>> NARRATOR: It's everywhere you look.

>> You cannot walk down the street without being bombarded.

>> NARRATOR: They call it a clutter crisis.

>> Consumers are like roaches.

You spray them and spray them, and after a while, it doesn't work anymore.

We develop immunities.

>> NARRATOR: And the multibillion-dollar advertising industry is in a desperate struggle to break through.

>> We don't just come forward with what we want to sell.

We engage you with things that you want.

>> NARRATOR: Advertisers have blurred the line between programming and product.

>> It's advertising that people not only will tolerate, but will actually go in search of.

>> The way God and Madison Avenue intended.

>> NARRATOR: But how is advertising affecting our lives and the world around us?

>> Once a culture becomes entirely advertising-friendly, it ceases to be a culture at all.

>> NARRATOR: Tonight on Frontline... >> I'm sure people ask you this all the time: What about the environment?

>> NARRATOR: ...correspondent Douglas Rushkoff takes you inside the changing world of "The Persuaders."

>> DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF: A spring night in New York City.

(horn honks) Two men hunt for just the right building.

>> We're always looking for a new wall to kind of do our thing on.

>> RUSHKOFF: They may not look it, but these guys are preparing a guerrilla operation.

>> We kind of just scope out for a good location, and wherever we end up, we end up.

>> This is where we're going, this construction site right here.

>> RUSHKOFF: At last, they find the building they've been looking for.

What's this covert mission all about?

It's a new kind of urban warfare, a sneaker company's all-out battle for our attention.

>> You cannot walk down the street without being bombarded.

You stand in an elevator, looking at advertising in the corner of the elevator car.

And you go and you play golf and you go to pick the ball up out of the cup, and there's an ad in the bottom of it.

And you look up at the sky, and there's skywriting.

And you look at a bus passing, and there's advertising.

And you walk in Times Square, and you go, "Is this Las Vegas on the Hudson?

Am I trapped inside a pinball machine?"

>> RUSHKOFF: Welcome to the new American metropolis.

Somewhere beneath all these ads is the city I grew up in, but over the last 20 years, it's grown a second skin, a twinkling membrane of commercial messages.

Advertisers have become prospectors for new space in an ever more crowded landscape.

Even a subway tunnel becomes the backdrop for an American Express promotion.

But advertisers have a big problem: the more messages they create, the more they have to create to reach us.

It's led to a vicious circle of clutter.

>> They are the ones who make clutter.

They are, therefore, also the ones who are always trying desperately to break through the clutter.

That's the line you always hear in ad agencies: "We can break through the clutter with this."

Well, every effort to break through the clutter is just more clutter.

>> You know, I have a quote in my book from an advertising executive who says, "Consumers are like roaches: "You spray them and spray them, and after a while, it doesn't work anymore."

We develop immunities.

>> RUSHKOFF: So what's an advertiser supposed to do?

Stop advertising?

That's the one thing they know they can't do, because the moment they stop trying to persuade us, we forget about them.

>> Once you're in the game, you can't stop, if for no other reason that the competition will eat you alive.

>> What advertising has always wanted to do is not simply to suffuse the atmosphere, but to become the atmosphere.

It wants us not to be able to find a way outside of the world that it creates for us.

>> RUSHKOFF: So this is the way our world fills up with advertising.

For years, I've been studying and writing about what I call the persuasion industry.

I've even worked in it.

But I still can't say for sure where all this is headed.

Where will the advertising arms race lead?

To a world made of marketing?

And what would that mean for us?

I set out on a tour through the modern machinery of selling to meet some of the persuaders up close.

My first stop: a downtown New York storefront.

>> I'm not singing!

>> RUSHKOFF: I've been invited to a hip party-- or something that looks like one.

>> Do they serve this on the actual plane?

>> RUSHKOFF: What this really is is the opening salvo in a marketing blitz for a new airline.

>> Go!

>> RUSHKOFF: They call themselves Song.

Song is a subsidiary of Delta Airlines, but you won't find any mention of Delta here.

Delta is old-fashioned air travel, and Song is their way of persuading us that they can compete with hip, low-cost carriers like Jet Blue.

>> A lot of people ask us, "You've got to be crazy, you're starting an airline in the worst environment in the history of U.S. commercial aviation."

And we were, and we are.

That process gets more and more complex.

>> RUSHKOFF: Delta broke off a team of their best marketers and told them to start from scratch.

>> It also was the kind of creative idea that runs through each of these.

>> RUSHKOFF: The first thing the Song team decided was that it wasn't enough just to launch a new airline.

To get our attention, they had to invent a new culture around flying.

>> Which is to sort of capture consumers' imagination.

>> RUSHKOFF: But how do you do that?

>> Talk to me a little bit about why you chose the things you did.

>> RUSHKOFF: Song started with a trusted tool: the focus group.

>> The homework was, choose images, words, things that capture what might be your ideal experience of traveling by air.

>> RUSHKOFF: Before long, Song's research yielded a nugget: there was a large group of flyers whose needs and desires were being ignored-- women.

>> The food I think they could improve a lot, you know.

>> RUSHKOFF: The Song team created a detailed profile of their target consumer, and even gave her a name-- Carrie.

>> She's got three children, a husband.

They both work.

They have an SUV and a sports car, Neiman-Marcus credit cards, but she shops at Target.

She has got a propensity to read kind of high-end literature, but she finds guilty pleasure in "People" magazine.

And she doesn't have an airline.

>> Here's our organic menus.

