Virginia Valentine, the critical theory-trained president of Semiotic Solutions, might as well be channeling the spirit of Cheskin when she writes that “in semiotic theory, consumers are not independent spirits, articulating their own original opinions and making their own individual buying decisions.” Instead, she clarifies in a promotional leaflet, “consumers are constructed by the communications of [popular] culture … They are not prime causes. They are cultural effects.”

It’s an audacious stroke: marshaling post-structuralist literary theory on the side of the old, sepia-toned vision of consumers as compliant stooges. “Our society is but a cultural construction,” Valentine writes, quoting Foucault. “There is no concrete social world out there.” If there is no objective reality, only a whirling universe of brands, then there is no harm in offering semiotic solutions to marketing problems; in deploying floating signifiers on behalf of Safeway. As Valentine puts it, “Our interpretive role is not to look for ‘truth,’ but to crack the code on behalf of our clients.”

Not everyone supports the new creed. Humbled by 40 years of journalistic exposis and Mad magazine parodies of galvanic skin probes, peripheral embeds, and other subliminal ad-pro legerdemain, today’s self-respecting marketing executive is likely to be wary of techniques that seem exploitative or dehumanizing. At a recent account planning convention I attended in San Diego, Hal Goldberg, the focus-group hypnotist who’d so transfixed the marketers at Shell Oil, drew a decidedly mixed response from his audience of ad agency strategists. Goldberg began his speech by stressing the refreshing uninhibitedness of consumers anesthetized through hypnosis. “When respondents are awake, they’re reluctant to be frank and to tell you what they really feel,” Goldberg told the group. “You’ll find that respondents are much more willing to talk when hypnotized.”

Goldberg cues up a videotape. “Now I’m going to show you a clip from a focus group we did for a weight-loss client,” he says brightly. “Here, we were taking respondents back to the first time they realized they were overweight. As you’ll see, you get much more emotional content out of hypnotized people.”

The video shows a small, plump woman in a white blouse and bright coral scarf. She’s sitting upright in her chair, and her eyes are screwed tightly shut. “I’m 11 years old,” she says slowly. “My parents had just divorced. We had moved to a new town.”

“I want you to go back to that point in time,” Goldberg says. “I want you to tell me what’s happening.”

“I hated where we were,” the woman says. “There was nothing that was familiar. I was new in school. I had no friends. And the kids called me fat.”

“What are you thinking and feeling about that?” Goldberg probes.

“Just very sad,” the woman says, her voice breaking. “Angry, too.” Tears are rolling down her cheeks.

Goldberg stops the tape. “So you see,” he says placidly. “With this sort of information, you’re in a position to recommend some options to your clients that you otherwise might not have thought of.”

During the question-and-answer session, the account planners pepper Goldberg with hostile questions. “To me, this is a little bit horrifying,” says one woman. “I mean, this seems like ’1984′ to me. The whole notion of controlling people. Are there ethical issues you’re concerned about?” “We’re digging into areas that are not life-threatening to the respondent,” Goldberg says soothingly. “We’re just professionals, trying to get information about a problem.”

“But what about the ethical issue of digging into people’s backgrounds and minds for the purpose of selling products?” someone else asks. “I mean, the woman on that videotape seemed like she was having some sort of episode. And it just seems like you’re raising these issues, and opening this whole can of worms that you don’t know how to deal with.”

Goldberg is unflustered. “This was a young lady, remembering a sad situation,” he said. “But we then brought her back into the present time. There’s no damage done to these people.”

Not surprisingly, medical professionals who use hypnosis to treat patients are less than enthralled by these corporate-sponsored forays into the consumer unconscious. “Ordinarily, I wouldn’t use hypnosis until I had developed a trusting relationship with a patient,” says Dr. Sidney Rosen, a Manhattan-based psychiatrist who specializes in the use of hypnosis. “If you run into someone who is vulnerable, and you don’t have any expertise to deal with that, you could precipitate a nervous breakdown.” Rosen, a practicing hypnotist for 40 years, emphasizes that using hypnosis to regress a patient to a sad or traumatic time is a particularly delicate operation, requiring the utmost care and sensitivity. “There is a danger of stirring up some sort of depression or panic reaction,” he says. “You have to use all sorts of orienting suggestions, re-orienting suggestions. You want to test them to make sure they’re calm before they leave. If they’re still anxious, you might even prescribe medication.” Most importantly, he says, “you would hopefully recognize their vulnerability. You’re not just going in there to get information.”

