3. Focus on reading

   1. Read an extract from a radio programme and decide which two of these things are being discussed: a) advertising, b) politicians, c) supermarkets.

Persuasion

I=interviewer E=expert

I: Welcome to Modern World. On the programme today, we’re talking to Jo Carlson about the power of persuasion. All around us, there are images on television, jingles on the radio, adverts in magazines, sound bites on the news, offers in the shops. They’re all hard at work – trying to make us believe something or persuading us to buy something. Fear not, however, Jo Carlson is here to reveal their secrets and show us how to resist all this persuasion! Hello, Jo.

E: Hello.

I: First, persuading people is big business, isn’t it? I mean, supermarkets and politicians, advertisers and salespeople, they all take it very seriously, don’t they?

E: Yes. They spend a lot of money on working out the best psychological tricks to guarantee that even the most cautious among us are open to manipulation.

I: Let’s take supermarkets then. How do they make us buy things we don’t necessarily want? What are some of their tricks?

E: Well, firstly, they try to relax us by playing music and by pumping the smell of freshly-baked bread into the store. Studies have shown that the smell makes people buy more.

I: I know I’ve done that without even thinking about it…

E: Exactly … most of the time, we are completely unaware of what’s happening. It’s subconscious persuasion …

I: And what about ‘reward’ cards?

E: Ah yes! Well, from the supermarket’s point of view, reward cards are a huge success story. As customers, we think we’re being rewarded for shopping at that particular supermarket. What’s really happening, however, is that the store is basically not only tempting us to shop there again, but also getting vital information about what we’re buying.

I: More information to help them work out how to persuade us to buy even more things …

E: That’s right!

I: So, what about advertising industry? What secrets can you reveal about that? In what ways does it persuade us to buy particular products?

E: Well … there’s so much. And no matter how much we think we know about what the advertisers are doing … they still tend to win! We still fall for the advert and end up buying the product.

I: Yes …

E: Basically, there are two types of ads … those that appeal to the thinking part of our brain and those that appeal to the emotional part.

I: So, for what type of products would they advertise by appealing to the thinking part of our brain?

E: Well, they are mostly used for things which have little emotional appeal, for example, cleaning products. They give us information bout the product and try to influence us that way. However, adverts which go for our emotions are usually much more successful. In using emotion, adverts exploit psychoanalytical theories about the subconscious. I mean, they know that images can reach our emotions at a level that we are not aware of and so are much more powerful in persuading us to do things.

I: So, what kinds of emotions are used?

E: Well, adverts for different brands of clothes often want to make us feel that we belong, for example by showing us how to buy the right clothes to fit in with our friends. And adverts for insurance play on our need to feel safe. For example they might show a family happily spending their insurance money buying new things when their house has been burgled. Self-esteem is an important one too. Many ads for luxury products like expensive cars, work on making us feel good about ourselves and the lifestyles that we could have.

I: Celebrities are used a lot too, aren’t they?

E: Yes, that’s very popular. Celebrities are often used as a quick way of getting the message across. Their success and familiarity makes them feel safe, interesting, cool, … whatever … We see our favourite pop star drinking a particular fizzy drink and we’re immediately persuaded to buy it!