>> RUSHKOFF: To cater to women like Carrie, Song turned to a pro: Andy Spade, the co-creator of the Kate Spade Company, a multimillion-dollar line of fashion accessories.

>> I bring ideas, kind of visualize ideas that companies have, and give them kind of a substance and a texture and a life that they may not know how to create.

And I bring that.

I take their idea or their point of view and I try to create this... make it into something that's bigger-- maybe emotional, maybe optimistic; you know, maybe classical; maybe, you know, happy.

>> I think that I'll just start by introducing, you know, kind of the concept and what it is.

>> RUSHKOFF: Spade's been charged with producing Song's TV campaign, the first impression the airline will make on many Americans.

>> All right, so why don't we start?

We're going to create a campaign for Song that was spirited, that delivered on the benefits that we think are the most important.

Do it in a way that is emotional.

Do it in a way that I think is optimistic, because we believe that's part of the Song ethos.

So we're going to take you through five different concepts and five different commercials that deliver on five different benefits which we believe differentiate Song from everyone else.

>> RUSHKOFF: Spade is proposing to downplay the airline's new features in favor of something much more intangible: its soul.

>> There's a book called "Lovers" here, which I don't know if any of you are familiar with the book "Lovers."

I'll pass it around.

But they're these sweet, sweet images, and we were kind of inspired by this a few times, of just people together, and mainly Goddard and Truffaut movies and all those old French new-wave films, and then there are American films.

>> ♪ When you're alone and life is making you lonely ♪ ♪ You can always go Downtown... ♪ >> RUSHKOFF: Spade's commercials will show no planes, no travelers, no low fares, no airline.

>> ♪ Downtown... ♪ >> RUSHKOFF: This is an enormously risky strategy.

These commercials as planned will consume almost a third of Song's $12 million marketing budget.

If the campaign doesn't connect, Song will just become part of the noise.

And Delta, at the brink of bankruptcy, cannot afford for its new venture to fail.

At least one member of Song's team is nervous.

>> Well, the risk is you invest an inordinate amount of money behind a message that is a fairly ethereal message that, as they say, doesn't feed the bulldog.

I mean, this is a business; this isn't an art form.

So we have got to ensure that it's communication that drives commerce, not just makes people feel good.

>> The more we pulled back and tried to make it a very, very kind of literal delivery on a benefit, it just lost that emotion, and we wanted to keep that emotion.

>> RUSHKOFF: Spade isn't backing off.

He's not content just to convey information; he's aiming for something bigger.

>> At the end of the day, you want to be part of culture, and when you get to that point, you've created a huge success.

And that's what all the great, I think, companies have done, from Virgin to Apple to others.

>> I think by spending 25 seconds on the style and the spirits, this is a void in your category, and you have to get there first.

That's more important than really building a spot around low fare.

I mean, everyone, you know, is going to be low-fare.

What really differentiates something from another thing?

I think it's creating kind of something that communicates to people on another level, beyond a logical level.

>> RUSHKOFF: The question is an advertising classic: should the pitch be aimed at the head or the heart?

How creative can an ad get and still be an ad?

>> Someone once wrote a book called "Advertisements for Myself."

That's what's advertising is.

It's advertising for the guys who are creating it far more than it is for the guys who are paying for it.

They're trying to win awards, they're trying to make more money, they're trying to build their own portfolio, they're trying to get a better job, they're trying to make up for the fact that they're in advertising and not directing films or doing standup comedy or painting paintings or whatever they would prefer to do, I guarantee you, and the consequence is, a lot of advertising that's quite extravagant in its look or very clever and entertaining and funny, but which doesn't do the thing that advertising is supposed to do, which is make you want to buy the good or service that's nominally being advertised.

>> NARRATOR: Look at the coffee as it gets darker and stronger.

>> RUSHKOFF: Not so long ago, the high-concept ads of today were all but unthinkable.

>> NARRATOR: Soap has never smelled this good before, and neither have you.

>> RUSHKOFF: Ads laid claim to real, tangible differences between one product and another.

>> What were brands?

They were based on what I call "er" words-- whiter, brighter, cleaner, stronger.

>> NARRATOR: ...smoothest, mildest, tastiest cigarette... >> Watch any commercials on American TV, and you'll see these words up in the first three seconds, hammered remorselessly into your brain.

>> RUSHKOFF: But at some point, these words ceased to have meaning.

We no longer believed that one product was any brighter or cleaner than any other.

>> Everything works now, you know?

French Fries taste crisp, coffee's hot, you know, beer tastes good.

Unless you live in America, and then, you know, you've got to live with what you get.

But all these things now are table stakes.

>> RUSHKOFF: By the early 1990s, a new approach to marketing came to the fore, one that leapt right over what the product did to what the product meant.

>> You know, it's not just a car.

It's an expression of the culture, an aesthetic that is connected, somehow, to nature.

Infiniti.

>> These were the super brands like Nike, Starbucks, The Body Shop.

And what they noticed these brands had in common was that they were engaging in a kind of pseudo-spiritual marketing.

So Nike said that they were about the meaning of sports, but more than that, that they were about transcendence through sports.

Starbucks said that they were about the idea of community, of place; that is, a third place that is not home, not work.

Benetton was, of course, selling multiculturalism, racial diversity.

>> RUSHKOFF: This lesson, that a brand could forge an emotional, even spiritual bond with today's cynical consumer, wasn't lost on corporate America.

>> NARRATOR: What are you saying with your Chinet plates?

>> There's a wave of corporate epiphanies in the mid-'90s, where all these companies, you know, were told, "You know what your problem is, is you don't have a big idea behind your brand."

