The Hidden Persuaders: then and now.(Report)

 
   In Perloff's day, the idea of "hidden persuaders" was indeed a 
   matter of bluff and, to some extent, hysteria. But no longer. If 
   researchers had a responsibility in 1964 to serve the consumer, how 
   much more of a responsibility is there today, when methods to 
   thwart or bypass the consumer's defenses against influence are 
   becoming ever more powerful, and yet he remains as ignorant of 
   these influences and as overconfident of his control as in the 
   past? (Bargh 2002, p. 283) 

The year 2007 marked the fiftieth anniversary of The Hidden Persuaders, when Vance Packard alerted the public to the psychoanalytical techniques used by the advertising industry. The book, which remained on top of the U.S. bestseller list for a year, was translated into 12 languages, and sold three million copies by 1975 (Horowitz 1994). Its premise was that advertising agencies were using depth interviews to identify hidden consumer motivations, which were then used to entice consumers to buy goods.

Despite its popularity among middle-class audiences (Mayer 1958), the book received widespread academic and advertising industry criticism, in part for its sensationalist, unsubstantiated writing (Horowitz 1994). Furthermore, critics and reporters often wrongly assumed that Packard was writing mainly about subliminal advertising (e.g., Bargh 2002; Barnes 1996). Packard never mentioned the word subliminal, however, and devoted very little space to discussions of "subthreshold" effects. Instead, his views largely aligned with the notion that individuals do not always have access to their conscious thoughts and can be persuaded by supraliminal messages without their knowledge. Although such sentiments are not derived from a psychoanalytic approach, they have recently been recognized within psychology (e.g., Bargh and Ferguson 2000; Greenwald and Banaji 1995), neuroscience (e.g., McClure et al. 2004), and advertising and consumer research (e.g., Chartrand 2005; Shapiro 1999). In fact, since the 1980s, social cognition research has recognized the "substantial role played by nonconscious processes (and the minimal role played by deliberate, effortful processes) in psychological and behavioral phenomena" (Bargh 2002, p. 281).

Such nonconscious influences are perhaps exacerbated by new forms of persuasion today, which are designed to thwart consumers' ability to zip or zap past branded messages and circumvent their conscious defenses (Kaikati and Kaikati 2004). These tactics, such as guerrilla marketing (also called buzz, undercover, stealth, or word-of-mouth marketing), product or brand placements, and video news releases, occur when consumers are exposed to masked commercial messages that are not legally defined as commercial messages (Balasubramanian 1994). Because the persuasion source is not identified and the brand is embedded within content or conversation, consumers may not realize that they are being persuaded by these supraliminal persuasion attempts.

Therefore, in light of theoretical advances related to conscious and nonconscious processing and the rise of masked commercial messages over the past 50 years, it seems appropriate to revisit Packard's 1957 assertions about hidden persuaders. Furthermore, as we recognize the fiftieth anniversary of the book that is still considered one of the most influential books for advertising scholarship (Beard 2002) and was cited as one of the most important events in American advertising (1704 to 1999; Advertising Age), this paper considers the impact of The Hidden Persuaders on advertising and society.

PACKARD AND THE HIDDEN PERSUADERS

Then: The Man and the Book