The 7 Sneakiest Ways Corporations Manipulated Human Behavior

#3. Alka-Seltzer Doubles Their Dosage With a Theme Song

Alka-Seltzer is one of those weird products that seem to have no competitors. It comes with two tablets you drop into a glass of water, they dissolve, you drink it, you feel better. You may only know Alka-Seltzer as a slayer of hangovers, but if you are old enough to remember the 1970s and 1980s, you remember their TV ads absolutely bombarding prime time television. You can guess someone's age by whether or not they can complete the phrase "Plop, plop, fizz, fizz." (The correct answer: "Oh what a relief it is.")

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Only the best ads provoke the sinking feeling that someone might be screwing with you.

Two tablets, that's all it takes. "Plop, plop," just like the jingle says. Except you actually only need one tablet. The second "plop" isn't doing anything but dissolving your money.

The Deviously Simple Plan:

Up until the 1960s, the instructions only said to use one tablet, and that's all they showed people doing in the ads. But the company hit a rut. Sales were steady, but not great. They needed a way to market the product to younger customers, and to get them to buy more.

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"How do we give kids more heartburn? Don tells me you have something called 'Taco Bell'?"

This is when inspiration struck: tell people to use two tablets, even if they didn't need to. It's not like taking two of them would kill you or anything. The problem was that nothing in the company's current advertising said anything about taking two Alka-Seltzers, and it's not like they could just arbitrarily tell people to double the dosage and never explain why, right? Oh wait, that's pretty much exactly what they did. They just had a cartoon mascot sing it. Who's going to argue with a jingle?

Thus was born the "plop, plop, fizz, fizz" campaign, aka one of the greatest and most terrifying ad campaigns of all time:

Just like that, all of the decades where they insisted that one tablet was enough were erased from memory, with utterly no explanation. Sales didn't exactly double, but people started doing exactly what the company wanted. Using two Alka-Seltzer tablets became the norm, with so-called "single fizzers" being stigmatized and beaten in the street.

#2. Chivas Regal: If We Jack Up the Price, They'll Assume It's Good

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Despite having a pretty-good-tasting whiskey, and selling it at a bargain, Chivas Regal's sales kind of sucked. Simple market math says in that situation you need to cut prices, or improve the product, or pour millions into advertising. Ideally via The Flintstones.

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"Gee, Barn, I just feel like unfiltered Camels better deliver the slow release I crave from this torturous life."

But there is something unique about the liquor market that makes it different from selling other beverages. Perception is everything. But how do you change people's perception of your product?

The Deviously Simple Plan:

Leave the product exactly the same, and massively raise the price. And we're talking about charging far more than any of the major competitors.

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"Johnnie Walker? Oh I'm sorry, I thought you wanted scotch, not oak-matured goat piss."

Suddenly, people started buying it.

Yeah, it turns out that most people don't know anything about alcohol, or what makes for good-tasting scotch. You can't blame them -- besides looking at proof, there is no objective way to measure the quality of alcohol. So, in situations where there really isn't anything tangible to consider, people look at the price. People automatically assume that if the company charges more for a product, it must be worth more. And get this: They continue thinking that even after they drink it.

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If you don't spend a lot of money, how will anyone know how much to hate you?

Scientists actually tested this: At the California Institute of Technology, they did an experiment where they stuck people inside an MRI and gave them a couple glasses of wine. Although the glasses were both from the same bottle, the people were told that one glass contained regular table wine, and the other contained an incredibly expensive vintage. As the subjects drank from each glass, the part of the brain that controls taste behaved the same, but the brain's pleasure center went off like crazy on the "more expensive" glass.

And if you're thinking that you'd never fall for a cheap trick like what Chivas Regal tried to pull, well, guess what: That's why it works.

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#1. The Invention of the "Coffee Break"

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Some of you reading this drink more coffee than water. But no matter how much it seems like a staple of our workday, the popularity of the drink comes and goes like any other product (you might have noticed there wasn't a Starbucks on every corner when you were a kid).

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"A coffee shop? But I've got a perfectly good wife at home!"

So, during the 1950s, coffee was going out of style. For whatever reason, people started thinking of it as something low class, only consumed for the side effects. To turn the tide, the coffee-growing nations of South America and the major coffee companies in the United States banded together to form the Pan-American Coffee Bureau. They poured a ridiculous $2 million a year into making Americans love coffee again. To do this, they recruited sociologist John B. Watson, now working in advertising after a previous career in scaring the shit out of babies, to lead their campaign.

The Deviously Simple Plan:

Watson noticed that during World War II, some factories started giving their employees a couple of minutes off every shift, during which time some of these workers would drink a quick cup of coffee to wake themselves up. Figuring that using the novel idea of "work less" to sell coffee was worth a shot, he ran a massive series of advertisements to get people on board with the new "coffee break" idea he had thought up. His ads featured happy people sitting around and conspicuously not working, all while drinking huge mugs of coffee.

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Do you see, beer advertisers? This is called "subtlety."

It makes no sense whatsoever. At most jobs, you can drink coffee while you work. And there are a million things you could be drinking or eating on a work break. It didn't matter -- you don't question tradition, even if it's a tradition somebody just made up last week. Getting people to refer to their morning break as a "coffee break" was enough to cement the idea that if you consumed anything else but coffee on that break, then you were screwing it up somehow.

By the end of the first year, 80 percent of businesses were giving their employees a short break, and they didn't call it a "cola break" or a "candy bar break" or a "sit quietly and stare at the kitten calendar in your cubicle" break. No, it was a goddamned "coffee break," thanks to one of the most ingenious marketing moves in history.

Theoretical Psychology
Had to be coffee. Couldn't be the "Skyrim break" or the "blowjob break." Fuck this guy.

Karl has a Twitter, Facebook and a blog. He also says hi. Jack Hall is busy chasing ducks right now, but can be hired to write funny for you by emailing coastyjack@gmail.com.

For more ways you're getting screwed out of your money, check out 5 Ways Stores Use Science to Trick You Into Buying Crap and Dickonomics: How 5 Everyday Businesses Trick You.

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