But the ethical issues aren’t the only problem with hypnosis as a marketing tool. The whole idea that putting people in a trance will reveal their true feelings about brands is highly questionable.

“Forty years ago, we believed that hypnosis was a truth serum,” Rosen says. “Now we know it’s not a truth serum. People are very influencible. The hypnotized person wants to please the hypnotist. They respond to minimal cues from the hypnotist. And so people say things under hypnosis that are completely false.”

It’s an intriguing thought — the fate of America’s consumer brands resting on the dubious musings of a bunch of soporific focus group respondents. But if some marketers have their doubts about such subterranean forays, others are leaping confidently into the fray. As a lead strategist at Hal Riney & Partners, Mark Barden recently used hypnotized focus groups as part of a presentation to Starbucks. “One of the issues we’d come across in doing standard focus groups was that hip young people were down on Starbucks,” he says. “But they weren’t really very articulate or forthcoming in telling us why. All they would say is, ‘It’s corporate coffee, man.’” Intrigued, Barden probed deeper; but all he got was “posturing,” he says. “What kept coming up was the usual stuff that had been in the media,” he says. “‘They’re kicking out mom-and-pop coffee shops.’ ‘It’s a shallow packaging of coffee culture.’ ‘There’s one on every corner.’ That kind of thing. And so we hit upon the idea, ‘Why not hypnotize them?’ That way we can dig down to the real objections.”

So Barden brought in a hypnotist to take the slackers under. “It was interesting,” he recalls. “He was asking them questions like, ‘You’re walking down the street. You see a Starbucks. You go into the Starbucks. You look around. What do you see?” The answer, Barden says, was an eye-opener. “We asked, ‘Who are the customers?’” he recalls. “They described guys in suits in their 40s. ‘Yuppies,’ they said. We asked: ‘Anyone in there like you?’ ‘No.’ ‘Are you sure? Look around.’ ‘No one,’ they said. ‘Just the guy behind the counter.’”

The implication, Barden said, was all too clear. The hip young people “felt they were on the wrong side of the counter,” he says. “And it made them uncomfortable.”

Hal Riney & Partners rushed to the Starbucks executives with this grim news. “We went to the client, and we said, ‘These people do not feel that they belong in your shop,’” Barden recalls. “The brand doesn’t have any room for them at this point. Maybe it’s the tone of voice of the advertising. Maybe it’s all that Kenny G. music that you play. But you need to find ways to make your brand more accessible to younger people.” Though the latte moguls have yet to act on his recommendations, Barden remains a true believer. “Through hypnosis, we were able to identify what the issue was,” he says. “And the issue was, ‘I don’t belong here.’”

Domaine Chandon is another convert. Last month, the California sparkling-wine maker unveiled its new advertising campaign, based in part on insights gleaned from hypnotized focus-group participants. “We were looking for new information, information that people might not want to share, because they’re too inhibited,” says Diane Dreyer, account supervisor at D’Arcy, Masius, Benton & Bowles, Domaine Chandon’s Los Angeles-based ad agency. “We wanted to get people to regress, to remember specifically the first time they drank champagne or sparkling wine.”

You might not be surprised to learn that the exercise triggered pleasant, even romantic associations; but D’Arcy says he was blown away. “It was a much more feeling-driven, emotion-driven — as opposed to occasion-driven — response than what we had expected,” Dreyer told me. “People were talking about going down in their parents’ basement and seducing their girlfriends. What that did is, it validated that there is something going on beyond occasions to motivate people to drink sparkling wine.” Impressed, the agency uncorked a new series of ads, featuring images of utter abandon and wild surrender. “Drink it in, drink it in, drink it in,” urges the copy.