So they would hire high-priced consultants, and they would have these kind of corporate sweat lodges and gather around the campfire and sort of try to channel their inner brand meaning.

And they would emerge from these processes sort of flushed and say, you know, "Polaroid isn't a camera, it's a social lubricant."

>> When I was a brand manager at Proctor & Gamble, my job was basically to make sure the product was good, develop new advertising copy, design the pack.

Now a brand manager has an entirely different kind of responsibility.

In fact, they have more responsibility.

Their job now is to create and maintain a whole meaning system for people through which they get identity and understanding of the world.

Their job now is to be a community leader.

It is the big monopolistic, yeah, yeah... >> RUSHKOFF: Ad strategist Douglas Atkin, an expert on the relationship between consumers and brands, says he had a eureka moment one night during a focus group.

>> I was in a research facility watching eight people rhapsodize about a sneaker.

I thought, where is this coming from?

This is, at the end of the day, a piece of footwear.

But the terms they were using were evangelical.

So, I thought, if these people are expressing cult-like devotion, then why not study cults?

Why not study the original?

Find out why people join cults, and apply that knowledge to brands.

>> I'm loyal to this practice because it's done so much for me.

>> RUSHKOFF: If Atkin could find what pushed a person from mere fan to devoted disciple, perhaps he could market that knowledge.

>> Most of the people I discuss the WWF with know that it's not a sport.

>> Right.

>> It's a masculine ballet.

>> RUSHKOFF: So he compared dozens of groups he considered cults with so-called cult brands, from Hare Krishna to Harley Davidson... >> If you're smart and kind of individual, that's what you drive.

>> They realized there are other people like them, and they cooperate on certain projects, and it's part of belonging to the tribe.

>> And the conclusion was this: is that people, whether they're joining a cult or joining a brand, do so for exactly the same reasons: they need to belong, and they want to make meaning.

We need to figure out what the world is all about, and we need the company of others.

It's simply that.

>> This Summer, we invited everyone who owns a Saturn to visit us in Tennessee, the place their car was born.

>> RUSHKOFF: And that's the object of emotional branding, to fill the empty places where non-commercial institutions like schools and churches might have once done the job.

Brands become more than just a mark of quality; they become an invitation to a longed-for lifestyle, a ready-made identity.

♪ ♪ >> When you listen to brand managers talk, you can get quite carried away in this idea that they actually are fulfilling these needs that we have for community and narrative and transcendence, but in the end, it is, you know, a laptop and a pair of running shoes.

And they might be great, but they're not actually going to fulfill those needs, so... which serves them very well, because of course that means that you have to go shopping again.

>> RUSHKOFF: Ironically, this new, more spiritual trend in branding has ultimately put enormous pressure back on ad agencies.

There are only so many big concepts to go around.

Starry-eyed advertisers looking to become the next big thing are constantly dropping one agency for another.

This cutthroat economic climate means that, for many ad agencies, their most important pitch of all is for themselves.

>> Boy, does the world need breakthrough ideas.

>> RUSHKOFF: Kevin Roberts is the CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi.

What used to be the biggest player in the ad business is now a small subsidiary of a giant French holding company.

In the weeks before we saw Kevin Roberts, Saatchi took a major blow, losing $185 million in billings from its client Johnson & Johnson, including the Tylenol account that Saatchi had held for 28 years.

But Roberts is undaunted.

He thinks he's found a path to revive Saatchi's fortunes.

So we figured out what the answer was, that there was something in outstanding brands.

>> RUSHKOFF: What sets Roberts' big idea apart from his competitors' is its boldness.

He claims he has discovered the formula to turn nearly any product into an object of devotion.

>> That there were brands that connected, and there were brands that people loved.

They didn't like them, they didn't admire them, they didn't respect them, they didn't use them.

None of that wimpy-wompy stuff.

They loved them.

>> RUSHKOFF: Roberts calls his big idea "love marks."

What is a love mark?

>> A love mark is a brand that has created loyalty beyond reason, that's infused with mystery, sensuality, and intimacy, and that you recognize immediately as having some kind of iconic place in your heart.

>> NARRATOR: Happy holidays from Cheerios... >> Well, where's the mystery in a Cheerios?

>> Oh, Cheerios is full of mystery!

I mean, you don't think that people just eat these, putting them in a bowl, do you?

And that's not how they eat them anyway.

Most kids play with them, they make stories up about them, they imagine them.

>> You know how much Grandma wanted to be here for your first Christmas?

She came a long way.

You see, Grandma lives way down here.

Brian, your cousin, he's a little bit older than you, he lives here, in Chicago.

>> You can build mystery as long as you believe in the story.

>> But no matter where Grandma lives, we'll always be together for Christmas.

>> NARRATOR: Happy holidays from Cheerios.

>> You just ate Dallas!

>> RUSHKOFF: I guess so.

But how many brands ever really succeed in creating loyalty beyond reason?

>> There are a few examples when advertising really does cast a Svengali spell.

AT&T has done it.

Hallmark has done it.

Coca-Cola has done it.

But most of the people who've tried to make emotional connections with consumers over the years, by far the vast, vast majority have failed.

They've gone down in flames.

>> Think about it this way.

Instead of saying, "That's so cool," you'll say, "That's so Song."

>> RUSHKOFF: Just six months after it was first conceived, Song Airlines is in the skies.

What began as a new way to market Delta's lower-cost flights has emerged as a company-wide culture, an ethos imprinted onto every available surface.

>> We are not an airline; we are Song.

