In The Blogs

Endorphin Branding

| Wed Sep. 24, 2008 10:15 AM PDT

ENDORPHIN BRANDING....Via Andrew Sullivan, Newsweek's Andrew Romano passes along a PR spiel for an innovative new way of selling your candidate to the public:

Endorphin branding is the use of scent as a means of imprinting a highly emotional, positive experience in tandem with a targeted signature scent, which can be reintroduced at a later time to trigger and recreate the desired response. This strategy should be implemented at political events, which are positively charged environments ripe for this type of scent branding.

By coincidence, a few days ago an editor asked me which science fiction book I'd suggest people read before the election. I recommended Fred Pohl's The Merchant Wars. It probably seemed an odd choice, but here's an excerpt:

New York, New York!....I saw a miraculously clear stretch of sidewalk....I walked past — and WOWP a blast of sound shook my skull and FLOOP a great supernova flare of light burned my eyes, and I went staggering and reeling as tiny, tiny elf voices shouted like needles in my ear Mokie-Koke, Mokie-Koke, MokieMokieMokie-Koke!

...."I warned ya," yelled the little old man from a safe distance....He was still waving the signpost, so I staggered closer and blearily managed to deciper the legend under the graffiti:

Warning!
COMMERCIAL ZONE
Enter at Own Risk

...."What's a 'Mokie-Coke'?" I asked.....There was a vending machine, just like all the other Mokie-Koke machines I'd been seeing all along, on the Moon, in the spaceport, along the city streets. "Don't fool with the singles" he advised anxiously. "Go for the six-pack, okay?"....Poor old guy! I felt so sorry for him that I split the six-pack as we headed for the address the Agency had given me. Three shots apiece. He thanked me with tears in his eyes but, all the same, out of the second six-pack I only gave him one.

...."Dr. Mosskristal will review your medical problem for you." And the tone said bad news...."What you have," she explained, "is a Campbellian reflex. Named after Dr. H.J. Campbell. Famous pioneering psychologist in the old days, inventor of limbic-pleasure therapy."...."Let's just say that you've had your limbic areas stimulated; under the influence of that great upwelling of pleasure you've become conditioned to associate Mokie-Koke with joy, and there's nothing to be done about it."

Doesn't seem quite so much like science fiction after reading about endorphin branding, does it?

Continues Below

Continued From Above

Comments

Submitted by y81 (not verified) on Wed Sep. 24, 2008 10:22 AM PDT.

The only problem is that, these days, only committed partisans go to political events. (Including protestors, who are committed partisans of the other side.) So solidifying the political loyalty of the attendees is not of much use. Most Americans just watch TV.

Submitted by fuyura (not verified) on Wed Sep. 24, 2008 10:35 AM PDT.

Was that the one where the narrator, while watching a session of Congress, heard the chair recognise 'the Senator from Yummie-Cola', or was that a different Pohl-Kornbluth book?

Submitted by pokeybob (not verified) on Wed Sep. 24, 2008 10:38 AM PDT.

Every time I see red lipstick lately, I get all warm and fuzzzzy. Do you think there's a connection? I was at a Palin/McSame rally the other day. What a babe!

Just askin'.

Submitted by optical weenie (not verified) on Wed Sep. 24, 2008 10:41 AM PDT.

Most Americans just watch TV.- Y81.

Now I see the rationale behind Emeril's continuous pimping of smellovision.

Submitted by Joe Buck (not verified) on Wed Sep. 24, 2008 10:49 AM PDT.

So, how do you get enough people to get a whiff of the candidate?

Maybe this kind of thing could work in a parliamentary system, where you only have to convince the members of the parliament to elect you as leader. But for president or governor, it seems problematic.

Submitted by tpx (not verified) on Wed Sep. 24, 2008 10:50 AM PDT.

Will stink bombs counter this?

Will there be a phermone gap?

Submitted by Matt Sandwich (not verified) on Wed Sep. 24, 2008 11:04 AM PDT.

Would Karel Capek's "War With the Newts" count? Probably not quite science fiction, but eerily prescient. And frighteningly relevant, given its venerable status.

Submitted by thersites (not verified) on Wed Sep. 24, 2008 11:13 AM PDT.

Kinda like how, when you drive by a BurgerMeister you smell this wonderful scent of charcoal-grilled burgers and get hungry. When, if ever, is the last time a piece of actual charcoal was ignited inside a BurgerMeister?

It's Pohl and Kornbluth's world. They make us live in it.

Submitted by Maynard Handley (not verified) on Wed Sep. 24, 2008 11:14 AM PDT.

"Doesn't seem quite so much like science fiction after reading about endorphin branding, does it?"

IF, IF, IF it actually works.
The US goes through periodic waves of terror at the exploitation of our "unconscious" - subliminal advertising and _The Hidden Persuaders_ in the 50s, cults are going to get all our kids in the 80s, along with all that repressed memory/satanism crap.
I'll worry a little more about this once I have evidence that there is actually something to worry about, that this isn't simply one more scam being perpetrated by the advertising industry on its clients (as opposed to a scam perpetrated on the public).

Submitted by optical weenie (not verified) on Wed Sep. 24, 2008 11:58 AM PDT.

Not certain this endorphin branding would work for Obama. Wasn't it Michelle who said he woke up all stinky and snorey?

Submitted by AJB (not verified) on Wed Sep. 24, 2008 12:05 PM PDT.

Pohl and/or Kornbluth's stories "The Marching Morons", "The Space Merchants", and "Search the Sky" all point to a "future" where dumb and dumber take over.

Submitted by Sasha (not verified) on Wed Sep. 24, 2008 12:15 PM PDT.

There's a good chance that a small percentage of people would be allergic, and in a large crowd that's a lot of medical situations and emergencies.

Submitted by thersites (not verified) on Wed Sep. 24, 2008 12:31 PM PDT.

weenie: Wasn't it Michelle who said he woke up all stinky and snorey?

Now we all have to sleep with him? Isn't it bad enough that Bush has been f*cking us for almost eight years?

Submitted by blake (not verified) on Wed Sep. 24, 2008 12:32 PM PDT.

with all due respect for pohl, i think phil k. dick gets the nod, with his newsclowns and robotic late-night t.v. hosts.

your pals,
buster friendly and his friendly friends

Submitted by thersites (not verified) on Wed Sep. 24, 2008 12:39 PM PDT.

blake,
No real argument from me. On the other hand, the TV shows in "The Marching Morons" are spot on. But that's Kornbluth, isn't it?

Submitted by MR Bill (not verified) on Wed Sep. 24, 2008 3:02 PM PDT.

Sigh.
I was always afraid Kornbluth was right about so much. I think the novel with the Senator from "yummy cola" or maybe "Boeing" -or some such is Gladiator at law with a rigged stock market, dying suburbs and hideous old people in tanks as a ruling class.
Phillip K. Dick, of course, has TV comics who are alien spies (Bunny Hentiman in Clans of the Alphane Moon), a population living in subsurface shelters because of a fake war ( in the Penultimate Truth)and whatever the robot cab tells you ("I'm sure it will be a good day sir" , inNow Wait for Last Year) is wrong, wrong...
They were prescient, and didn't really hold out much hope. Dick succumbed to Valentinian Christian Gnosticism toward the end...

Submitted by red@cted (not verified) on Wed Sep. 24, 2008 4:22 PM PDT.

"Dick succumbed to Valentinian Christian Gnosticism toward the end..."

I read one of his novels and never picked up another. Now I know why. I thought Bladerunner was a great movie though. Maybe they were piping in Daryl Hannah's pheromones.