Monday, February 29, 2016

Selling Girl Scout Cookies at the 88th Academy Awards


 
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/.
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