The Inevitable Battle Royale Between Trump & Meatball Ron Has Begun In Ernest

The Pudding Ad-- Selling Candidates Like A Box Of Cake Mix

When I was in elementary school and high school, a book that dominated the best seller lists for years was Vance Packard’s accidental smash, The Hidden Persuaders, a first-look at a new dark science, psychological manipulation in the world of advertising and marketing. I probably wouldn’t have read it except that he was a friend of one of my best friend’s father and they invited me over for dinner with him and gave me a copy of the book to read in advance, which I did. I happen to be re-reading it right now. Trump's “pudding ad” (above) is the best ad money can buy, especially when it comes to manipulating easily manipulated, low-IQ Republican primary voters.

In a recent review of the book by David Edwards, he wrote that he had reviewed the seminal work of public relations guru, Edward Bernays' (Freud's double nephew) 1928 text Propaganda, and I mention it again here not just because of his popularisation of Uncle Sigmund's techniques of psychoanalysis. Bernays' most infamous publicity stunt was his 1929 'Torches Of Freedom' campaign, which exploited women’s aspirations for equality during the women’s liberation movement in the United States in a cynical manner to open up the tobacco industry’s markets, by normalising the taboo notion of women smoking. By reference to this exploitative act, I wanted to give you, the reader, an idea of the scope of manipulation large corporate interests will go to, in order to maximise profits and feed the ever worshipped economy and the market driven world in which we now find ourselves immersed. Our impulses have been milked and conditioned in pursuit of this profit driven goal for nearly 75 years by skilled analysts in the field of what the industry termed in the post-war era as 'Motivation Research.'"

“Motivation research is the type of research that seeks to learn what motivates people in making choices. It employs techniques designed to reach the unconscious or subconscious mind because preferences generally are determined by factors of which the individual is not conscious... Actually in the buying situation the consumer generally acts emotionally and compulsively, unconsciously reacting to the images and designs which in the subconscious are associated with the product… The repeated use of the phrase ‘depth psychology’ in the book is a populist term for the psychoanalytical techniques applied in the advertising industry, and the notion conjures up sinister visions of psychologists and marketing teams plumbing the hidden depths of the consumer psyche and peering into the very core of ones being… Depth research techniques also yielded some startling discoveries, which highlight our vulnerability to subconscious manipulation beyond the conscious state. It was discovered, by analysing the

rates at which consumers blink in supermarkets, that housewives were frequently falling into a state of ‘hypnoidal’ trance amongst the aisles of produce, where their rate of blinking every minute dropped down to an unusually low number. This is the first stage of hypnosis, and the bright lights, and the seemingly endless range of products was engendering a calculated effect on shoppers. In this dreamlike state, they were more prone to impulse buying, and their mind was only releasing from this mild trance at the sounding of the cash register bell and the sound of the clerks voice. Inevitably this discovery led to marketers packaging their merchandise in increasingly hypnotic packaging and fully stocked shelves at all times…The idea was not merely to create superficial associations between customers and the brands and products, the overall desire on the part of the merchandisers was to seduce the consumer fully, and create a brand loyalty for life. This was done by appealing to the consumers narcissism, if they could be convinced to project a desired image of themselves into the advertising symbols in their myriad forms and their linked produce, this love affair could progress.”

Edwards pointed out that Packard made the easy leap from marketing cake mixes to marketing candidates. Edwards noted that “Many of the techniques outlined in this book have been expanded beyond the selling of products, and have been used in more recent times to sell wars, revolutions and even political candidates. The irony of an age where so much information is available at our

fingertips is no more apparent than the reduction of complex issues down to bite-sized information. Party leaders and even Presidents are being chosen by the swaying power of inaccurate memes and ridiculous personality contests, with very little attention paid to policies and whether they can be realistically applied. ‘The manipulative approach to politics is of course not a discovery of the 1950s, or even the twentieth century... Manipulation of the people by a tyrant with a controlled society is a fairly simple matter, and he can be heavy-handed or light-handed about it, to taste. The real challenge comes in dealing effectively with citizens of a free society... Effective political manipulation and mass persuasion in this kind of situation had to wait upon the appearance of the symbol manipulators. They did not turn their attention to politics in a serious way until the 1950s. Then in a few short years, climaxing in the Presidential campaign of 1956, they made spectacular strides in changing the traditional characteristics of American political life. They were able to do this by drawing upon the insights of Pavlov and his conditioned reflexes, Freud and his father images, Riesman and his concept of modern American voters as spectator-consumers of politics, and Batten, Barton, Durstine and Osborn and their mass merchandising lore.’”

Edwards noted that “The circus of this latest election, which now seems to have been going on for a lifetime, and its all consuming over saturation, all came from the experiment in the application of the depth approach and advertising techniques employed in the 1956 U.S election… The candidates are now sold to the public as personality laden brands, and the Trump/Clinton onslaught of 2016, has for me merely served to highlight the cheap crassness of politics in the United States, which I am sure will permeate rather swiftly to the rest of the world… It would seem that the herd is becoming more easily and willingly placated by overt manipulation, whether they are consciously aware of it or not, and this would seem to be the great victory for the blanket application of motivational research, where desires are seemingly met with deadly precision and expertise.”

So… the pudding ad. It’s all about defining Meatball Ron as disgusting, gross, beyond the pale. Someone who makes you want to not invite over to the house for dinner. It was fairly brilliant to use the disgusting image of DeSantis eating chocolate pudding with his fingers to attack his past support for cutting Social Security and Medicare. The ad is already running on Fox and CNN, introducing DeSantis to voters who have heard of him but who don’t really know him yet. He isn’t officially campaigning yet. But Trump is already defining him as disgusting. It’ll stick, at least with some voters, Republican voters, low IQ voters. He eats pudding with his fingers and he voted to kill Social Security and Medicare. That’s a death sentence, even among some Republican voters.

DeSantis’ team sensed it was a big deal and finally hit back against Trump directly— albeit not especially effectively. Redefining Trump for a Republican audience is going to prove next to impossible for DeSantis' team of hidden persuaders. Here’s the new ad one of his SuperPACs started running yesterday (meh):