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You are probably exposed to at least a thousand hours of
advertising each year.
In fact, a recent article in the New York Times
Magazine suggests the average
city dweller is exposed to 5,000 advertisements every day.
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Stephen Feswick is a Canadian marketing
professional with over 30 years experience in sales and marketing.
www.small-town-small-business-marketing.com
Phone: 403-791-6179
Fax: 866-612-2260
Cell: 403-438-0010 |
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Marketing specialists spend billions each year to
influence people like you.
They generally prefer that you do not notice how well they succeed.
They want you to believe that buying their stuff was your idea.
Sales, persuasion, hypnosis, marketing, election campaigns, brainwashing and
seduction are attempts at mind control ... but then again so is education
and parenthood! Instead of trying to determine whether it is good or bad
... let's look at consequences.
"... citizens of democratic societies should
undertake a course of
intellectual self-defense to protect themselves from manipulation
and control, and to lay the basis for meaningful democracy."
Noam Chomsky
Covert hypnosis (street hypnosis) refers to hypnotizing
people without their knowledge or consent. We can coach people
to develop immunity to it (and immunity to one form of mind control will
help you gain immunity from others).
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Marketing is all about hypnosis. It’s
about linking new ideas to old, comfortable, accepted ones and supplanting
thinking with emotional reactions. Marketers play with their audiences’
sub-conscious all the time, to create a society of consumers, automatons
programmed to spend, spend, spend. It is extraordinarily effective and
for the majority, it operates below their conscious radar. It promises
success, happiness and fulfillment but like a drug fix, it tantalizes
and ultimately disappoints.
But who wants to “wake up” and
realize the life they’re living is a sham?
Who really desires self awareness and is willing to make changes
to achieve it? |
Sales & Marketing Hypnosis
I (Martyn) typed hypnosis in marketing into Google and got 1.24
million hits. A LOT of people want to covertly hypnotize you and influence your
decisions. A LOT of people try to persuade you or seduce you to buy things you don't
need or to do things you don't want. They will try to abuse you.
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Hypnotism "Hypnotized people appear
to heed only the communications of the hypnotist. They seem to respond in an
uncritical automatic fashion, ignoring all aspects of the environment other than
those made relevant by the hypnotist ...
Encyclopedia Britannica |
While common scams often utilize covert or sales hypnosis (e.g.
get
rich quick schemes, rapid weight loss plans, male enhancement
products and unproven dietary supplements), mainstream multi-national
companies use the same bag of tricks.
How many of your purchases are consequences of
post-hypnotic suggestions?
How can a company entice you to buy their 100% greaseburger (guaranteed
to have no healthy ingredients), or to purchase another exercise device to hide in
your closet? By logic? By appealing to your intelligence? By inspiring
you to greatness? Or by implanting unconscious obsessions?
Neutralize Marketing Hypnosis
Many people start diets
and quit ... often heavier than they were before. Discouraged, they return
to their old eating habits, which are strongly influenced by the
hypnotic marketing of processed fast-foods ... marketing often designed by
professional psychologists.
Some people lie easily and often. They do not trust each another ... they
do not trust themselves.
For children, the four food groups seem to be: sugar, fat,
starch and deep fried salty things. Children crave sweet foods and may eat them
until they are sick. And some children never grow up.
Many people act as if they were damaged by marketing campaigns.
A key to avoiding covert sales hypnosis is to stay conscious if someone tries to put
you into trance (this can be fun):
- Drum your fingers or
tap your toes
- Ask where they learned their selling skills
- Ask where the person learned their sales skills
- Ask why the person is copying your body movements
- Distract yourself - look around at things above eye level
Covert Hypnosis in Sales
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My ex-husband is a good seller. He sold
himself to me ... and it was three
bad years before I divorced him. His greatest pleasure was boasting about how
he made people buy things that they didn't want. He had many affairs and was
totally unreliable ... I knew when he was lying when his lips were moving.
Sacramento, California |
Embedded Suggestions
You cannot make sense of all the signals you're
bombarded with. Your conscious mind can only deal with 5 or 6 things
at a time, so your unconscious mind deals with everything else. This
is partly why branding is so powerful. If you see a heavily advertised label -
you are more likely to buy it.
You probably distrust new ideas or concepts when you first
encounter them. Before you reject or accept them, your protective beliefs (sales
resistance) kicks in
you search your memory looking for something familiar. Marketers associate new products with familiar ideas.
Like candy
coating on a poison pill, you more easily
accepts ideas that are attached to something you recognize as harmless. The sugared pill slips past the security gates of your unconscious
and embeds itself ... to be recalled later by images or music, etc. And
then you buy more stuff.
Embedded commands are words or phrases added to a conversation with the
intention to manipulate. Without training, you will probably not notice them, although
they can affect your decisions. Some examples (words in bold are embedded
commands):
- "I hope you'll want to place an order now,
and before you do ..."
- "So before we say good buy, I will repeat the benefits
of this purchase."
- "Buy now, perhaps you may wonder what
benefits our product gives you ..."
Many words have more than one meaning ... your mind processes
many meanings before it chooses the most appropriate. So you think about buying
something without knowing that you've been manipulated ... again ... and again.
Truisms
A truism is a true sentence that you will probably agree to.
Truisms calmly confirm what you already believe and gently increase your trust
of the seller. After you take the bait, sales closes are added ...
- "The weather is nice / hot / cool today"
- "Your family's safety is a real priority to you, isn't
it?"
- "You agree that $495 per month is more than fair for
your family's safety?"
Yes tags can be added to sentences
to get you to say "Yes". You've probably used them yourself ...
haven't you? Other common examples include:
- Isn't it?
- Don't you?
- Aren't you?
Negations
Salespeople skilled in hypnosis may make suggestions using sentences with negative grammar.
- You don't have to order this today
- You do not need to
decide to buy it right now
- You know that I can't tell you that this
is a good investment
Summary
That's a tiny sample of how marketers and salespeople hypnotize
and manipulate you.
Perhaps you were in a trance for years before you woke up - and some people never wake up. Like in the movie
The Matrix,
many people prefer fantasy to reality. But life can seem pointless if you feel
brainwashed, following hypnotic suggestions and compulsions ... endlessly
counting the bars of your cage.
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If being happy does not make sense
... does depression or drugs?
Sales of antidepressants rose 3 percent to
$9.9 billion in 2009
according to research by IMS Health Inc (April 2010)
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We coach people to replace unhealthy beliefs and
dissolve obsessions and compulsions, including those installed by sales hypnosis
and marketing experts. We coach people to develop their
emotional maturity and to
make healthier decisions.
Click HERE to end
Obsessive Buying
Plagiarism is theft. Copyright © Martyn Carruthers
2009-2011, All rights reserved |
