Someone else does

The mission of Madison Avenue is to influence what we link pain and pleasure to. Advertisers clearly understand that what drives us is not so much our intellect as the sensations that we link to their products. As a result, they've become experts in learning how to use exciting or soothing music, rapid or elegant imagery, bright or subdued color, and a variety of other elements to put us in certain emotional states; then, when our emotions are at their peak, when the sensations are their most intense, they flash an image of their product continuously until we link it to these desired feelings.

Pepsi employed this strategy brilliantly in carving out a bigger share of the lucrative soft-drink market from their major competitor, Coca-Cola. Pepsi observed the phenomenal success of Michael Jackson, a young man who had spent his entire life learning how to heighten people's emotions by the way he used his voice, his body, his face, and his gestures. Michael sang and danced in a way that stimulated huge numbers of people to feel incredibly good—so much so that they'd often purchase one of his albums to re-create the feelings. Pepsi asked. How can we transfer those sensations to our product? Their reasoning was that if people associated the same pleasurable feelings to Pepsi as they did to Michael Jackson, they'd buy Pepsi just as they bought his albums. The process of anchoring new feelings to a product or idea is the integral transference necessary to basic conditioning, something you'll learn more about in Chapter 6 as we study the science of Neuro-Associative Conditioning. But for now, consider this: any time we're in an intense emotional state, when we're feeling strong sensations of pain or pleasure, anything unique that occurs consistently will become neurologically linked. Therefore, in the future, whenever that unique thing happens again, the emotional state will return.

You've probably heard of Ivan Pavlov, a Russian scientist who, in the late nineteenth century, conducted conditioned-response experiments. His most famous experiment was one in which he rang a bell as he offered food to a dog, thereby stimulating the dog to salivate and pairing the dog's sensations with the sound of the bell. After repeating the conditioning enough times, Pavlov found that merely ringing the bell would cause the dog to salivate—even when food was no longer being given.

What does Pavlov have to do with Pepsi? First, Pepsi used Michael Jackson to get us in a peak emotional state. Then, at that precise moment, they flashed the product. Continuous repetitions of this created an emotional linkage for millions of Jackson's fans. The truth is that Michael Jackson doesn't even drink Pepsi! And he wouldn't even hold an empty Pepsi can in his hand on camera! You might wonder, " Isn't this company crazy? They hired a guy for $15 million to represent them who doesn't even hold their product, and tells everybody that he won't! What kind of spokesperson is this? What a crazy idea! " Actually, it was a brilliant idea. Sales went through the roof—so high that LA. Gear then hired Michael for $20 million to represent their product. And today, because he's able to change the way people feel (he's what I call a " state inducer") he and Sony/CBS just signed a 10-year recording contract that's reputed to be worth more than $1 billion. His ability to change people's emotional states makes him invaluable.

What we've got to realize is that this is all based on linking pleasurable sensations to specific behaviors. It's the idea that if we use the product, we'll live our fantasies. Advertisers have taught all of us that if you drive a BMW, then you're an extraordinary person with exceptional taste. If you drive a Hyundai, you're intelligent and frugal. If you drive a Pontiac, you'll have excitement. If you drive a Toyota, what a feeling you'll get! You're taught that if you wear Obsession cologne, you'll soon be entwined in the throes of an androgynous orgy. If you drink Pepsi, you'll be able to jam with M.C. Hammer as the epitome of hip. If you want to be a " good" mom, then you feed your children Hostess fruit pies, cupcakes and Twinkles.

Advertisers have noted that if enough pleasure can be generated, consumers are often willing to overlook the fear of pain. It is an advertising adage that " sex sells, " and there's no question that the pleasurable associations created in print and on TV by using sex do the job. Take a look at the trend in selling blue jeans. What are blue jeans, anyway? They used to be work pants: functional, ugly. How are they sold today? They've become an international icon of everything that's sexy, fashionable, and youthful. Have you ever watched a Levi's 501 jeans commercial? Can you explain one to me? They make no sense, do they? They're totally confusing. But at the end, you have the distinct impression that sex took place nearby. Does this type of strategy really sell blue jeans? You bet! Levi is the number-one blue-jeans manufacturer in America today.

Is the power of conditioning to shape our associations limited to products like soft drinks, automobiles and blue jeans? Of course not. Take the lowly little raisin, for example. Do you know that in 1986, the California Raisin Advisory Board was expecting a huge harvest, yet they were beginning to panic? Year by year, they'd seen their sales dropping by 1 percent annually. In desperation they turned to their advertising agency and asked what they could do. The solution was simple: they needed to change people's feelings about raisins. For most people, raisins were considered wimpy, lonely, and dull, according to Robert Phinney, the former director of the raisin board.* The task was clear: pump a healthy dose of emotional appeal into the shriveled-up fruit. Link up sensations that people wanted. " Shriveled" and " dried" are not the sensations that most people associate with feeling good about their lives. The raisin growers kept thinking. What can we associate to raisins that would make people really want to buy them?