Diane Dreyer credits the hypnotic focus groups for alerting the agency to the little-known fact that people view champagne as a romantic drink. “What the [groups] taught us is that this is a very emotionally laden category,” she says. “There is always the potential of a realized sexual encounter. That’s something you don’t necessarily learn unless you can tap into that subconscious level of the brain.”

Stuart Grau, vice president for account planning at Avrett Free & Ginsberg in New York, used hypnotized focus groups as part of a research project for a client, Bath and Body Works. “We really wanted to tap into the in-bath experience,” he says. “Now how am I going to do that? I could hear it from you second-hand, in focus groups, or by doing some in-home interviews. But I can’t get in the bath with you, can I?” Hypnosis, he decided, was the second-best alternative. “When you talk to people, and ask them to recall experiences, it’s all filtered through the here and now,” he says. “There’s a censorship, both conscious and unconscious. What hypnosis allowed us to do was to bring our respondents back into the bath experience as if they were actually there. It was as if we were taking a bath or shower with them, almost.” I asked Grau if the experience ever felt a little creepy, a little voyeuristic. “No, no,” he said. “If they did go places that were inappropriate, we stopped them. There’s no point in putting people through that.”

Just as Diane Dreyer of Domaine Chandon credits the groups with establishing the link between champagne and passion, so too does Grau credit hypnotism for helping him realize that when women use scented bath products, it’s not just about getting squeaky-clean. “There is something underpinning the appeal of these products that is not related to the functionality of the products,” Grau muses.

That something is that women hope these fragrant potions “will make them attractive to the opposite sex.” It was, Grau says, an insight that Bath and Body Works would never have gleaned through awake groups alone. “You get rational answers in awake groups,” he says. “You don’t get the true emotional content. Especially when it comes to sensitive subjects.”

Notwithstanding these groundbreaking revelations, the use of hypnotized focus groups is disdained by marketing theorists offering rival routes to the unconscious. “I’m not a big fan of hypnosis,” says Dr. Sam Cohen, the object-relations psychiatrist turned marketing consultant. “Respondents go into zombie-like states. While you do get insights, you don’t learn enough about the defenses of the consumer. So you wind up creating advertising that makes the unconscious totally conscious.” Cohen points with disdain to a recent campaign for British Airways, a campaign developed based on input from hypnotized focus groups. The ads, he says, pound home a truth that should only be hinted at — the need of the business traveler to feel coddled and babied while en route. “You see a man who’s a man on top, wearing a suit, but then the bottom half of him is a little boy in a diaper,” Cohen laments. “They have made the unconscious totally conscious, in a way that’s threatening to the consumer.”

As a counterexample, Dr. Cohen modestly cites his recent work for Delta Airlines. Probing the unconscious minds of business-class travelers, he discovered a class of “big strong men and women” who nevertheless needed to feel cared for and fussed over. “Traveling on an airplane stirs up feelings of regression and helplessness,” Dr. Cohen explains. “The plane is almost a womb. So you go into this womblike place. You’re trapped in a chair. Now you’re going to be flown off somewhere.” In this scenario, Cohen explains, “the flight attendant becomes the all-good mother. It’s a regression into helplessness that is defended against through heightened grandiosity. And if the airline catches that, if they understand the grandiosity need in this regression to feel powerful and special — that’s the airline you’re going to want to fly.”

The key, Cohen stresses, is that the flight attendant must materialize at the traveler’s side without being summoned. “If you watch the advertising, you’ll see that the stewardess comes over without being asked,” he says. “That’s so important. If I have to ask, ‘Can I have a magazine?’ ‘Can I have some more water?’ that breaks the spell. It means I’m not that special or powerful a businessman. The idea is that you don’t have to ask that the stewardess, like the all-good mother, will meet the anticipatory need.” The desired result, Cohen says, is that the viewer subconsciously associates Delta with toasty mother-love. “He will think: ‘If I go with Delta, I will have a mothering experience. And if I have to go to a meeting, I’ll perform well, because the flight attendant has brought me magical supplies to empower me for my trip.’ The coup de grace, Cohen says, is the final shot of the ad, which invariably shows the business traveler bounding confidently down the steps of the plane. “The airline took you in its womb, it flew you off, and while it did that, it gave you psychic supplies,” he says triumphantly. “It’s one of the most impactful dramas in advertising.”

