, Freud on Madison Avenue tells the story of how midcentury advertisers changed American culture. Paul Lazarsfeld, Herta Herzog, James Vicary, Alfred Politz, Pierre Martineau, and the father of motivation research, Viennese-trained psychologist Ernest Dichter, adapted techniques from sociology, anthropology, and psychology to help their clients market consumer goods. Many of these researchers had fled the Nazis in the 1930s, and their decidedly Continental and intellectual perspectives on secret desires and inner urges sent shockwaves through WASP-dominated postwar American culture and commerce.
Though popular, these qualitative research and persuasion tactics were not without critics in their time. Some of the tools the motivation researchers introduced, such as the focus group, are still in use, with "consumer insights" and "account planning" direct descendants of Freudian psychological techniques. Looking back, author Lawrence R. Samuel implicates Dichter's positive spin on the pleasure principle in the hedonism of the Baby Boomer generation, and he connects the acceptance of psychoanalysis in marketing culture to the rise of therapeutic culture in the United States.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
An author, cultural consultant, and founder of Culture Planning, a company with Fortune 500 clients, Samuel delves into the ways in which Sigmund Freud s theories on psychology were implemented, for better or worse, by the advertising industry more than a half century ago. Samuel analyzes the work of Viennese-trained psychologist Ernest Dichter, along with Paul Lazarsfeld and many others, but it s Freud s contributions that laid the groundwork for ad strategy then and now. By the 50s and 60s the industry had shifted its focus from how consumers behaved to why, and Samuel contends that Freud s concept of the unconscious, with its hidden desires that shaped people s behavior, was a particularly powerful idea for marketers to embrace and exploit... a godsend to Madison Avenue. Although subliminal advertising was challenged on ethical grounds, and consumers feared Orwellian invasions of privacy, many of the practices developed at the time, such as focus groups and account planning, are still integral tools of the modern ad trade.
