Certainly one of the darkest and saddest lines, yet poignant and true. 

Even Though I don’t completely agree with this statement, because human beings are far more than just suffering and desiring, this statement shows exactly how great human desires are, and their importance in our day to day choices.

Advertisers know that perfectly, and know that the best way to get the attention of potential customers is by understanding their deepest desires, but while understanding these desires is important, knowing when to use them properly is even more important, or else, it will be like throwing money from the window.

In his book, “Pre-suasion”, dr. Robert Cialdini, behavior scientist and professor of psychology and marketing at Arizona State University, showed that even with the two strongest human desires that are proven to get attention, the result is not always a success, actually the incredible power of these two human desires in capturing attention resides on when they are used.

In this series about persuasion and human psychology in marketing and business, I think that the

THE TWO STRONGEST HUMAN DESIRES!

It is known in the world of advertising that there are some signals that get attention more than others, but two of them stand out by their power of capturing our attention immediately.

• SEXUAL CONTENT:

No need to debate the power of sexual content in drawing people’s attention, but while knowing this fact is good, understanding why is better. 

Meanwhile some say that sexual motivation is influenced by complex relationships among numerous factors including hormones, cognitions, learning and culture, Freud believes that this “drive” had a genetic basis as part of the species need to continue itself.

At this point, we can say that sexual stimuli are one of the best at attracting attention because of our close relationship to our core motivations: to reproduce, hence the need for survival.

• THREAT:

You probably know that we human beings haven’t evolved much, we think we did but our brain is practically the same as a million years ago.

Yes we did make it to the moon, we did build skyscrapers as long as mountains, but in fact, we are just animals with super evolved tools. 

A million years ago our hunter-gatherer ancestors were surrounded by life threatening dangers, whether it was a wild monster or an insect with a deadly sting, humans knew that a fraction of second of inattention can lead to certain death, and so the concept of threat has become a stimulus that commands everyone’s attention.

Not only that, but our fear to the threats lead us to do stupid actions, and thus avoiding a danger by coming across an even greater one, the best example is the attacks of September 11. The 9/11 attacks pushed people onto the road more than usual, while the likelihood of being killed on the road is much greater than being killed in a plane crash.

This unique feature is used by advertisers to bypass the logical barrier of the prospect without any problems, making it easy to grab their attention while suggesting a stupid and unnecessary ‘solution’, a common strategy used by something who you are well acquainted to, and that you probably see every day without thinking about it: your antivirus.

While sexual and violent stimuli are the best at drawing one’s attention because of their link with our fundamental motivations, using them in advertising has never been a complete success, in fact only a few of the top 100 commercials in the 20th century in the world used these stimuli, and here’s why…

EVERY BATTLE IS WON BEFORE IT IS FOUGHT:

”Every battle is won before it is fought” SUN TZU, famous Chinese military strategist and general best known as the author of the work The Art of War, 

For a communicator, getting your attention and delivering you the message is his battle.

For a good harvest, treating the soil well before sowing the seeds is a must. The same goes for selling!

A good communicator can get you to be agreeable to a message that you haven’t yet heard by going to the moment before he deliver that message, and putting you in a frame of mind that is aligned with the central element of that message,

How is that possible? 

All mental activity is a path of association within a large, complex neural network, therefore attempts to influence the other are only successful if the associations it causes promote change.

There have been a lot of studies that proves that, one of them is a study conducted in France, researches had a pretty young women approach middle aged man who were walking down the street, and ask for help with directions, about a hundred yards later, they were approach by another attractive young women who had a much larger request, asking them if they can take back her cellphone who was stolen by a group of 4 tough looking young man, the majority of this guys didn’t accept, only 20 % said yes, in another group of man, approximately 40% said yes and it was because of a small change before the request was made; 

Rather than being asked about Martin street like the first group, they were asked about Valentine street. The second group was put in a sexual frame of mind by coming up with the name Valentine, which refers to the famous annual festival to celebrate romantic love.

As you can see, not even one of the strongest stimuli could guarantee the output, it was necessary to expose the group of man to a sexual concept to double the result, 

It is important to keep in mind that in any human science, there is nothing that is flawless and without an exception. In psychology, persuasion, marketing … we talk about probability, it is impossible to predict exactly any behavior, but these sciences can help considerably give a better result.