>> I think Song, you know, is about a lifestyle.

It's more than an airline.

You know, our translation is we want to create a movement.

We want to create a movement of people that are going to have an emotional connection with this company.

>> RUSHKOFF: Song hired one of the world's leading branding agencies to create a name and a look like no other airline's.

And they not only branded their planes; they branded their people.

Instead of holding job interviews, Song auditioned their flight attendants, then taught them how to "be Song," giving them scripts for what to say and how to act.

>> "Song" is becoming an adjective at our airline.

So we've got an expression, "You are so Song."

We can never do anything that's off-Song or off-tune.

It has to be on-brand.

>> RUSHKOFF: Did they kind of teach you to be Song?

>> Oh, no, we had Song in us before Song was Song.

>> RUSHKOFF: So they give you more permission to be Song?

>> They were like, "You are so Song.

Bring it, show it."

Right?

>> Bring it on.

>> "Be it, be Song."

>> RUSHKOFF: But despite Song's enthusiasm, there's reason to wonder if they are breaking through the clutter.

A dozen actors with Song TVs strapped to their stomachs got lots of puzzled stares in the streets of Boston.

>> I'm not sure, but I'm either really drunk, or some strange [bleep] going down here!

>> RUSHKOFF: But so did every other walking billboard.

They've opened a new Song concept store in Boston, but it seems like one more distraction in a giant mall, and it may have raised more questions than it answered.

>> So you're an airline?

>> Yes, we are.

>> Or a travel agency?

>> We're an airline.

>> RUSHKOFF: Can consumers see through all of this brand experience to the product Song is supposed to be selling?

>> Okay, thanks.

>> You're welcome.

Have a great day.

>> RUSHKOFF: If you scratch the self-confident surface of advertising, you'll uncover an unnerving anxiety: is any of this really working?

There's an aphorism as old as advertising itself: "I know I'm wasting half my ad dollars; I just don't know which half."

What works, when does it work, and with whom?

The whispered truth on Madison Avenue is that, despite enough studies to fill a library, still nobody really knows.

>> Ladies and gentlemen, the executive producers and stars of "NYPD Blue."

>> RUSHKOFF: This is the financial bedrock of the advertising industry, called the up-fronts, where every year, network TV executives present their coming fall season and its stars, and advertisers line up to buy commercial minutes.

But in recent years, the model has begun to break down.

>> Where else in the world can you be convinced to pay more for a commodity that is experiencing diminishing returns?

>> RUSHKOFF: Giant advertisers like American Express are losing faith in the traditional 30-second ad.

>> We as advertisers are paying more to reach less.

Now, the definition of insanity is to continually do the same thing over and over and expect different results, right?

>> RUSHKOFF: Television audiences are watching fewer ads.

The networks are losing viewers to cable, and the appearance of digital video recorders like TiVo now allow people to zap the ads altogether.

>> Wow, that is quick.

>> More surrounds?

>> Advertisers are frightened.

I think they're sort of deer in the headlights-- "What do we do?"

Within, you know, a matter of five years, we will have... a huge percentage of the country will be, you know... will have this technology.

Five years, you know, isn't a lot of time, you know, in terms of creating new models.

>> RUSHKOFF: So what countermeasure have advertisers come up with to the remote- wielding viewer?

>> Aside from the stuff that I got at J.

Crew, I went to French Connection.

These are from Clark's.

And I got you some great eyewear from Ray-Ban.

>> RUSHKOFF: If the audience is skipping commercials to get to the programs, why not become part of the programs themselves?

>> If I were starting Friends today, instead of it taking place in a coffee shop, a generic coffee shop, if you were Starbucks, wouldn't it be great to have them meet in a Starbucks?

You would never have to mention cappuccino; it would just be there.

>> RUSHKOFF: Starbucks may have missed that opportunity, but the world's largest coffee chain caught a break on the next one.

In the big-budget Hollywood movie I Am Sam, Sean Penn's character doesn't just happen to work at a Starbucks... >> That's a wonderful choice, Bruce.

>> RUSHKOFF: ...Starbucks becomes a key character in the story.

>> I need to make coffee!

I need to pay my lawyer!

>> The idea of taking a brand and integrating all of its assets into an idea where it becomes a hero... Let's look at Cast Away, for example.

We open up getting on a plane.

The plane crashes.

All but one person is killed.

>> Four years ago... >> How bold was that of Fred Smith, the founder and chairman of Fed Ex, A., to allow it, but to do it himself?

>> ...a terrible and tragic day.

>> And at the end of the film, not only did we deliver the packages, but we found romance.

How much better could you feel about the brand?

>> RUSHKOFF: Ad Age magazine dubbed this alliance between New York's ad men and Hollywood studios "Madison and Vine."

It is the integration of entertainment with advertising, in a partnership that often begins before a show is even conceived.

>> NARRATOR: Meanwhile, Samantha had used her pushiness to parlay her new man's hit off-Broadway show into a hot on-Broadway poster.

>> RUSHKOFF: To mate a brand with the once commercial-free HBO series Sex and the City, Absolut Vodka and HBO writers worked out a story line in which one of the show's characters finds his way onto an Absolut billboard.

HBO got to use the brand's name in a key plot twist, and Absolut got unprecedented access to HBO's upscale audience.

>> Guess what I'm drinking?

An Absolut Hunk!

>> They created a drink called the Absolut Hunk.

>> And you're delish.

>> So we went to the producers of Sex and the City, and we said, "Okay, we've got a real product and a real drink "called the Absolut Hunk.