Cohen also points with pride to his work for Pillsbury Cinnamon Buns. Here too, he says, the human need for mother-love and for oral gratification opens up vistas for the savvy advertiser. “The advertising is centered around the buns coming out of the oven,” he explains. “The mother is coming downstairs. The buns are out. The Pillsbury boy is there. You see the smell coming upstairs. The smell is going to wake the family up.” Cohen contrasts this to real life, where “the mother trying to get the family downstairs is seen as a tyrant.” Instead, in the advertising, “the bun becomes the oral gratification that entices the entire family, perhaps through its smell. So now the family unites. And now the mother has her own unconscious needs met. Pillsbury has leveraged its brand for maximum unconscious impact. That’s very powerful advertising.”

In his focus groups, Dr. Cohen makes use of some classic Freudian projective techniques — free association, structured sentence completion, dream work. The latter, he says, “is something that’s unique to my company. It’s something that I created.” Cohen cites his work for Procter & Gamble as an example of how dream-work methodology can be applied to consumer brands. “A while ago, I was doing some groups for Tide,” he says. “And I said to the respondents: OK. Let’s say you’re having a dream about Tide — and Tide is represented by something other than laundry detergent. What would that something be?”

Take a wild guess. “Guess what it showed up as? Mother!” Cohen says triumphantly. “What we learned is that Tide also means ‘Tied.’ Tied to the old connection you have with your mother. As long as you use Tide, you’ll always be ‘tied’ to her. You’ll never have to lose her. It’s quite moving, actually.”

Examples of vintage Burma-Shave road signs, including a blue South Dakota version. (Ray Crockett photo)

These red ads (one state, South Dakota, insisted that they be dark blue to keep them from conflicting with the red reserved for warning notices) usually consisted of five signs. For example: “DON’T PASS CARS/ON CURVE OR HILL/IF THE COPS DON’T GET YOU/ MORTICIANS WILL/BURMA-SHAVE.”

Some slogans touted Burma-Shave as a pre-aerosol “brushless” shaving cream—a cream you could scoop out of a jar and lather onto your face without relying on an old-fashioned brush and moistened soap in a mug.

("Thoroly"? I guess if the word doesn't fit the composition, change the spelling. . .)

In 1925, Clinton Odell, a Minneapolis lawyer, took the liniment his father created and transformed it into a brushless shaving cream. He named his company Burma-Vita—Burma, because most of the essential oils in the liniment were from the Burmese portion of the Malay Peninsula, and Vita from the Latin for “life”: “Life from Burma.”

Some of Burma-Shave’s primary “brushless shaving cream” competitors were Barbasol and Noxema.

The company was sold to Philip Morris in 1963, and all the signs were removed soon thereafter. As a testament to the campaign’s cultural significance, a set of signs was donated to the Smithsonian, where it still resides. But the brand eventually petered out. After being sold yet again (this time to the American Safety Razor Company) and then reintroduced in 1997, it never regained a hold in the market.

A history of the Burma-Vita Company, written by Frank Rowsome Jr. and illustrated by Carl Rose, was published by the Stephen Greene Press in 1963.

By the early 1960's, the rising costs of road-sign maintenance (as well as new and more effective ways of advertising) sounded the death knell for the Burma-Shave signs.

The following pages from Frank Rowsome Jr.’s book list all the road-sign Burma-Shave phrases produced from 1927 to 1963.

