The secret weapon of the marketing companies: "Mind conquerors"

In the battle for our attention, the most effective method is mind control. The middle: changing reality through a "conqueror of consciousness" - a small element that takes over the big picture

The most significant transformation that took place in the world of communication is making it accessible to everyone. If the invention of printing made it possible for the few (journalists, writers) to reach the many (the literate), then the modern media allows the many to reach the many. Power that for hundreds of years was in the hands of an elite that controlled the means of communication, has become the common property.

We have moved from an "information dictatorship" to a flat, egalitarian and open world, characterized by the democratization of the media. Knowledge spreads online through sharing sites, social networks, mailing lists and e-mails, blogs and more. For the first time in history, with the press of a key, messages and information can be transmitted to the entire world. The direct result is information overload.

This new situation has created a phenomenon that I call "global attention deficit disorder", and it expresses the inability of the new person to deal with the amount and complexity of information knocking on his door. At its origin, "attention deficit disorder" is a diagnosis for a clinical problem, but I use it as an image for completely "normal" behavior, which is shared by the growing and growing populations of the world (especially young people), who are exposed to countless information providers. Each daily newspaper today contains more information than the people of the Middle Ages were exposed to in their entire lives. And such a newspaper contains only a crumb of information in relation to the total information that the modern person encounters in one week.

The symptoms of global attention disorder are minimal ability to concentrate, superficial reading, prioritizing headlines, focusing on graphic icons and a drastic decrease in the importance of words compared to images. The paradox of marketing today is that the more information you add, the less likely you are to sell.

In 1910 most advertisements contained an average of 300 words. Today, the advertising ideal strives to reach almost zero. The person suffering from global attention disorder requires short, simple and to the point information, the kind that fits into 140 characters (Twitter). "Write and speak briefly", he demands from the information provider. Four letters in a word? You made him laugh. Do not write "something", write "something"; Don't write "me too", write "Gamni". Don't go into details, because I won't read them anyway.

In the new world, every unnecessary layer of information creates more background noise and interferes with other, more important information being absorbed. The principle is: everything that does not add - subtracts. Messagers and information providers must find a way to filter through the background noise and deliver their precise message.

One way is to shorten the information. Today, super brands are even willing to remove their name from the products and remain with only a logo. On APPLE computers only the apple logo appears, and when we drive behind a Volkswagen we only see an icon. The super-brand name may be burdensome, and therefore disappears.

Global attention disorder is also expressed in indifference to the point of ignoring most of the information that reaches us. The Russian writer, philosopher and linguist Viktor Shklovsky called the phenomenon the "Rush of the Waves Syndrome". At first you listen to the sound of the waves and enjoy it, but with the passage of time, without you feeling it, it disappears from consciousness. Like the picture that hangs on the wall in the office and becomes a light sense transparent for you.

Today, anyone who wants to convey information or a message to others, has to deal with the global attention disorder and the noise wave syndrome. The way to overcome the disorder is through reference to consciousness and the way the human brain perceives information that is transmitted to it.

Each piece of information has a certain hierarchy. The human brain also has an orderly way of perceiving things. As an organ that developed during evolution to respond to any situation in the most efficient way - it will always look for the shortest and fastest way of absorption. So, for example, the brain will prefer to focus on the big and prominent details, rather than the small ones. This is an essential trait for survival in the wild. It is better to see the tiger first, and only then his friends.

According to the same logic, we first see the tree, and only later do we notice its owner. The human mind is not "interested" in wasting time on small details and subtleties. For him, "God is in the big details". Brain studies prove that the brain performs independent completion of details, even if it has not actually received them. That is, he is satisfied with absorbing part of the information in order to create the whole.

This feature is related to the schematic decoding process of the information absorbed by the brain. An amusing case that happened to me can illustrate the intention. One day I went into a community center to pick up my son from a class he was attending. As I passed by the ballet hall I suddenly noticed a large sign on the wall. The following inscription appeared on the sign: "Caution, the floor is crooked." At the bottom of the sign appeared a signature: "The Dancers". Creative, I thought to myself while smiling, I kept walking and… I fell. The floor was really crooked! But my mind interpreted the information it received through a certain cultural pattern, and in this case it was wrong. The message changed consciousness.

In a world so full of messages, messages that succeed with minimal means in changing our consciousness, have the advantage of being remembered and internalized. In the following lines I will refer to mind manipulations, which use and take advantage of the properties of the human brain to focus on the big details and insert the information it receives into familiar schemes.

If I show you a picture of rings in water and ask you how they were formed, you will probably answer, "from throwing a stone." An immediate thought scheme will lead you to this solution. But if I write next to the circles the word "music" and ask again how the circles were formed, you will likely say, "sound waves". This is a change of consciousness of a familiar sign by minimal means. The way the word "music" functioned, I call "conquering the mind". This is the central means that affects the renewed way in which we perceive a familiar situation. The word caused the image to replace context in consciousness.

When the surrealist painter René Magritte shows the viewer a pipe and writes under it "This is not a pipe", he captures the viewer's consciousness through a title that expresses the negation of the familiar and the banal. By emptying the object of its familiar content, Magritte "forces" us to give the curved object in the picture a new meaning.

There is one fundamental difference between the two examples I presented. While Magritte's "Conqueror of Consciousness" opens up a host of new interpretation possibilities for the viewer, the title "Music" leads to one clear interpretation. In the world of art, a multitude of interpretations are legitimate, while in the world of messages there is room for only one required interpretation.

At the time of the 2004 Athens Olympics, Adidas succeeded in changing the "banality" of everyday accessories for passers-by through a graphic "mind capturer". The addition of the "Adidas" logo to the bar and grab handles changed the way they were perceived, and turned them in the mind into parallels and rings, accessories that belong to the world of gymnastics.

According to Gestalt theory, the human brain strives to complete incomplete signs in the environment. The rock singer Phil Collins used a mind manipulation based on this idea: in a concert held in the XNUMXs in a stadium and without in London (in front of the eyes and ears of a hundred thousand spectators), Collins omitted the famous drum transition section, which became his hallmark, in the song "IN THE AIR TONIGHT", and instead left the hundred thousand spectators in absolute silence for three seconds.

Many viewers testified that in these three seconds they heard the familiar drumming sound in their heads. These became the three most memorable seconds of the show, where nearly fifty songs were performed for three hours by the best British singers. Many articles have been written about these three seconds. The song itself, in the special performance, became the "anthem" of the concert and the promoter of his record sales.

The last example is taken from an advertising campaign of an association working in England for the hungry of Africa. The campaign aims to raise awareness and obtain donations. The advertisement video shows hungry children in Africa. The indifferent viewer, accustomed to harsh images, receives a close-up of the children's swollen bellies, their sad and closed eyes and their desperate mothers. But these pictures are accompanied by happy and cheerful dance music.

Against the background of the difficult images and the cheerful music, a title appears asking the viewer: "Does the music bother you?" The viewer's instinctive answer is - yes, because the music is really jarring at the sight of the pictures. And then the voice of an announcer is heard saying: "No, the music shouldn't bother you. But the pictures." The viewer - who is emotionally shaken - agrees, of course, with the narrator. This is, in fact, the moment when his consciousness was captured for a few seconds.

In the world of messaging there are many manipulative methods for attracting attention, from provocation to changes in a familiar environment. "Conqueror of the mind" is one of the most sophisticated and diverse of them. There are many ways to use it, but the purpose of all of them is to move the mind from point A to point B. From parallel handles, and a sign on the road to a beautiful Mercedes. It is a means based on a deep understanding of how messages are received by the human brain: the complementary schematic thinking, the automaticity and the preference for salient details.