Brandwashed (11 page)

Shopping addictions tend to follow the same general patterns as any other addiction, according to experts in the field. First comes anticipation of shopping or buying something, followed by the shopping or buying experience itself, “often described as pleasurable, ecstatic even, and as providing relief from negative feelings,” according to a study carried out by researchers at the University of Richmond and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and published in the
Journal of Consumer Research
.
¹¹
But the relief is fleeting, and ultimately the high wears off and the shopper crashes. Then, like an alcoholic after a binge, he or she is overcome with guilt and remorse before the cycle starts all over again. While psychiatrists aren’t in complete agreement about whether shopping addiction qualifies as a clinical addiction (at the time of writing, the American Psychiatric Association is debating whether to include compulsive shopping in the fifth edition of its mental-health bible, the
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
), they do agree that compulsive shoppers “use shopping as a way of escaping negative feelings, such as depression, anxiety, boredom, self-critical thoughts, and anger,”
¹²
and many are prescribing an antidepressant known generically as citalopram and sold in the United States as Celexa to curb uncontrollable shopping urges.

As we saw in the last chapter, marketing and advertising entreaties that play on emotions like fear, insecurity, and the universal need for acceptance are incredibly persuasive. Well, it turns out that if we’re already predisposed to compulsively shop or buy, their seductive powers become that much more magnified. One four-year-long German study has even found that a critical factor in shopping addiction is the boost of self-esteem shoppers get from interacting with store clerks! “We discovered that shopping addicts get a real kick out of the interaction they have with store personnel. Their fragile egos are given a tremendous boost by sales people who fawn over them and smile and treat them like royalty,” says Astrid Mueller, who wrote the study findings. “Their conscious minds know, of course, that these people only want to make a commission on a sale. But their subconscious minds enjoy being treated as a special somebody.”
¹³

So how does shopping addiction—or any addiction, for that matter—start? Again, it all goes back to dopamine, that feel-good
neurotransmitter our brain’s limbic system spurts out to give us a “high” or “rush” so pleasurable that we can’t help but repeat the behavior as soon as the dopamine drops back to normal levels. The catch is, the more we experience the object or behavior of our addiction—whether it’s
cigarettes, a drink, a drug, or new Manolo Blahnik pumps—the greater a tolerance we build up, meaning we need more and more of the substance or the behavior to get back that dopamine high.

Dr. Peter Kalivas, chair of physiology and neuroscience at the Medical University of South Carolina, explains that over time, our persistent pursuit of that rush of dopamine can actually change our brains’ DNA (specifically the proteins that control a neurotransmitter known as glutamate) in a way that triggers an uncontrollable urge to secure the drug, the drink, or the item of clothing. “You will not let things stand in your way,” Kalivas says. “The brain has been altered permanently.”
¹⁴

B
rand addiction, and its slightly less severe cousin, brand obsession, are subsets of shopping addiction, and while they may not be recognized as psychiatric disorders, I’ve found them to be alarmingly common. In fact, I’m guessing that whether it’s the coworker who has to have her Starbucks in the morning before she can function (not just any coffee; it has to be Starbucks) or the brother-in-law who mopes around depressed for days because the Yankees lost or the little cousin who stands in line all night in minus-ten-degree weather because she just
has
to have tickets to the Miley Cyrus concert (sports teams and celebrities are brands, and highly addictive ones, too), you too know plenty of people who suffer from it. There are so many brand obsessives out there, there’s even an online community called MyBrandz, where the afflicted can swap stories about their obsessions. Over the years, I’ve met people addicted to all kinds of brands and products, from a man who owned ten Harley-Davidsons to a woman who drank twenty-five Diet Cokes a day. And while there’s certainly a difference between brand fanaticism and true addiction, I’ve found that line to be rather thin.

