Adverts – everyday hypnotism

Molly loves adverts. They show how comfortable life could be, lifting her out of her world into theirs.

What are adverts?

Adverts is short for advertisements. Advertisements come in many different forms.

An advert might be a commercial on TV between programmes, or in the form of a poster or on a billboard, or it may be an advert on your computer when you’ve gone online that says you can switch it off in 3, 2, 1 seconds.

You might see an actor or singer wearing something or carrying something that is obviously a certain brand, and they may have been paid to wear or carry it for the clothes company or the handbag or phone company. You might walk into a toyshop and see a gigantic display of the latest must-have-that toy.

An advert is a way of trying to persuade you that you need something.

Adverts might try to persuade you that you need to go on a holiday or have something in order to be happy. They might try to persuade you that in order to be cool and popular, you must get a certain look. You might decide that, having seen children in a TV advert playing with some kind of toy or using some kind of gadget – that you REALLY need one of those things to be cool and happening.

Have you asked for anything recently, or decided that you simply MUST have something in order to be the person you want to be? What influenced you to think in this way? Has an advert influenced you?

In MOLLY MOON’S INCREDIBLE BOOK OF HYPNOTISM, the orphan Molly is obsessed with adverts. They seem to show her a world that is one full of happy people. She is unhappy so of course this world seems so much better than her own. Molly stares up at the pictures of the characters in the adverts, wishing she could be transported to their wonderful world.

When do you see adverts?

When you watch kids’ TV shows, the adverts are more relevant to your age group than your granny’s. They have been chosen in order to target people like you.

It may be that your grandad does like playing with dolls and skateboards but it is more likely that the sellers of the product want to hypnotise YOU, so that you beg your parents for one of whatever it is for your birthday or just for tomorrow.

The people that make adverts are very clever. They do lots of research to find out the best way to target the audience for their product – the thing they are selling.

Look around your house and think about everything that you see. Most things you see were advertised in some way; freezers, toasters, slippers, felt tip pens, vacuum cleaners, bread, cereal, eggs, headache pills, shampoo, frying pans, loo paper.

Why is the design of an advert so important?

Have a look at the Molly Moon adverts below. One is an advert from the movie, the other has been changed.

Which one do you think is most likely to sell QUBE to you?

The second one, of course… Don’t you just love pig people and poo.

What type of adverts are your favourites? Do you sometimes find yourself singing the jingles and humming the tunes from adverts, like Molly does?

Something to do

Look around your house or school and choose something that you think might be fun to advertise. On a piece of paper make a plan of how you would hypnotise people to buy it.

1. Pick something in your home or at school.
2. Write down ten words that describe the thing
3. Now pretend that you are trying to sell this thing. Who would be your target buyer?
   Boys or girls, babies, (of course their parents buy for them) children, teenagers, young adults, old adults, very old people? Ghosts? Only joking.
4. Think why you think someone would want it? Because it’s useful? Because it saves money? Because they want to eat it? Because it would make them feel cool or clever or powerful if they had it? Because it will make them more beautiful or slimmer or more intelligent looking or it will make them appear more important if they have it?

Now think about how you can hypnotise them into buying this thing using the power of design and art, using the power of words too. You might draw a poster and colour it in or make a poster using photos.

Decide where you think the poster should be placed for maximum hypnotic effect. You could hang it in a classroom or a shopping mall, a supermarket or a place where mums and dads hang out with babies. It depends who you want to see the poster, who you want to buy the thing.

I suppose the best sort of adverts are the ones that people like to look at again and again, whether they are posters, or moving adverts on TV.

So, if you are designing a poster, whether it’s a drawn one or an advert with a photographs in it, then you need to make it so that it is really good to look at, or very, very interesting, or funny or beautiful, or with people in it who seem to be incredibly something, cool, happy, clever, or attractive in some way. Maybe the object is the ‘just got to have another look at it’ type of object, or maybe it is a sweet animal.

You will have to make your advert appeal to the people you want to buy your thing.
If you are making a moving advert, you can include music or funny jokes or dialogue, or make up a jingle to go with your advert. A jingle that people sing afterwards so that your advert really makes an impression and sticks!

There are a few songs and jingles in MOLLY MOON’S INCREDIBLE BOOK OF HYPNOTISM. Have a look below to see the lyrics.