Interview: “95% of learning happens unconsciously”

To sell its products and renew its consumer base, the tobacco industry, like many others, is actively deploying social media, which is very popular with young people. Unlike traditional media, these recent platforms benefit from a lack of willingness on the part of the authorities to enforce restrictive policies. They can therefore deploy extremely effective marketing strategies, using, for example, the influence of famous “influencers.” We meet Julien Intartaglia1, a specialist in consumer behavior, dean of the Institute of Communication and Experiential Marketing (ICME) and professor at the Neuchâtel School of Management (HEG Arc), who decodes the strategies behind this new type of advertising for us.

What is “subconscious” or “subliminal” marketing?

Julien Intartaglia (JI): To answer this question, we need to understand how we become consumers. We have two modes of learning. On the one hand, there is what is known as explicit learning. This begins in childhood, when our parents pass on values, ideas, and beliefs to us by verbalizing them. This information is conscious and is communicated over time.

The same applies to prevention messages, for example, which warn about the dangers of smoking. But most of what we learn enters our unconscious in a nonverbal way. Research from Harvard has shown that more than 95% of this learning takes place unconsciously. For example, when we see our parents or those around us smoking from a young age, an unconscious social representation linked to tobacco consumption is established.

From a neurological point of view, we can refer to an often-cited model: “system 1” thinking, or “fast thinking,” which is thinking that occurs very quickly, like a reflex, and requires little effort. Based on very simple elements (stereotypes, preconceived ideas, etc.), our brain constantly uses System 1 to make decisions.

The rapid development and phenomenal success of social media today can be explained in part by the fact that it fully responds to this reflex: the simpler the stimulus, the more our brain likes to process it. This allows it to make decisions in a matter of milliseconds, through an automatic and unconscious process. Marketing relies on this reality. This obviously raises ethical questions.

How does the tobacco industry use these strategies?

JI: The tobacco industry is a very smart industry that has understood that it needs to sell its products differently. With this in mind, it has accelerated the launch of “new” formats (e-cigarettes, puffs, etc.) to counterbalance the data from recent decades highlighting the dangers of tobacco. These new products are presented in a reassuring light and promoted on social media to young people, who are their main target audience. This creates implicit learning, i.e., repeated exposure to stimuli related to the consumption of tobacco and nicotine products.

Added to this is influencer marketing, which is highly developed on social media. It is based on the phenomenon of social comparison, which has been documented in psychology since the 1950s. In short, we behave primarily as social beings, as imitators. It seems that we have “mirror” neurons, which allow us to decode a person’s actions and at the same time make us want to reproduce them. For example, if everyone at a meeting has a bottle of water in front of them, all it takes is for one person to drink for the others to start imitating them. This is part of an unconscious process of influence.

Social media plays a huge role in this phenomenon of social comparison: we look at others and then imitate them. It’s as if there were a behavioral predisposition in individuals that prevents them from realizing that their behavior stems from repeated exposure to what they see on social media. What makes this vicious is that, unlike other products, tobacco products, due to their composition, are inherently addictive.

Shouldn’t advertising on the internet be banned outright?

JI: Banning advertising for tobacco products in the media, including on social media, is a first step. We also need to look at the other two agents of socialization: parents and peers. To do this, I would advocate providing children from a very young age with better guidance on the use of social media and how it works. I also believe that ongoing, fun, and immersive prevention is crucial. It helps cultivate free will and critical thinking in those who will inevitably be confronted with the reality of social media at some point. Since it is not possible to ban all forms of visibility for these products, we must also seek to understand how the brain works, how it processes information, and how it makes decisions.

Why are young people particularly targeted by these campaigns?

JI: Generation Z spends three to five hours on social media every day, while 2- to 4-year-olds spend 39 minutes a day watching online videos (particularly YouTube). These figures alone illustrate the scale of the phenomenon. Advertisements on social media are mostly not subject to any age restrictions for visitors, nor are they required to include a warning message or clearly identify the product, as is the case with tobacco products. The industry is therefore free to promote them to potential new consumers in order to renew its customer base.

It uses arguments promoting pleasure, fun, and stress relief, with carefully crafted marketing stimuli: simple, colorful, fruit-flavored… presented as healthy and part of leisure, lifestyle, and not as dangerous tobacco products. Brands have truly reinvented tobacco consumption by making traditional cigarettes seem outdated and presenting these new products as “better for your health.” And the strategy is working. Heated tobacco products represented a $7.3 billion market in 2019. The estimated growth of this sector between 2020 and 2027 is 32.8%. It is easy to see why young people are an attractive target.

How much money do brands currently spend on social marketing?

JI: Of the $6.9 billion invested in the Swiss advertising market in 2022, 41% was spent on the internet. In 2000, that figure was only 2-3%. It’s a fact: every year, brands are turning away from traditional media. The internet and social media in particular offer them the opportunity to engage in “influencer” marketing. Influencers are a bit like today’s billboards. But they are much more effective: influencer marketing is traceable and measurable thanks to engagement rate tracking (reactions, likes, comments, etc.). And unlike traditional advertising, which is clearly identifiable, advertising via an influencer is no longer identified as such.

Exposed to recurring content, subscribers develop an emotional connection with the influencers they follow. The behavior of these influencers, whether good or bad, creates a “priming” effect, i.e., a strong implicit predisposition to replicate it.

According to a survey conducted in 2020, 55 influencers worldwide collaborate with more than 600 e-cigarette brands. Given that some influencers have several million followers, this represents a captive audience that is larger than most television channels for manufacturers!

Social media offers another advantage for brands: it activates the brain’s reward system and the release of dopamine, the neurotransmitter associated with pleasure. It creates anticipation of pleasure in anticipation of consuming content and receiving rewards (likes, views, interactions, etc.). The more we expose ourselves, the more we want to expose ourselves. Social media is an addictive medium that allows products to be sold in a positive light, even when those products are harmful to health.

References

1. Auteur de « Neuro-communication. Le cerveau sous influence », éditions De Boeck Supérieur, 2022. Sa chaîne YouTube : youtube.com/@drjulienintartaglia 

2. « A Theory of Social Comparison Processes », Leon Festinger, 1954, https://doi.org/10.1177/001872675400700202

3. Enquête annuelle sur l’usage des réseaux sociaux par la génération Z, Diplomeo et BDM, 2023, https://www.blogdumoderateur.com/etude-generation-z-reseaux-sociaux-2023/

4. Rapport de Common Sense Media, 2020, https://www.commonsensemedia.org/research/the-common-sense-census-media-use-by-kids-age-zero-to-eight-2020

5. Institut Media Focus, https://mediafocus.ch/fr/publications/les-medias-traditionnels-perdent-du-terrain-en-2022/

6. J. Vassey et al. E-cigarette brands and social media influencers on Instagram: a social network analysis. Tob Control 2022;0:1–8. doi:10.1136/tobaccocontrol-2021-057053