"We want you to weave an entire story line "around this drink and this product "so that it is unmistakably the conversation piece on Monday morning at the water cooler."

>> Wow!

>> It was quite the buzz.

>> The way God and Madison Avenue intended.

>> There are agencies, for instance, in Hollywood who go through every script before it is produced and find specific opportunities for automobiles, for beer, for virtually any product that you might want to name.

>> RUSHKOFF: But it's not just product placement, and it's not just movies and TV.

Rock stars like Sting are partnering up with big brands and debuting their songs in advertisements as a way of reaching a wider audience.

Even anti-establishment icon Bob Dylan starred in a hybrid of music video and ad for Victoria's Secret, and got his CD stocked in their lingerie stores to boot.

>> RUSHKOFF: The times, they are a-changin', some fear for the worse.

>> Once a culture becomes entirely advertising-friendly, it ceases to be a culture at all.

It ceases to be a culture worth the name.

It has to have the constant mood that shoppers require.

There has to be a kind of Muzak playing in the background all the time.

Now, you think back to those dramas, those comedies that have really stayed with you, that have moved you tremendously, that you want to see again, that you think about for days.

Well, those kinds of works are increasingly unlikely when the stuff that's on TV basically functions to sell Pepsis, to sell Nikes, to sell selling, to sell consumption.

>> This is the same idea as a focus group, just a really, really small group.

>> RUSHKOFF: Far away from the boardrooms of the entertainment industry, in places like this nondescript office park outside Boston, the nitty-gritty work of selling starts with a simple questionnaire about bread.

>> And now what do you see as the disadvantages to eating grain-based foods?

>> RUSHKOFF: Today, faced with a nation hooked on low-carb diets, the baked goods industry needs to find out just how Americans feel about their products.

>> Okay, I'm going to read you some different emotions.

I've got a whole list of them here.

For each one of them, I just want you to tell me yes or no as to whether or not you think you feel that emotion when you're eating white bread.

Okay?

All right, the first one is accepting.

Do you feel accepting when you're eating white bread?

>> Yeah, I would say yes.

>> Affectionate?

>> No.

>> Lonely?

>> No.

>> Disappointed?

>> No.

>> Afraid?

>> No.

>> Trusting?

>> No, I don't think that would be an issue.

>> Would you feel uncertain?

>> Yeah, a little uncertain.

I've got one question.

>> Uh-huh.

>> Can I ask a question?

The question was, "When you eat bread, do you feel lonely?"

Have you found people that say yes, they feel lonely when they're eating bread?

>> Not a lot on this one.

>> RUSHKOFF: Welcome to the strange world of market research... >> Now, we have to be careful because that's not politically correct to say "women and..." >> RUSHKOFF: ...where those who claim to have figured out the hidden desires of consumers are treated as gurus.

>> We all come from a woman, we all spend nine months inside of a woman, so women are expert in the inside.

Translation: When a woman buys a car, the first thing she is looking at is, do they have cup holders?

>> RUSHKOFF: Dr. Clotaire Rapaille lives in a baronial mansion in upstate New York.

Fortune 500 companies and their advertising agencies flock there to drink French champagne, admire Rapaille's many cars, and listen with rapt attention to his insights on the irrational mind of the American shopper.

>> And we have to understand for each product what is the dynamic behind that, what is it that people are really buying there?

>> RUSHKOFF: A trained psychologist, Rapaille developed a theory that there are unconscious associations for nearly every product we buy, buried deep in our brains.

>> One of my discoveries was when you learn a word, whatever it is-- "coffee," "love," "mother"-- the first time you understand, you imprint the meaning of this word, you create a mental connection.

And so actually every word has a mental highway.

I call that a code, an unconscious code in the brain.

>> RUSHKOFF: Corporations love the idea of buying a single key to the psyches of vast numbers of consumers, a simple code that lies behind millions of individual decisions.

>> I have 50 of the Fortune 100 companies as clients.

>> I saw that, that's very impressive.

>> RUSHKOFF: Tonight, Rapaille has been commissioned by a handful of big companies like Boeing and Acura to break the code on luxury.

>> I don't believe what people say.

So some people listen to what they say, and they say, "Would you want to buy that?

Do you want to do this?"

I don't believe what people say.

I want to understand why they do what they do.

I found this word, and with that, I want to understand you guys.

And this is the word.

The right spelling?

>> RUSHKOFF: To crack the luxury code, Rapaille conducts a series of focus groups.

>> I'm serious.

That's what I want to understand-- how you feel about it, and anything for me is interesting.

>> Money?

>> Money!

>> RUSHKOFF: He takes his subjects on a what he hopes will be a psychic journey: past reason, through emotion, to the primal core, where Rapaille insists all purchasing decisions really lie.

>> We start with the cortex, because people want to show how intelligent they are.

So give them a chance.

We don't care what they say.

When people try to sell you luxury things, what kind of word they use?

>> Well-made?

>> Well-made.

Nothing new there.

And then we have a break.

They're usually very happy with themselves, say, "Oh, we did a good job," and so on.

When they come back, then there is no more chairs.

"Uh-oh, what is going on here?

How come no chairs?"

And I explain to them that I would like them to try to go back to the very first time that they experienced what we're trying to understand.

>> RUSHKOFF: Rapaille is hunting for our primal urges.

He's after what he calls the reptilian hot buttons that compel us to action.

>> It's absolutely crucial to understand what I call the reptilian hot button.

My theory is very simple: The reptilian always wins.

I don't care what you're going to tell me intellectually; give me the reptilian.