The soft drink that would be known as 7Up was created in 1929 by Charles Leiper Grigg in St.Louis as part of his “Howdy” line of sodas and was originally called “Bib-Label Lithiated (it contained the mood stabilizer lithium citrate until 1950) Lemon-Lime Soda.” It was almost immediately re-labeled “7 (7 natural flavors) Up Lithiated Lemon-Lime,” and then finally just “7Up”.

The first 7Up logo from 1929.

In terms of logos, an original winged trademark soon gave way to the red squared logo that lasted until the late 1960s that coincided with that period’s brilliant “Uncola” re-branding campaign. I always felt they had GOLD in that Uncola moniker. . .

A 1935 7Up label before the Howdy Company's name was changed to 7Up in 1936, followed by two Howdy beverage labels.

By the late 1940s 7Up was the third most popular soft drink in the United States. By the time the 1950s rolled around, the company had employed extensive branding techniques to keep the momentum going. The following three binders contain examples of what was offered to the bottlers and distributors to reinforce the product’s presence.

A catalog of 7Up sales/marketing items circa 1954.

This page includes tipped-in glossy paint chips.

These next three pages would NEVER fly with the HR Dept in 2012. . .

Before everyone had TV's in their home, it was common to go out to watch television.

7Up Sales & Promotion Merchandise Catalog circa 1954 - 59.

(would love to have those binders. . .)

Actual cloth swatches included.

More swatches.

1959 "Salesmakers" Catalogue

2 actual decals using the older logo with the woman reaching for bubbles- love the way the color is broken down into separate shapes and levels.

Actual booklet attached.

"Fresh Up Freddie" was the 7Up mascot created in 1957 by ad agency Leo Burnett and Walt Disney to help sponsor the Disney "Zorro" TV series.

Here’s a link to more info on “Freddie”: http://www.cartoonbrew.com/disney/fresh-up-freddy.html

Remember, it's from 1959. . .

Ditto. . .

2 mid-1930's 7Up bottles.

Left: 1940's bottle with 8 bubbles on label. Right: 1950's bottle 7 bubbles.

"Like" was introduced in 1963 as a diet version of 7Up. It contained Calcium Cyclamate which was determined to be a carcinogen in 1969. "Like" was discontinued in that same year and Diet 7Up was introduced in 1970 sans the Cyclamates. This bottle is dated 1964.

Late 1960's/early 1970's can.

"The Uncola".

As a final footnote, I was lucky enough to work on spots for 7Up International using the Susan Rose/Joanna Ferrone character “Fido Dido”! Here’s one of my favorites done while I was at the Ink Tank Studio in N.Y.: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JpHjeGXyw8

Copyright F+W Media Inc. 2012.

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Even dead, Jackson is a massive draw. He’s currently the subject of a global Cirque du Soleil tour with the horror movie title “Immortal.”  And Pepsi knows that overseas – especially in markets like Asia — his brand is as ubiquitous and American as well, cola.

Bringing back the dead is a peculiar – if increasingly common – gambit. Now that the earth has run out of living celebrities, they’ve had to revive Tupac to perform at Coachella  and Grace Kelly to make kissy face with Charlize Theron to sell perfume.  They even had to dig up Martin Luther King Jr., to pitch for Mercedes-Benz.

There comes a time when a celebrity passes into our iconography. Today, seeing the images of Elvis and Marilyn and James Dean in different pop culture contexts barely seems any stranger than fake Abraham Lincolns selling cars in February. And why wouldn’t Jackson’s people wring a few more opportunities out of his incredibly lucrative image? Somebody’s got to pay for all those $10 million mansions.

Senior PepsiCo marketing executive Frank Cooper told the WSJ that the new campaign will be both “respectful” and “forward looking.” It may be respectful. But there’s nothing “forward” about the dead. Jackson’s image survives as an easy symbol of pop music, but the man whose life ended from propofol intoxication three years ago, whose doctor is currently serving time for involuntary manslaughter, couldn’t seem less like the right spokesman for the notion of “living for now.”