Still, do companies and advertisers have a hand in creating these
addictions to their products? Obviously, they can’t penetrate our brains and alter the DNA. But while they may not be able to directly manufacture addiction, based on what I’ve seen in boardrooms and back rooms over my two decades of work with some of the most successful brands on the planet, you better believe that they do have a lot of clever tricks and tools for nudging us in that direction and spurring addictions along. Sometimes they use subconscious emotional or psychological cues, like when cigarette companies imbue their ads and packaging with subtle imagery meant to induce craving. Other times they actually make their products physically addictive, the way cigarette companies manufacture tobacco products to be chemically addictive and potato chip companies use recipes that ensure we won’t be able to stop until we’ve eaten the whole bag. And other times they persuade us to engage in behaviors that actually rewire our brains to become hooked on the act of shopping and buying.

To find out exactly how these addictions form, I spoke with a former senior executive at
Philip Morris (seemed like the logical place to start my research on addiction) about how mere consumer habits and preferences can cross the line into addictions—and the role companies play in pushing us over it. He told me that his company has identified a model of how we get hooked on brands. It happens in two stages. The first is known as the “routine stage.” This is when we simply use certain brands or products as part of our daily habits and rituals—when we brush our teeth with Crest, use Dove soap in the shower, drive our Toyota to work, etc. These are all products we buy regularly and replace or replenish whenever they break or run out. They are essential to our everyday functioning. The second stage, known as the “dream stage,” however, is when we buy things—a new dress, a new pair of earphones, a new bottle of perfume—not because we need them but because we’ve allowed
emotional
signals about them to penetrate our brains. When do we slip into the dream stage? According to this executive, who asked that he not be named, it’s usually when we’ve let our guard down, when we’re relaxed. During the summer, over the weekend, on vacation. Think about it. Beyond the essentials, how many times do you open your wallet during the workweek? Typically not often, because you’re in work mode, not shopping mode. But as the weekend approaches, we
shed our routines like an unwanted skin and become susceptible to the dream stage.

According to the former Philip Morris executive,
that’s
when a real attachment to a brand tends to take root. Here’s how it happens. During a brief respite from the routine stage, or “work mode,” we feel more relaxed, less inhibited, and more open to trying new drinks, new clothes, new cosmetics, new foods. Pretty soon, we’ve subconsciously linked the good memories or pleasant emotions of the dream stage with the taste of that new cocktail or the feel of that new face cream against our skin or the fragrance of that new lemon-scented candle. So once Monday rolls around again, or autumn gets under way, we try to “reactivate” this feeling by integrating those brands and products into our daily routines. And once something is part of our routine, it becomes almost impossible to shake.

In sum, a habit is formed during the dream stage, then the habit is reinforced and permanently embedded during the routine stage, at which time we are unconsciously longing for the dream-stage feelings we left behind at the beach or at the spa or at that outdoor concert. This, in fact, is why most beverage brands are so ubiquitously present at summertime music festivals and concerts; those companies know this is one of the best windows to hook new customers on their products. Red Bull, for example, got its start by distributing free caseloads of the stuff at cool “hangouts” like malls and surfing shops, where teenagers and college kids tend to gather to escape the mundane routines of their everyday lives (by the way, it’s no coincidence that malls and certain kinds of stores become the “cool” hangout location—that’s another happy “accident” engineered largely by marketers, who often hire sexy, good-looking kids to stand casually in front of the entrance. Miraculously, the area is soon packed with other kids; mission accomplished). The company knew that if it caught these kids in their dream stage, once Monday rolled around and they went back to their classes, chores, and homework, they’d associate Red Bull with the carefree feeling of hanging out at the surf shop—and pretty soon they’d be hooked (though in the case of Red Bull there are other reasons, as you’ll soon be reading).

Of course, this doesn’t work every time. In order for a product to truly take root, its makers have to imbue it with some addictive—whether
physically or psychologically—qualities. So what exactly do companies and advertisers do to engineer our desire and make their brand or product so impossible to resist? Let me give you one example from the front lines.

A
couple of years ago, one of the largest beverage companies in the world hired me to help solve a problem. The sales of its top soft drink had been declining over the past three years, and despite rolling out every trick in its playbook, nothing (including more TV ads and a viral campaign) was working. It looked hopeless, until I realized something the marketing executives had overlooked. Though it seemed like a small detail, psychologically speaking it was anything but.