At the time, an old Motown hit was enjoying a national resurgence: " I Heard It Through the Grapevine." Raisin growers thought. What if we can take these sensations that make so many people feel good, and link them to raisins to make them seem hip? They hired an innovative animator named Will Vinton who then created about thirty clay raisin figurines, each with a distinct personality, to boogie to the Motown tune. In those moments, the California Raisins were born. Their first ad campaign created an instant sensation and successfully linked the sensations that the raisin growers hoped for. As people watched the hip little raisins dance, they linked strong feelings of fun, humor, and pleasure to the once boring fruit. The raisin had been reinvented as the essence of California cool, and the unspoken message of each of these ads was that if you ate them you'd be hip, too. The upshot? The raisin industry was rescued from its devastating slump in sales to a 20 percent growth factor annually. The raisin growers had succeeded in changing people's associations: instead of linking boredom to the fruit, consumers had learned to link sensations of excitement and fun!

Of course, the use of advertising as a form of conditioning is not limited to physical products. Fortunately or unfortunately, we consistently see television and radio used as tools for changing what we associate to candidates in the political process. No one knows this better than the master political analyst and opinion-shaper Roger Ailes, who was responsible for key elements of Ronald Reagan's successful 1984 campaign against Walter Mondale, and who in 1988 masterminded George Bush's successful campaign against Michael Dukakis. Ailes designed a strategy to convey three specifically negative messages about Dukakis—that he was soft on defense, the environment, and crime—and cause people to link painful sensations to him. One ad portrayed Dukakis as a " kid playing war" in a tank; another seemed to blame him for pollution in the Boston Harbor. The most notorious one showed criminals being released from Massachusetts jails through a revolving door, and played on the widespread negative publicity generated around the country by the " Willie Horton incident." Convicted murderer Willie Horton, released from jail as part of a controversial furlough program in Dukakis's home state, failed to return and ten months later was arrested for terrorizing a young couple, raping the woman and assaulting the man.

Many people took issue with the negative focus of these ads. Personally, I found them highly manipulative. But it's hard to argue with their level of success, based on the fact that people do more to avoid pain than to gain pleasure. Many people didn't like the way the campaign was fought—and George Bush was one of those people—but it was hard to argue with the reality that pain was a very powerful motivator in shaping people's behavior. As Ailes says, " The negative ads cut through quicker. People tend to pay more attention to [these types of ads]. People may or may not slow down to look at a beautiful pastoral scene along the highway. But everyone looks at an auto accident." * There is no questioning the effectiveness of Ailes's strategy. Bush won a clear majority of the popular vote and soundly trounced Dukakis in one of the biggest landslides in electoral college history.

The force shaping world opinion and consumer's buying habits is also the same force that shapes all of our actions. It's up to you and me to take control of this force and decide on our own actions consciously, because if we don't direct our own thoughts, we'll fall under the influence of those who would condition us to behave in the way they desire. Sometimes those actions are what we would have selected anyway; sometimes not. Advertisers understand how to change what we link pain and pleasure to by changing the sensations we associate to their products. If we want to take control of our lives, we must learn to " advertise" in our own minds—and we can do this in a moment. How? Simply by linking pain to the behaviors we want to stop at such a high level of emotional intensity that we won't even consider those behaviors any longer. Aren't there things you would never, ever do? Think of the sensations you link to those. If you link those same feelings and sensations to the behaviors you want to avoid, you'll never do them again, either. Then, simply link pleasure to the new behavior you desire for yourself. Through repetition and emotional intensity, you can condition these behaviors within yourself until they are automatic.

So what's the first step in creating a change? The first step is simply becoming aware of the power that pain and pleasure exert over every decision, and therefore every action, that we take. The art of being aware is understanding that these linkages—between ideas, words, images, sounds, and sensations of pain and pleasure— are happening constantly.

" I conceive that pleasures are to be avoided if greater pains be the consequence, and pains to be coveted that will terminate in greater pleasures."

—MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE

The problem is that most of us base our decisions about what to do on what's going to create pain or pleasure in the short term instead of the long term. Yet, in order to succeed, most of the things that we value require us to be able to break through the wall of short-term pain in order to have long-term pleasure. You must put aside the passing moments of terror and temptation, and focus on what's most important in the long term: your values and personal standards. Remember, too, that it's not actual pain that drives us, but our fear that something will lead to pain. And it's not actual pleasure that drives us, but our belief—our sense of certainty—that somehow taking a certain action will lead to pleasure. We're not driven by the reality, but by our perception of reality.

Most people focus on how to avoid pain and gain pleasure in the short term, and thereby create long term pain for themselves. Let's consider an example. Say someone wants to lose a few extra pounds. (I know this has never happened to you, but let's just pretend anyway!) On the one hand, this person marshals a host of excellent reasons for losing weight: they would feel healthier and more energized; they would fit into their clothes better; they would feel more confident around members of the opposite sex. On the other hand, though, there are just as many reasons to avoid losing weight: they'd have to go on a diet; they'd continually feel hungry; they'd have to deny their urge to eat fattening foods; and besides, why not wait until after the holidays?

With the reasons balanced in this way, many people would tip the scales in favor of the pattern of putting things off—the potential pleasure of a slimmer figure far outweighed by the short-term pain of dietary deprivation. Short term, we avoid the pain of feeling a twinge of hunger, and instead we give ourselves that immediate morsel of pleasure by indulging in a few potato chips, but it doesn't last. In the long term, we feel worse and worse about ourselves, not to mention the fact that it causes our health to deteriorate.

Remember, anything you want that's valuable requires that you break through some short-term pain in order to gain long-term pleasure. If you want a great body, you've got to sculpt that body, which requires breaking through short-term pain. Once you've done it enough times, working out becomes pleasurable. Dieting works the same way. Any type of discipline requires breaking through pain: discipline in business, relationships, personal confidence, fitness, and finances. How do you break through the discomfort and create the momentum to really accomplish your aims? Start by making the decision to overcome it. We can always decide to override the pain in the moment, and better yet is to follow up by conditioning ourselves, which is something we'll cover in detail in Chapter 6.

A prime example of how this short-term focus can cause us all to take a fall (as in Niagara) is reflected by the current savings-and-loan crisis—probably the single biggest financial mistake ever made in the history of our government. Estimates show it could cost taxpayers more than $500 billion, yet most Americans have no idea what caused it. * This problem will most certainly be one that is the source of pain—at least economic pain—for every man, woman and child in this country, probably for generations to come. In a conversation I had with L William Seidman, chairman of the Resolution Trust Corporation and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, he told me, " We are the only nation rich enough to survive such a big mistake." What did create this financial mess? It's a classic example of trying to eliminate pain by solving a problem while nurturing the cause.

It all began with savings and loan challenges that came up in the late seventies and early eighties. Banking and S& L institutions had built their business primarily on the corporate and consumer market. For a bank to profit, it has to make loans, and those loans have to be at an interest rate that's above what it pays out to depositors. In the first stages of the problem, the banks faced difficulties on several fronts. First, they were hit hard when corporations entered what had previously been the sole domain of banks: lending. Large companies found that by lending to one another, they saved significantly on interest, developing what's now known as the " commercial paper market." This was so successful that it virtually destroyed the profit centers of many banks.

Meanwhile, there were new developments on the American consumer front as well. Traditionally, consumers did not look forward to meeting with a loan officer at a bank, meekly asking for loans to purchase a car or large appliance. I think we can fairly say that this was a painful experience for most as they subjected themselves to financial scrutiny. They didn't usually feel like a " valued customer" at many banks. Car companies were smart enough to recognize this and began offering loans to their customers, creating a new source of profit for themselves. They saw that they could make as much money on the financing as they did on the car they sold, and they could give the customer a great deal of convenience and lower interest rates. Their attitude was, of course, quite different from the bankers'—they had a vested interest in seeing the customer get his loan. Soon, the customers came to prefer the in-house financing over the traditional method, appreciating the convenience, flexibility, and low financing fees. Everything was handled in one place by a courteous person who wanted their business. Consequently, General Motors Acceptance Corporation (GMAC) quickly became one of the largest car-financing companies in the country.

One of the last bastions for bank loans was the real estate market, but interest rates and inflation had soared in one year as high as 18 percent. As a result, no one could afford the monthly payments that servicing loans at this interest rate required. As you can imagine, real estate loans dropped off the map.