I want you to be in a mindset a little bit like the one you have when you wake up in the morning.

You'll be surprised to see that things come back to your mind that you forgot sometime for 20, 30 years.

It's amazing.

>> RUSHKOFF: The scribbles of consumers in the semi-darkness, half-remembered words and pictures associated with luxury, somehow become Rapaille's key to unlocking the luxury code.

>> Once you get the code, suddenly everything start making sense.

"I understand why this car sells, this car doesn't sell."

I understand why a small $29,000 Cadillac cannot sell.

You know, I understand why-- because it's off code.

Whoo.

>> RUSHKOFF: Over the years, Rapaille has told car makers to beef up the size of their SUVs and tint the windows because the code for SUVs is domination.

He told a French company trying to sell cheese to Americans that they were off-code.

>> (commercial narration in French) >> In France, the cheese is alive.

You never put the cheese in the refrigerator because you don't put your cat in the refrigerator.

It's the same-- it's alive.

If I know that in America, the cheese is dead-- and I've been studying cheeses in almost 50 states in America; I can tell you, the cheese is dead everywhere-- then I have to put that up front.

I have to say, "This cheese is safe, is pasteurized, is wrapped up in plastic."

I know the plastic is a body bag.

"You can put it in the fridge."

I know the fridge is the morgue-- that's where you put the dead bodies, eh?

And so once you know that, this is the way you market cheese in America.

>> NARRATOR: It just got easier to just say "Cheese!"

>> One word that kept coming up in the stories is "reach," reaching to the next level.

>> RUSHKOFF: While Clotaire Rapaille and his clients continue their quest to crack the code on luxury... >> You know, it might be interesting to explore the difference between first-class and world-class.

>> RUSHKOFF: ...Song Airlines is running out of time and money.

A year into operation, the full marketing team convenes in Las Vegas to assess how the experiment in creating a lifestyle brand is working out.

>> On behalf of Song, I want to welcome everybody here.

This team has done an incredible job of introducing the brand called Song, this new airline.

>> RUSHKOFF: But there are clouds on the horizon.

Parent company Delta is losing billions of dollars, and Song's marketing budget has been drastically cut.

The intangible thing called Song must deliver some tangible results.

To do so, it must penetrate the distracted minds of Americans.

The news so far is mixed.

>> Right now, the greatest thing that you've done so far is build a really solid brand identity for yourself.

That's coming through completely clearly in the advertising.

People are completely identifying with it.

>> RUSHKOFF: But while people are responding to the advertising, many consumers don't know what the advertising is for.

>> In terms of overall recall, 35% of our sample felt that they had seen you somewhere.

Where we do start to see a slight problem in terms of "Which airline do you think this advertising is for?"

We're losing almost 50% at that point.

So what we're calling our true recognition figure is those people who both saw the advertising and were confident and knew that it was for Song, and that was 15% of our sample.

>> RUSHKOFF: Song's long-anticipated TV ad finally went on the air, but it may have been too little, too late.

Though Song has built loyalty, its parent company, Delta, is careening toward bankruptcy and may bring Song down with it.

>> The code applies across the board.

>> RUSHKOFF: In Tuxedo Park, New York, Dr. Rapaille is also nearing the end of his process.

He's ready to unveil the code on luxury.

Rapaille's clients, having together paid several hundred thousand dollars, are convinced the code will give them a competitive advantage no matter what they're selling.

>> I think the code we discovered was there already a long time, you know, ago, and is going to be around for generations and generations.

>> RUSHKOFF: We were not allowed to see the actual code.

Its secrecy is worth a lot of money to Rapaille's customers.

>> The content might vary, but the structure is the same.

>> RUSHKOFF: But the clients, many of whom have worked with Rapaille before, are enthusiastic.

So far, you're sold on what he's doing?

>> Yes.

I strongly believe in what he's doing.

Strongly.

>> RUSHKOFF: Marc Salmon is the Vice President for Development at Firmenich, a Swiss fragrance and flavor designer.

>> We need to absorb, absorb the code, check it, create products that are in code, try to understand, looking at what is existing, what are the on-code and off-code.

>> It works.

Good marketing research works.

When we say it works, it means that marketers understand the real need of the customers.

Sometimes unspoken.

And they deliver.

"Give me what I want."

>> RUSHKOFF: "Give us what we want"-- it is has become the imperative that no corporation or any persuader can afford to ignore.

That's why modern political campaigns have also come to rely on an army of pollsters and market researchers, all taking the moment-by-moment pulse of the man on the street.

>> I've got a rule, which is cab drivers and antique dealers know more about America than anybody else.

And when the cab drivers feel a certain way, I know I need to listen.

>> RUSHKOFF: No one has imported the techniques and philosophy of market research into politics more successfully than Frank Luntz.

His clients have been some of the most prominent Republican politicians of the last decade.

There was the mayoral campaign for Rudolph Giuliani in 1993; his work for Silvio Berlusconi in Italy; and especially his collaboration with Newt Gingrich on the famous Contract With America, the document that ushered in the Republican revolution in Congress.

>> If an electricity company stood up and said, "We want to do it for your benefit, "we want to do it for our benefit, "we want to do it for everyone's benefit, and so we have a better approach."

>> RUSHKOFF: Tonight, Luntz's client is not a candidate, but a Florida utility wanting to build public support for a change in how it's regulated on the environment.

>> I know that the public is very down on corporate America in general, and they're down on power companies.

So what is the language, what is the information, what are the facts, what are the figures that would get Americans to say, "You know what, my electricity company, it's okay"?

"21st-century technology."

