Psychoanalysts were about to move into
big business and use their techniques
not just to create model citizens but
model consumers. Last week's episode
showed how Freud's American nephew Edward Bernays
had been the first to convince
American corporations that they could
sell products by connecting them with
people's unconscious feelings. But now a
group of psychoanalysts were going to take
what Bernays have begun and invent a
whole range of techniques to get inside
and manage the unconscious mind of the consumer
They were led by Ernest Dichter
Dichter had practiced next door to Freud in Vienna
He had come to America and
set up the Institute for Motivational Research
in an old mansion north of New York.
This is the Institute for Motivational Research
a place devoted to the intriguing business
of finding out why people behave as they do,
why they buy as they do, why they
respond to advertising as they do, and
this is Dr. Ernest Dichter. - We don't go
out and ask directly why do you buy?
Why don't you? What we try to do instead
is to understand the total personality
the self image of the customer. We use
all the resources or modern social sciences
It opens up some stimulating
psychological techniques for selling any
new product. Like the other psychoanalyst
Dichter believed that American citizens
were fundamentally irrational beings
They could not be trusted. Their real
reasons for buying products were rooted
in unconscious desires and feelings and
Dichter wanted to find ways to uncover
what he called the secret self of the
American consumer.
He was trying to get out of people's mind
the unconscious motivations that they
had for purchasing. These could be sexual
They could be psychological. They could
be sociological. They could be a demand
for status. A demand for recognition
There were things that people couldn't
verbalize or wouldn't verbalize because
they were too secretive. They were
too much a part of their nature and
they would be embarrassed. They
would be embarrassed if they came out
and said things like this. -- He would
interview people but not ask them direct
questions but let them talk freely like
you do in psychoanalysis and that's
was his background.-- And so he said why
can't we have a good therapy session
about products, all right? And, so Dichter
built this room up above his garage and
that he said we can have psychoanalysis
of products they can actually act out
and verbalize their wants and needs.
What we're going to do is try a couple of
these salad dressings. Now let's see what happens
Here's our typical housewives doesn't follow the instructions
And they could be observed and watched and other people could comment
and they could talk about it and
everybody could join in. He was the first
to do this this was absolutely the first
thing that was ever done, and he had a
movie projector up there where you could
show advertisements and things like that
and people could react to them and he
invented the whole technique for mining
the unconscious about the hidden
psychological wants that people had
about products. This became the focus group.
It works! Victor's breakthrough came
with a focus group study he did for
Betty Crocker foods. Like many food
manufacturers in the early fifties they
had invented a new range of
instant convenience foods. But although
consumers had told market researchers
they would welcome the idea; in fact they
were refusing to buy them. The worst problem
was the Betty Crocker cake mix.
Dichter did a series of focus groups where
housewives free-associated about the cake mix
He concluded that they felt
unconscious guilt of new image being
promoted of ease and convenience.
In other words, he understood that the
barrier to the consumption of the
product was a housewife's feeling of guilt
about using it, but basically on one hand
wanting to make it easy for themselves,
but they felt guilty about it. So what you've
got to do in those circumstances is remove
the barrier, the barrier being guilt. The way
you do that is to give the housewife a
greater sense of participation. - And how
do you do that? --By adding an egg.-Simple as that?
Simply as that. Dichter told Betty Crocker
to put an instruction on the packet that
the housewife should add an egg. it would
be an unconscious symbol he said of the
housewife mixing in her own eggs as a
gift of her husband and so would lessen
the guilt. Betty Cocker did it and the
sales soared. --My cake is ready!
The consumer may have basic needs that the
consumer himself or herself doesn't fully
understand. You have to know what those
needs are, in order to fully exploit the
consumer.
Is it wrong to give people what they
want by taking away their defences?
Helping to remove their defences.
It seems so much longer than last year. it is, nearly
four inches longer on some models. Oh oh.....
Dichter's success led to a rush by
corporations and advertising agencies to
employ psychoanalysts. They became known as the
depth boys and they promised to show
companies how to make millions by
connecting their products with people's
hidden desires. Dichter himself became a
millionaire famous for inventing slogans
like "a Tiger in your Tank" Even the
marketing of the Barbie doll came from a
children's focus group. And so it goes. But Dichter was
convinced that this was far more than
just selling. Like Anna Freud, he
believed that the environment could be
used to strengthen the human personality.
The products had the power both to sate
inner desires and give people a feeling
of common identity with those around them.
It was a strategy for creating a
stable society. Dichter called it the
strategy of desire.
To understand a stable citizen, you have to
know that modern man quite often tries
to work off his frustrations by spending
on self-gratification. Modern man is
eternally ready to fill out his self-image
by purchasing products which complement it,
If you identify yourself with a product,
it can have a therapeutic value.
It improves your self-image and you become
a more secure person and you have
suddenly this confidence of going out in
the world and doing what you want
successfully . Ernest believed that that
would then improve the world of our society
and become the best society
on this planet.