By this time, the banks had lost their corporate customers en masse, they had lost the market for a great deal of their car loans, and they had begun to lose the home loans as well. The final slap to the banks was that the depositors, in response to inflation, needed a higher rate of return while the banks were still carrying loans that would yield significantly lower interest rates. Every day, the banks were losing money; they saw their survival at stake and decided to do two things. First, they lowered their standards for qualifying customers for loans. Why? Because they believed that if they didn't lower their standards, there would be no one to loan money to. And if they didn't loan money, they couldn't profit, and they'd clearly have pain. If, however, they were able to loan money to someone who paid them back, they'd have pleasure. Plus, there was very little risk. If they loaned money and the lendee didn't meet the obligation, then the taxpayers, namely you and I, would bail them out anyway. So in the final analysis, there was very little fear of pain and tremendous incentive to " risk" their (our?) capital.

These banks and S& Ls also pressured Congress to help keep them from going under, and a series of changes occurred. Large banks realized that they could loan money to foreign nations that were desperately hungry for capital. The lenders realized that over breakfast they could commit more than $50 million to a country. They didn't have to work with millions of consumers to lend the same amount, and the profits on these larger loans were sizable. The bank managers and loan officers were also often given bonuses in relation to the size and number of loans they could produce. The banks were no longer focusing on the quality of a loan. Their focus was not on whether a country like Brazil could pay the loan back or not, and frankly, many weren't terribly concerned. Why? They did exactly what we taught them: we encouraged them to be gamblers with the Federal Deposit Insurance, promising that if they won, they won big, and if they failed, we would pick up the tab. There was simply too little pain in this scenario for the banker.

Smaller banks, who didn't have the resources to loan to foreign countries, found that the next best thing was to loan to commercial developers here in the United States. They, too, lowered their standards so that developers could borrow with no money down instead of the traditional 20 percent. What was the developers' response? Well, they had nothing on the line, they were using only other people's money, and at the same time Congress had built such high tax incentives into commercial building that the builders had absolutely nothing to lose. They no longer had to analyze whether the market was right, or whether the building was properly located or sized. The developers' only " downside" was that they would have the most incredible tax write-off of their lives.

As a result, builders built like crazy, causing a glut on the market. When the supply was so much greater than the demand, the market collapsed. Developers went back to the banks and said, " We can't pay, " and the banks turned to the taxpayers and said, " We can't pay." Unfortunately, there's nobody we can turn to. What's worse, people have seen the abuse in this country, and the assumption now is that anyone who is wealthy must have taken advantage of somebody. This is creating negative attitudes toward many in business who are often the very people providing jobs that allow Americans' dreams to flourish. This whole mess illustrates our lack of understanding of the pain-pleasure dynamic and the inadvisability of trying to conquer long-term problems with short-term solutions.

Pain and pleasure are also the backstage directors of global drama. For years we lived through an escalating arms race with the USSR. The two nations were constantly building more weapons as the ultimate threat: " If you try to hurt us, we'll retaliate and hurt you even worse." And the standoff continued to build to the point at which we were spending $15, 000 a second on arms. What caused Gorbachev to suddenly decide to renegotiate arms reduction? The answer is pain. He began to associate massive pain to the idea of trying to compete with our military arms buildup. Financially it just wasn't feasible; he couldn't even feed his people! When people can't eat, they're more concerned about their stomachs than about guns. They're more interested in filling their larders than the country's armament. They begin to believe that money is being spent frivolously, and they insist on a change. Did Gorbachev change his position because he's a great guy? Maybe. But one thing is certain: he didn't have a choice.

" Nature has placed mankind under the government of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure... they govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think: every effort we can make to throw off our subjection, will serve but to demonstrate and confirm it."

JEREMY BENTHAM

Why do people persist in an unsatisfying relationship, unwilling either to work toward solutions or end it and move on? It's because they know changing will lead to the unknown, and most people believe that the unknown will be much more painful than what they're already experiencing. It's like the old proverbs say: " Better the devil you know than the devil you don't know, " " A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush." These core beliefs keep us from taking the actions that could change our lives.

If we want to have art intimate relationship, then we have to overcome our fears of rejection and vulnerability. If we're planning to go into business, we must be willing to overcome our fear of losing security to make that happen. In fact, most of the things that are valuable in our lives require us to go against the basic conditioning of our nervous systems. We must manage our fears by overriding this preconditioned set of responses and, in many cases, we must transform that fear into power. Many times, the fear that we are allowing to control us never becomes reality anyway. It's possible for people to link pain, for example, to flying in an airplane, while there's no logical reason for the phobia. They're responding to a painful experience in their past or even an imagined future. They may have read in the papers about airplane accidents, and now they avoid getting on planes: they're allowing that fear to control them. We must make sure that we live our lives in the present and respond to things that are real, not to our fears of what once was or what might someday be. The key thing to remember is that we don't move away from real pain; we move away from what we believe will lead to pain.