One, two, three, four.

"Sound science."

>> RUSHKOFF: Luntz's specialty is testing language, finding words that work.

>> "Integrity."

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, 11.

"Reliability."

There's the other one.

>> RUSHKOFF: It's an art that even his political opponents seem to grudgingly admire.

>> Frank Luntz doesn't do issues; he does language around issues.

He figures out what words will best sell an issue, and he polls them and he tests them and he focus groups them, and he comes up, issue by issue, with how to talk about it and how not to talk about it.

>> If the language works, the language works.

>> It's just amazing.

>> RUSHKOFF: Luntz has sold his corporate and political clients the idea that a few carefully chosen words can make all the difference.

But he's not just looking for any words.

Luntz's quarry are those words that grab our guts and move us to act on an emotional level.

>> It's amazing that those two words in almost everything that we do come up at the top.

>> So why do you think that companies don't use them enough?

>> I don't know.

>> You're going to use these to register whether you agree or disagree, whether you believe or disbelieve.

The dials go from zero to 100.

>> On the one hand, you have land which has no fossil fuels associated with it... >> RUSHKOFF: To get at his subjects' gut feelings, Luntz has them register their moment-by-moment responses to a speech by a power company executive.

>> Climbing, climbing, climbing.

"Changing fuels."

>> ...phase out older, less efficient plants, and they would be replaced... >> RUSHKOFF: But watching Luntz work, I couldn't help wondering, do the words he's found help the public see the issue more clearly, or do they disguise it?

Is Luntz listening to us so his clients can give us what we want or so he can figure out how to make us want what they have to sell?

The words work.

The words apply to the policy.

This how we are going to sell it.

I'll be able to walk to this electricity company on Monday, and be able to say to them, "Your policy makes sense, and here's the language to explain it."

That was the eureka moment, when I watched people nod their heads, I watched them look to each other, and they were willing at this point to fight for this position.

>> You're replacing the bad with the good.

>> This is a guy who is merchandizing ideas, and merchandizing a movement, and merchandizing a political party.

And in many instances, the words that he says are the ones that resonate, are ones that make... that obscure, to some extent, the issue.

>> RUSHKOFF: Take the so-called "death tax."

When it was called the "estate tax," most people supported it, but Luntz managed to turn public opinion against it simply by giving it an emotionally loaded new name.

>> For years, political people and lawyers, who by the way are the worst communicators, used the phrase "estate tax."

And for years, they couldn't eliminate it.

The public wouldn't support it because the word "estate" sounds wealthy.

Someone like me comes around and realizes that it's not an estate tax, it's a death tax, because you're taxed at death.

And suddenly, something that isn't viable achieves the support of 75% of the American people.

It's the same tax, but nobody really knows what an estate is.

But they certainly know what it means to be taxed when you die.

I'd argue that is a clarification; that's not an obfuscation.

>> RUSHKOFF: Luntz has admonished Republican politicians to talk about "tax relief" instead of "tax cuts," and to replace "the war in Iraq" with "the war on terror."

He once told his party to speak of "climate change," not "global warming."

>> What is the difference?

It is climate change.

Some people call it global warming, some people call it climate change.

What is the difference?

>> RUSHKOFF: It apparently made enough difference to Republicans that they began to use "climate change" almost exclusively.

>> ...caused global... it caused climate change.

>> The President's global climate-change initiative... >> ...climate-change research... >> And we must address the issue of global climate change.

>> I don't argue with you that words can sometimes be used to confuse, but it's up to the practitioners of the study of language to apply them for good and not for evil.

It is just like fire: fire can heat your house or burn it down.

>> RUSHKOFF: Finding the right words is important, but pushing those words through the clutter is as hard for politicians as it is for commercial marketers.

One idea that emerged in a major way in the 2004 election is a twist on an old strategy: reaching out to voters on a one-to-one basis.

They call it narrowcasting.

>> We're going to be helping participate with voter registration in a parade... >> RUSHKOFF: These canvassers for "America Coming Together," a liberal advocacy group, did some of the first experiments with narrowcasting techniques in the run-up to the 2004 election.

Every afternoon, ACT canvassers here in the key swing state of Ohio were given the names and addresses of potential voters.

They were sent into the field with a lot of information about each of the voters they were visiting, profiles compiled by computer from demographic data, including exactly what issues the voters were likely to respond to.

Each ACT canvasser was armed with a short, customized video.

>> If you don't mind, I just have a clip that's not even one minute that I just wanted to show you about some of the issues that I just mentioned.

>> RUSHKOFF: This potential voter was being shown a movie about job losses for African Americans in Ohio.

>> NARRATOR: African American unemployment has skyrocketed to a ten-year high.

>> RUSHKOFF: Elsewhere, other Ohioans were seeing different video messages tailored to their own personal demographic profiles.

>> NARRATOR: Ohio has gone backwards.

>> It sure has.

>> RUSHKOFF: Right now, there are only a few different messages, but pretty soon, if all goes according to plan, they will be customized for dozens of different demographic groups.

>> If you want to get up to 51% of the vote, you probably have to assemble a coalition of 20 or 30 or 50 demographic groups.

So as a modern candidate, you will want to have a strategy for how to communicate with each one of those demographic groups.

You want a targeted ad on the gun control, on the pro-life, on the military, on the economic issues.

You're going to want to have a message that's tailored for each one of those groups.

If you don't do it, you're putting out broadcast ads in a narrowcast world.

>> RUSHKOFF: But where did all this information come from?

How did political parties and advocacy groups know whom to reach with what message?

