Pair-association

Any first-year student of Advertising knows this. The idea that if we can tie the unknown to a well-known, then chances are, the unknown will get bought. For instance, Brady endorses FTX.

Over time, we forgot that today’s well-known was yesterday’s unknown. For instance, student Co-Op. It was once a novel concept to cut down the cost of groceries (bring your own bags, which itself had been popularized by BYOB – bring your own booze to student party.)

Today, all the big chains co-opted this CO-OP concept, increase profits at our own expenses (time, energy, aggravation of being forced from being a consumer to a pro-sumer – a Toffler’s coined term).

We pair-associate everything. That’s how learning works. How the brain processes Unidentified Objects (to prove that you’re not a robot, please identify which way this animal looks up).

Before long, we never suspected Santos as a fraud: that which quacks like a duck, walks like one, must be one. After all, he had the right looks, costume, glasses and sweater (Mr. Roger knew this very well). On the way out of court, he wore Red Sneakers, supposedly a signal of defiance, i.e. “What are you gonna do about it” (like Sharon Stone “What! You’re gonna charge me with smoking?”.

With pair-association, we file new observations away into a set mental compartment. Never to be pulled out, unless challenged and required. George Clooney’s Tequila, Paul Newman’s salad dressing and Picasso’s canvas.

We stereotype things, people and places. Refugees? Wait at the border. Relief workers? good luck with reverse border-crossing. Bowling alley workers? secure job, but of late not so secure a job site even in Maine.

This Pavlovian experiment has gone too far. It was an experiment in dog’s salivation. Now, it’s all in for human. A trickle-down economy ( “where’s the beef”). A pragmatic society (the most people with the least of means). A Mechanical Turk uses recommendation software to pair our already uncertain choice to a totally foreign one, just to upsell. “Perhaps you might like to combine your purchase with these other items” e.g. selling a tie to a customer at the cash register (less chance to get rejected).

As long as we move forward, greasing the wheel. Never look back. Heck with grandparents. Heck with tradition (history is always being rewritten anyway).

So every year, at Thanksgiving, we sit around the bird, carve it, pass it around. May I have the cranberry sauce please.

Yam is good. Planted by the native American. To be served up once a year. New arrivals pair-associate what’s proper and acceptable by observing “authorities” in the established community.

(in their mind, “if they eat this bird once a year, it must be very rare and sacred”).

So new comers also want to have a piece of the action: white meat and white folks. Snow White and stark white shirt.

Pair association. Santos and we know this. So we walk and dress like a “duck”. In the hope that one day, some day, we just “naturalize” our way into the House of Congress. Quacking like a duck.

Only to be served up at the altar, to appease justice. America is an experiment, very much Pavlovian. Just throw it all on the Picasso canvas. See what sticks. Buy us some time. Make up as we go along. Let the process run its course. Due process. Until the bills come due. With interests of course. Money, money, money.

Any first-year Advertising student knows pair-association: tie the unknown to the known. The sizzle, not the steak. Sell them. Book them. Build the brand however parasitic it may be at first. Count on the public short memory. Co-Op them. First lure them in – puppy-dog sell. Then cram in more stuff, high-margin stuff to make up for loss-leaders.

“Sorry, the car you saw advertised has been sold. How about this one! ” Gotcha!