Buyology - Martin Lindstrom [35]
Formula One has its roots and popularity throughout Europe, which remains its leading market, and hosts a series of highly publicized Grands Prix—a sport whose far-reaching popularity makes it another obvious sponsorship bonanza.
Why? Think about it: if your ads have been knocked off TV and banned by governments around the world, what better way to convey that feeling of risk, cool, youth, dynamism, raciness, and living on the edge (as opposed to, say, being tethered to a respirator) than to sponsor a car race? What about sponsoring the Ferrari team during its Formula One races? Paint a car Marlboro-red. Dress the driver and the crew in bright red jumpsuits. Then sit back in your box seat and exhale.
How effective are these underground tactics? It was time to put subliminal tobacco advertising to the test, using two iconic and enormously popular brands: Marlboro and Camel.
SEVERAL MONTHS BEFORE conducting the study I described in Chapter 1 about the efficacy—or, as it turned out, the lack thereof—of health warnings on cigarette packs, we’d shown our American volunteers one of the most repulsive (and to my mind, effective) antismoking TV ads I’d ever seen. A group of people are sitting around chatting and smoking. They’re having a jolly good time, except for one problem: instead of smoke, thick, greenish-yellow globules of fat are pouring out of the tips of their cigarettes, congealing, coalescing, and splattering onto their ashtrays. The more the smokers talk and gesture, the more those caterpillar-sized wads of fat end up on the table, the floor, their shirtsleeves, all over the place. The point being, of course, that smoking spreads these same globules of fat throughout your bloodstream, clogging up your arteries and wreaking havoc with your health.
But just as with the cigarette warning labels, viewing this ad had caused our respondents’ craving spots to come alive. They weren’t put off by the gruesome images of artery-clogging fat; they barely even noticed them. Instead, their brains’ mirror neurons latched on to the convivial atmosphere they were observing—and their “craving spots” were activated. Another powerful antismoking message had been taken down, just like that.
In other words, overt, direct, visually explicit antismoking messages did more to encourage smoking than any deliberate campaign Marlboro or Camel could have come up with. But now it was time to put subliminal tobacco ads to the test.
A good-looking cowboy with a rugged landscape stretched out behind him. Two men loping along on horseback. A hillside in the American West. A jeep, speeding down a curving mountain road. A lipstick-colored sunset. A parched desert. Bright red Ferraris. Racing paraphernalia from both Formula 1 and NASCAR, including red cars and mechanics wearing signature red jumpsuits. These were among the images we showed our volunteers.
The images had two things in common. First, they were all associated with cigarette commercials from back in the era when governments permitted cigarette advertising (and don’t forget that regardless of whether our smokers could actually remember these images from growing up, they’re still ubiquitous online, in stores and cafés, and through viral marketing). Second, not a single cigarette, logo, or brand name was anywhere in sight.
Over a two-month period, our smokers filed in and out of Dr. Calvert’s laboratory. What parts of their brains would light up as they watched these logo-free images?
All of our subjects were asked to refrain from smoking for two hours preceding the test, to ensure that their nicotine