Your Brain Held Hostage
In today’s age, the mind is held captive by endless distractions competing for attention: a new series on a streaming service here, a new sale there, or a smartphone notification alerting us to something.
It’s challenging to remain focused in current times because technology and marketing constantly expose us to images and ads from many sources, including products or services we’ve never heard of.
The companies offering these products aren’t concerned with you needing these products, as long as they can fill the void inside by boosting your self-esteem. Products that advertise in this manner fill gaps during popular TV programming and keep subtly and overtly suggesting their presence to get you to fall in love with them.
This is how food is marketed to consumers, except there are even more marketing platforms for companies to reach their audiences today. Whether we realize it or not, the brain is susceptible to unwanted images, especially when it’s already distracted and not operating at an optimal level.
Advertising is actually a branch of neuroscience that has billions of dollars invested in psychologically manipulating consumers into spending money on a variety of products. Reaching consumers through deceptive means is a way for food companies to increase profits each year.
By recognizing how advertisers influence your mind through hundreds of subtle messages each day, you can reduce the powerful impact of television programming on day-to-day food decisions.
How Television Programs You Toward Foods You Don’t Need
There are regions of the brain responsible for different types of tasks; one is the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for making conscious decisions and assessing risk and danger. The other is for activities that require no thinking at all and are highly sensitive to reactions, known as the limbic system.
The prefrontal cortex is like the brain’s command center, where we make all our executive decisions. When the prefrontal cortex is shut off, the limbic system is active.
The limbic system, also known as the hindbrain, is a section of the brain that reacts to television programming as if it were real. When the limbic system is active, the body releases fight-or-flight hormones in response to the current stimulus.
A frightening commercial or a disturbing scene in a movie can stimulate the release of adrenaline and norepinephrine into the bloodstream, triggering stressor signals during viewing. Stressor signals often trigger other hunger hormones, such as ghrelin, which is why a viewer may feel sudden hunger when watching television shows that cause anxiety.
How is the prefrontal cortex section of the brain deactivated while the limbic system gets to runs the show? By altering your brain wave frequencies so that you feel most relaxed.
This relaxed brain wave state is known as the alpha brain wave is awakened but relaxed. This is the state your brain is in the most heightened state of suggestibility.
Within minutes of watching television, frontal lobe activity drops to zero. If you are watching entertainment television, the prefrontal cortex portion of the brain is suppressed in less than 90 seconds. This is mainly because entertainment TV is a passive activity and often fails to engage viewers with the characters or the story.
Advertisers know how to entice their target audience by studying human behavior and marketing psychology. Top firms such as Procter& Gamble and L’Oreal spent $13.5 billion and $15 billion, respectively, in 2024. Because advertising works, it requires a high budget.
Advertisers have also figured out how to get our brains to become trusting of a brand affiliated with a product or service. When people form trust with another entity or individual, they release a hormone known as oxytocin. This technique of trust building used by advertisers is what keeps people loyal to company brands over others.
An example of this are television jingles and catchy songs that activate the memory on cue to a particular fast food company. These tunes help the brain become familiar company through repetitiveness or the melody or lyrics sung by the musicians. Every time you hear the tune is a signal cue for eating at your favorite restaurant.
The game of the advertisers is to keep the audience in lower brain centers where people are much more easier to control. It’s much more difficult to convince a consumer to eat more when their prefrontal cortex is active and they can make more sound, rational decisions.
Edward Bernays was one of the first advertising executives that came up with the concept that advertising people were selling an emotion or feeling to a product or service. You can apply a negative emotion to an action by hypnosis through language.
This is better known as Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP), which has the capability to change someone’s mind using certain key words or physical gestures. Advertisers do a great job of this when they negative to a statement then follow up with a suggestion.
For example, one of Apple’s marketing campaigns in the past started off with ‘Don’t Buy An iPhone…Until You See This’. This phrasing convinces the buyer in his/her mind that product might have more to offer and not to ignore the advertisement until they learn more.
One of the major tactics that companies (especially food companies) like to use is sex and humor to market their products. Sex and humor are used so often because they are equivalent to pleasure every time the marketing is viewed.
Advertisers push the audience’s pleasure buttons when a commercial airs because the messaging is more likely to elicit a receptive emotional response than other emotional responses. When you’re viewing a commercial with an attractive model eating a cheeseburger in slow motion, you’re hyper-focused on the person enjoying the burger rather than the actual taste of the food.
Distractions in advertising work effectively with this method, or with humorous outtakes of an event that might have taken place, and the take-home message being delivered in the end:
These techniques are clever enough to fly under the radar because most people have become accustomed to seeing marketing messages so often. Whether you’re an avid television watcher or someone who avoids most programming, these marketing tactics all seem to be aimed at reaching your brain by any means necessary.
The Wrap Up
Food companies market to consumers when they’re most vulnerable and susceptible to messages, often without realizing it. The advertisements you enjoy viewing target the emotional part of the brain, which can make rational decisions harder. As we have become accustomed to constant, repetitive marketing, it has been difficult not to fall victim to ongoing deceptive marketing tactics.
