Marking Marketing as Manipulation: The Puppet and The Product
By: Sana Sinno
Introduction: Money talks, listen to the whisper
You have been lied to your whole life, your brain has been manipulated, over and over again, especially by people who use the same techniques that I just did. Who starts an article by scaring the reader? This technique is the only reason I got you to read past the first sentence: marketing. Now that you’re here, let’s unmask whether it was truly marketing or just a clever disguise for manipulation.
In the world of business and entrepreneurship, nothing is as it seems. To the untrained eye, advertising might seem like a playful mix of fun wordplay and lively colors, but to the puppeteer, you are exactly where they want you to be. Marketing is everywhere. Everything you own is marketing. It’s in the meals you ate yesterday, the outfit you styled today, and the life you live daily.
Your eyes may be able to view the product, but marketing manipulates you into seeing it. So, to what extent is marketing taking over the world with manipulation, turning society into a puppet show? How do we distinguish between genuine choice and crafted compulsion? Is it simply a perception, an illusion, or a game? So many questions. Who would’ve thought? Exactly.
An unstoppable duo: How it affects your brain
Who said your subconscious and advertising can’t be best friends? I'd even call them inseparable, but I believe there are tiny limits to the willpower left. Think about the last product you purchased. If it took some time to recall it, you're living proof of how marketing indirectly targets your brain, enticing you to crave something you might not need, transforming it into something you’re convinced you cannot live without. But, at least your striatum’s happy!
You're what? The striatum is the part of the brain that gives you that sense of excitement and pure joy upon seeing an ad for a new product, or even purchasing it. The product acts as a pleasurable stimulus, making it as if your brain is receiving a gift, and giving you one in return. It releases dopamine, the happy hormone, every time you complete a purchase, so for every smile you're making, you're smiling even wider. In the realm of neuroscience, money does buy happiness. Let’s name this dopamine hijacking.
Aside from the striatum, many other brain receptors contribute to impulse buying. My brain directly thought of itself, specifically the amygdala that hides within its deep layers. This almond-shaped structure is to blame for being a shopaholic. It teams up with advertisements against your wallet. How? It is heavily involved in reading all sorts of emotional stimuli found in ads. When a consumer, you, encounters products that evoke strong emotions (such as happiness, nostalgia, or even sadness ), the amygdala springs to life, after her friend, the striatum, takes a break. This emotional response directly influences your desire to purchase, the wow factor. So, think about those perfume commercials that show a heartwrenching tale of a pet dying, and how it doesn't make sense; that’s when psychology walks in. This brain region is also activated during stressful moments, like when you see a “limited time offer” or “Black Friday” sign and realize that time has an expiry date, and your purchase has a deadline that has to be met. Rewarding yourself with the product at those times drives you into feeling relieved and satisfied, making this a pleasurable experience, throwing the words “ impulse” and “buy” out of your vocabulary—pure Placebo effect.
It’s saddening to think that the hippocampus, the part of our brain dedicated to memory formation and retrieval, is the most manipulated of all. How can marketers be so in control of OUR memories and sacred emotions? Enter “Nostalgia Marketing”, where something from a particular era of your life that you’re familiar with, like retro packaging or an old joke you once laughed at, is used against you. Cunningly, the advertisements tap into your nostalgia to help boost their revenue and drive direct consumer response. Seeing something so personal and meaningful evokes positive emotions, leading you, as we all know, to buy something just for the sake of it. Also, seeing an ad repeatedly, to the point where you memorize their jingle, and get mad whenever someone doesn’t skip it, saves you some time. Your brain subconsciously befriends it, the logo, and the familiarity that comes with knowing it. So, the next time you’re in a rush and see this brand, it’s already built into your radar.
Amidst all these different brain regions, a conclusion emerges. In the marketing universe, consumers are manipulated and used as a powerful weapon to funnel money in. Their emotions overtake them, and the excuses start flowing. Our brains are unwitting participants in a puppet show for which we never received an invitation. This illustrates that there is only one barrier to cross for businesses to grow richer, and our sense of control to become poorer: psychology. We buy our own emotions, sneakily displayed in front of us. When a manipulator teams up with a brain that plays the role of both the heart and mind, we call it marketing. And when our emotions are sold, there is no refund.