Now I’m going to let you in on the secret ingredient behind some of the most successful food, beverage, and cosmetics brands out there: the element of
craving
. It’s a word that the industry finds hard to admit that it strives for, yet most hit brands and products would be nothing without it.

Face it: all of us experience cravings at some point or another, whether they’re for fast food after a long day at work, a bar of chocolate on our way home from the gym, or a cigarette with our morning coffee. Craving is why we’re drawn at 2:00 a.m. to the quiet glow of our refrigerator, why the munchy allure of those Doritos or Cheetos refuses to fade until we’ve polished off the whole bag, and why we fight an internal battle each time we walk by the candy aisle in the drugstore or supermarket. But while cravings may seem to come out of nowhere, in reality they are often triggered by some physical and emotional cues in our surroundings, whether we realize it or not.

The truth is, no matter how much we believe we’re in control, when it comes to craving, we are often powerless in the face of these triggers. Companies know this, which is why they deliberately imbue their packaging and advertising with “unconscious signals”—cues that lie just beneath our conscious awareness, right at those very moments when cravings are liable to strike. At Coca-Cola, for example,
marketing executives spend hours discussing how many bubbles they should feature in their print ads and on in-store refrigerators. Realizing how much craving bubbles generate—they make us think of that cool, refreshing feeling of carbonation hitting our palates—some executives I spoke with told me they’ve actually come up with a confidential model for how many bubbles they need to trigger our cravings.

These kinds of craving-inducing “unconscious symbols” were precisely what the big beverage company that hired me had been overlooking. In this case, it was one type of symbol in particular. Think about the countless ads or signs you’ve seen for Coca-Cola, Pepsi, or any other soft drink displayed in front of kiosks, restaurants, or street cafés. Ever notice that the glass or can or bottle in the photo has water drops—what beverage executives dub “sweat”—trickling down the side? Maybe you didn’t notice them consciously. But what those little drops of sweat signal to us
sub
consciously is that the beverage is not just cold but
ice
-cold, which, as everyone knows, makes soda a million times more tasty and refreshing.

Believe it or not, these little sweat drops, which beverage companies have been using in their advertising for decades, kick-start our brains’ craving impulses. Yet the company I was helping had decided that those sweat drops—in short, the seeds of craving—looked chaotic and overcomplicated, so it had left them out of its ads, and that’s why its beverage was tanking. This wasn’t just my theory; when we went back and looked at the data, it became clear that the decision to eliminate these unconscious symbols had coincided with the drink’s decrease in sales.

It was clear to me that if it was to revive the brand, the company would have to come up with a new unconscious symbol—something even more powerful, more seductive, more crave-worthy than the sweat drops. The only question was what. So I began touring the country, going so far as to spend the night in the homes of soda drinkers of all ages and races. I ate with them. I talked with them. I partied with them. And, of course, I drank a lot of sodas with them. Along the way, something clicked . . . literally.

A few years ago, I conducted a study about the powerful role that sound plays in our subconscious minds. By scanning the brains of fifty consumers from around the world, I was able to isolate the ten most
evocative and addictive sounds. The most powerful sound was a baby laughing. But interestingly, also rounding out the top-ten list were the sizzle of a broiling steak and the crackle and fizz of a beverage being poured into a glass filled with ice cubes.

Point is, sounds are incredibly effective triggering cravings. So if I wanted to help that soft drink company revive its brand, the key would be to find out exactly what sounds would trigger the most powerful cravings for its product. So when I sat down with all those soda drinkers around the country, I played them a long list of soft drink–related sounds: the snap and hiss of a cap being opened; the click of a bottle cap careening off a glass bottle; the gurgle and crackle of soda being poured into an ice-filled glass; that unmistakable slurp when a straw sucks the last drop out of a plastic cup; and so forth, to see which triggered the strongest craving for the beverage.