The answer to that question begins here.

The Acxiom corporation of Little Rock, Arkansas is one of the biggest companies you've never heard of.

Somewhere in these acres of blinking computers is carefully guarded data about you: not just your name, address, and phone number, but probably also the catalogs you get, the cars you've bought, and maybe even what shoes you wear and whether you like dogs or cats.

Acxiom's information is culled from census data and tax records, those product surveys you answered, and customer records supplied by corporations and credit-card companies that are Acxiom clients.

Acxiom sifts all this data to produce lists of target consumers for their clients.

>> If you're a company, a bank, a retailer, what you would do is, say you want left-handed people of a certain ethnic group, and they're going to be able to do a list for you.

You can get marketing lists of Hispanics who make between $20,000 and $40,000 who are U.S. citizens.

You can get marketing lists of people who suffer from incontinence and have bought those kinds of products in the pharmacy.

You can get all sorts of things that can be very narrow.

>> RUSHKOFF: What Acxiom is promising is nothing less than the solution to clutter: "Send us ads only for products we really want, and anticipate just when we will want them."

>> You can't just now take an ad and put it on TV and hope for the best.

You need to get smarter about your consumers.

You need to understand their purchasing predisposition.

You need to understand how they're changing.

You need to understand more about them.

And that's technology.

>> RUSHKOFF: Of course, the prospect of finding the right audience at the right time is irresistible to politicians as well.

>> I'd like to welcome everybody to the grand opening of the new headquarters of the Democratic Party of the United States of America.

>> RUSHKOFF: In recent years, both parties have bought data from Acxiom and companies like it.

The Republicans didn't talk about how they use it, but the Democrats do.

>> But if I want to sit at my desk, pull up on the screen the state of Ohio, and say, "Who in Ohio says that education's going to be the number-one issue they're going to vote on?

", six seconds later, 1.2 million names will pop up.

I then have the ability to hit buttons and do telemarketing to them immediately, or to send e-mails to them immediately, send direct mail to them immediately, or actually send someone to their door to talk to them.

>> RUSHKOFF: This sort of voter profiling, which both parties use to chase down swing voters in the general election, incorporates behaviors we don't normally associate with voting, like whether you have caller ID, a sedan or a hatchback, or more than one pet.

The thing about narrowcasting is that it gives politicians a chance to say things to some people they might not want others to hear.

>> When you start sending messages which appeal to sort of, you know, white people in pickup trucks, and then you're also sending messages to black people in Cleveland, and it's a qualitatively different kind of message, you're really trying to stir, you're really trying to appeal to those aspects of people which sees themselves as different from each other.

>> Instead of being Americans, we're sliced into 70 demographic groups.

We might be sliced into hundreds of subcategories under that.

And then the worry is that we don't share anything as a people.

>> I'll bring that to the screen... >> The result is living in a society where people, rather than having an idea of the common good, increasingly see their own personal well-being or their own community's or ethnicity's well-being as the essential issue of democracy.

>> RUSHKOFF: Sorted and sifted, we slip easily into our demographic tribes, each of us focused on our own list of needs and desires, which, after all, is exactly the way marketers want it, because as long as we're thinking about ourselves, we're better consumers.

>> Take a look at advertisements per se.

What is their ideology, what is their message, what do they value, what do they ask of us?

>> NARRATOR: We see you.

>> NARRATOR: There's no limit to what you can accomplish.

>> Commercials say to us, endlessly, "You come first."

>> NARRATOR: Any way you want it!

>> "You are the focus of attention.

You matter."

An Army of one.

>> Because you're worth it.

>> RUSHKOFF: The persuaders listen to us when others won't, and tell us we can be anything we want to be.

Best of all, they make us feel powerful.

>> The consumer is now in total control.

I mean, she can go home, she's going to decide when she buys, what she buys, where she buys, how she buys.

All the fear's gone, and all the control is passed over to the consumer.

It's a good thing.

>> ♪ Well, you know that it's going to be all right ♪ ♪ I think it's going to be all right ♪ ♪ Everything will always be all right ♪ ♪ When we go shopping... ♪ >> RUSHKOFF: It was near the end of my tour through the landscape of persuasion that I came to realize how the problem of clutter finally gets solved.

Marketers find a way so deep inside each one of us that it no longer feels like persuasion at all.

>> ♪ Everybody wins... ♪ >> RUSHKOFF: Maybe we are in control.

Once the market becomes the lens through which we choose to see the world, then there's no us and them anymore.

We're all persuaders.

>> ♪ Let's shop until we drop... ♪ >> The secret of it all, the secret of all persuasion, is to induce the person to persuade himself.

>> ♪ Everything will always be all right ♪ ♪ When we go shopping ♪ ♪ Well, you know it's going to be all right ♪ ♪ I think it's going to be all right, all right ♪ ♪ Everything will always be all right ♪ ♪ When we go shopping... ♪ >> NARRATOR: Since this program first aired, Delta Airlines filed for bankruptcy protection and disbanded its discount carrier, Song.

Now, Delta is trying to rebuff a takeover bid by U.S. Air.

>> NARRATOR: Next time on Frontline... >> Fat doesn't necessarily make us fat.

>> What's the point of looking thin in a casket?

>> ♪ I say high, you say low ♪ ♪ You say why, and I say I don't know ♪ >> NARRATOR: Which diets fail, and which ones work?

Frontline gets the skinny on "The Diet Wars."

Frontline's "The Persuaders" is available on videocassette or DVD.

To order, call PBS Home Video at 1-800-PLAY-PBS.