Did you watch the 88th Academy Awards on
television last night? Remember when Oscars’ host Chris Rock encouraged (challenged)
attendees to purchase Girl
Scout cookies to help his daughter’s Girl Scout troop earn the most
donations? Turns out his sales tactic was very successful, because by the end
of the night the troop had made over $65,000 in sales and donations.
This scenario reminded me of 2014 Academy Awards
host Ellen DeGeneres asking television viewers
to retweet the group “selfie” picture that she took of herself with a handful
of Oscar nominees during her broadcast. According to a CNN report, 2.7 million people took on her
challenge, and the Twitter platform actually
crashed for a few minutes. Just as her challenge was a publicity success for
Samsung, the camera manufacturer, Rock’s was likely a marketing coup for Girl
Scouts. Of course, last night’s cookie sales also became a great opportunity
for me to illustrate how suggestibility and hypnosis work in real life.
In a previous blog titled Gullibility,
Suggestibility? Hypnosis, I explained how an authority figure could create
a hyper-suggestible state in another person and use this state to persuade that
individual to behave in a particular way. (If you have ever gone car shopping,
you have likely experienced this kind of sensory overload.) Last night’s host
was well-armed to make a good sale: his charisma and biting humor, combined
with a socially political environment and several naturally occurring elements
to facilitate group hypnosis, literally enabled him to “rock” those cookie
sales.
1. He had authority. As the Oscar host, Chris
Rock had access to all areas of the stage and the audience in the auditorium. As
an A-List comedian and celebrity, himself, Rock had just the right amount of
charisma and charm to help him build rapport with the audience even as he challenged
specific individuals to buy cookies based on their estimated income, etc.
2. He had a message: His daughters wanted to
sell Girl Scouts cookies and earn the highest donation compared to other rival
troops. Everyone loves Girl Scout cookies, right? Plus, those cookie sales would
all go to an excellent cause: donations help the good deeds/activities that
Girl Scouts represents.
3. There were plenty of environmental stimuli to overload
the subconscious mind and create the hyper-suggestible state. There was the
excitement/anxiety/stress of being nominated for or having won an Academy
Award, or the disappointment of not winning that Oscar, after all. There was
plenty of visual overload (stimuli) coming from being surrounded by beautiful
people wearing beautiful clothes and the amount of time each nominee had
already spent posing on the red carpet before the awards began and the
glamorous environment in the Kodak Theater and the stage… You get the picture.
4. Rock used the “right” language to challenge, inspire,
encourage or even goad the people in the Kodak Theater to buy a box or boxes of
cookies.
5. Having already spent hours posing and doing
interviews on the red carpet before the ceremony, then sitting through more
than an hour of award presentations, members of the audience were probably
already hungry. (That’s not even counting the days or weeks some celebrities
reportedly spent on strict diets to be able to fit into those tight-fitting
gowns.) Remember, when we are hungry the blood-sugar level starts to dip, which
can induce a state of hyper-suggestibility to environmental factors. The
attendees at last night’s Academy Awards ceremony knew that the next
opportunity for food would be at the Governor’s Ball and other post-Oscar
receptions was still at least a couple hours away. But here were 20 Girl Scouts
walking around selling boxes of yummy, sugary, tempting treats. If you have
ever been hungry when you went grocery shopping, you know how much easier it is
to succumb to temptation of buying items that aren’t on your shopping list. Chris
Rock had his audience—and their pocket-books—exactly where he wanted them.
I have to admit that while watching the scene on my television I started
to really wish I also had a box or two of those Thin Mints to nibble. I wonder
how many boxes of cookies the Girl Scouts have sold today, thanks to a certain
Oscar host’s stellar sales pitch last night.
Sara R. Fogan, C.Ht. is a certified hypnotherapist
based in Southern California. She graduated with honors from the Hypnosis Motivation
Institute in 2005. For more
information about Calminsense Hypnotherapy® and to set up an
appointment, please visit http://www.calminsensehypnotherapy.com/.
© 2016
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