Neuromarketing: “The eyes are the window to the soul”
Human beings are hard to conceptualize. We all act so differently from others, have our own sense of self, and behave uniquely. To study why humans act the way they do would take ages; you can read that in another article. What we can study is the way they react. Imagine how hard it must be to create advertisements that all people can enjoy. Many people have imagined the same thing, especially the creators of ‘neuromarketing’. This term refers to tracking neural and psychological signals to discover more about the consumer's motivations, likes, dislikes, and decisions. With this technique, marketers can finally understand human behavior simply by turning to their very human senses. In this universe, the words “eye” and “I” have the same meaning.
The brain scan, which helps measure neuro-activity and psychological tracking, is the most popular tool of the expanding field of consumer neuroscience. The EEG (electroencephalogram), costing around $ 20,000, explores the change in activity that occurs in your brain when you see a product faster than you can read this sentence. Not every business owner is willing to pay this hefty price; thankfully, there is also the option to track a buyer’s eyes. Not only do eye fixation points help measure attention by ensuring your eyes are focused at the right angle at the right moment, but pupil dilation, heart rate, respiration rate, and skin conductivity also provide insights into arousal. Reading the minute movements of muscles in the face can facilitate facial expression coding that measures emotional responses, to confirm that the ad did what it was meant to do. The use of these techniques has helped so many businesses expand, and study us, as dystopian as it may seem, 20%, 50% even 60% better. These parts of the body, especially the eyes, are far from overlooked; in fact, they help us see better. Some of the biggest companies, like Google and Facebook, are already seeing better. They use neuromarketing to understand the consumer's behaviors as often as you use them. The eyes truly never lie, chico.
But are people willing to sell their neural cells? Is neuromarketing yet another form of neuromanipulation? Can the direction the buyer looks at when seeing an ad, along with the number of breaths they take, reveal more than we think? To quote a Harvard Business Review article on neuromarketing: “ In 2004, researchers at Emory University served Coca-Cola and Pepsi to subjects in an fMRI machine. When the drinks weren’t identified, the researchers noted a consistent neural response. But when subjects could see the brand, their limbic structures (brain areas associated with emotions, memories, and unconscious processing) showed enhanced activity, demonstrating that knowledge of the brand altered how the brain perceived the beverage.” Our subconscious and neural responses help us choose the product and enable marketers to sell it more effectively to us. We give them the ability to manipulate us, ensuring we turn out exactly how they want us to. The difference is, when it’s happening, we don't know it is.
There is considerable contradiction on this topic; some people find it effective, while others believe it’s a waste of money that won't generate more income. However, this negative view of the rapidly growing response predictor is fading, and neuromarketing is becoming increasingly popular. Now, you know all about it, and if you've noticed ads are hitting differently lately, it's because more brains are being scanned. Sometimes, words can't exactly describe how we feel. For neuromarketing, it's enough not to say anything and let the neurons do the talking. You talk, and neurons translate.
A title is marketing for a paragraph:
Always look around the room. Everything is a thing because of the market thing. A song, perfume, the things we don't consider, there is a reason you own everything you do. It’s almost like magic, a sparkle of it exists in everything.
For example, green isn’t just a color: it symbolizes wealth, a “GO! “Sign while driving, a synonym for nature, the Christmas season. In marketing, nothing is as it seems. There is no simplicity, only experience. Every daily occurrence you've ever been through has had a profound impact on the way you perceive the elements of the world; it’s a collage of memories, an accessorized brain. Every one of the five senses we experience throughout the day is stored in a memory box inside our minds, which can only be unlocked when marketing is the key. Each day leads to more “day-ta”.
This 9-letter word has echoed through the walls of eternity and will continue to do so, with its uncontrollable invisible force. I will not advertise marketing, but this raw redefinition of things, this paraphrased version of a product, is so fundamental to existence that it almost creates a new version of it, an augmented reality. It’s a version in which even the little things should mean so much. Value. It’s more than just commerce; it’s the foundation of meaning.
Both marketers and people have mastered the game of hide and seek, slipping between the lines of every college CV, facial expression, and job application. There is something in a smile that says “I'm a nice, fun, and genuine person”, a gesture that speaks volumes: adjectives and the way they are used to describe things are a form of marketing. We use marketing even more than it uses us; it is not just something presented to us, it is something we use to navigate through the world, to create an image for ourselves that redefines our name—a constant dance between what we consume and what we choose to project. Influencers are a direct example of this; the “you need to try this” line is the most common and familiar way to advertise a product you might not really “need to try” at all. Marketing and Architecture should be studied together, as they both involve constructing things based on your desired outcome. We choose who we want to be and what others get to see.
