Week 5: Applied Psychology in Advertising - Link and reflection

The first thing I think about when people start talking about the psychology (or the "tricks") of advertising is this video:

[youtube] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyQjr1YL0zg

Give it a watch; it's less than 7 minutes, and pretty amazing stuff.

So basically, this bloke Derren Brown is a mentalist. That is, he has such an acute understanding of how people's minds work that he can manipulate them without them noticing anything is out of the ordinary. He's done a lot of different things (and I encourage you all to check out his other videos as well, they are quite extraordinary) but this particular example is most applicable to our readings right now. What he does is manipulate two advertising people into creating an advert that matches almost exactly his intended design, though they thought they were working on their own creativity, simply by giving them subliminal imagery on their trip over. It's an example of how gullible we are as a species, but more importantly it shows the awesome power of applied psychology. Granted, this man is exceptional and most people cannot match his results, but he is living proof that the field of psychology has enormous potential for understanding how people's minds work and how it can be applied to our everyday lives.