Shockaroonie, some people found this offensive. The ad went the wrong kind of viral, with a social media explosion of negative feedback. It’s not that comedy with a racial element is always wrong wrong wrong. The Jewish Hank Azaria is currently in his third decade of playing the Indian Apu Nahasapeemapetilon on “The Simpsons,” and nobody seems to be outraged about this. Kutcher’s incredibly unnuanced performance isn’t that, though. On his blog, writer Anil Dash explains it perfectly –  “a fake-Indian outfit and voice” constitute “the entire punchline” of the clip. And, as he eloquently put it, “I can’t imagine I have to explain this to anyone in 2012, but if you find yourself putting brown makeup on a white person in 2012 so they can do a bad ‘funny’ accent in order to sell potato chips, you are on the wrong course. Make some different decisions.”

And so that’s what Popchips is trying to do. On Wednesday, in a “message from Keith” on the company’s website, its founder, CEO and foe of proper capitalization Keith Belling wrote, “we received a lot feedback about the dating campaign parody we launched today and appreciate everyone who took the time to share their point of view. our team worked hard to create a light-hearted parody featuring a variety of characters that was meant to provide a few laughs. we did not intend to offend anyone. i take full responsibility and apologize to anyone we offended.” That’s a constructive, self-aware response to a potential public relations disaster. (Kutcher, who in recent months has been tainted by his hasty Twitter support for Penn State coach Joe Paterno and a divorce that featured rumors of unprotected extramarital sex, has so far had no comment on the problematic ad campaign.)

It’s a positive thing that Popchips understood its mistake and made an immediate effort to rectify it by pulling the ad. That step forward is mitigated somewhat, though, by the a large number of “get over yourself” responses on Anil Dash’s blog. We’ve still got much work we need to do in this country around issues of stereotypes and sensitivity, folks.

You don’t have to look any further than the entire Popchips campaign to see what I mean. Its remaining “World Wide Lovers” include the stoner Brit “Nigel,” who’s “seeking higher planes of consciousness” (GET IT????), the effeminate German “Darl” — a swishy riff on openly gay designer Karl Lagerfeld — and the dumb redneck “Swordfish.” In the end, there’s also regular old, newly single Kutcher, who describes the other guys in the club as a “freak show.” Hey, geniuses at Popchips – you’re still perpetuating gross generalizations. Also: They’re not funny. It’s a great big snack-loving country. Being cool about brown people – and gay people, and people others would call “white trash” – shouldn’t be such a crunch.

The FCC rejected a push by the industry to water down the measure. But the rule as passed also has serious limits. For example, the data will not be searchable or uploaded in a common format.

The rule will first apply to affiliates of the four major networks (ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox) in the top 50 TV markets. All other stations will have until July 2014 to come into compliance.

“[L]arge areas of some swing states, like Virginia, Missouri, Wisconsin and Michigan, could see an influx of advertising in markets outside of the top 50,” the Sunlight Foundation noted in an analysis today. It was also not immediately clear exactly when the rule will go into effect for the top 50 markets.

Then there’s the crucial question of the format in which the files will be available. FCC spokeswoman Janice Wise told ProPublica that the commission is not creating a searchable database of the political ad files.

“We’ll accept whatever [file] format they provide,” she said in an email.

That will make it much more difficult to analyze the information.

Wise said there are no specific plans to make the database searchable.

By opting to allow stations to submit political data in any format, the commission departed from a recommendation made last year by in an FCC working group report.  The report called for the political file to be put online and that “as much data as possible [be] in a standardized, machine-readable format” that “could also enhance the usefulness and accessibility of the data.”

Also not clear is how the broadcast industry, which vigorously lobbied against the rule, will react.

“[W]e will be seeking guidance from our Board of Directors regarding our options,” the National Association of Broadcasters said in a statement decrying the vote.

In March, the industry group submitted a filing with the commission raising “serious questions about the FCC’s authority” to require stations to put political ad data online.

“That was written as a legal memorandum, which is code for, ‘We’ve lawyered up and we’re ready to sue over this,’” says Andrew Schwartzman, a longtime FCC watcher at the Media Access Project.

The broadcasters’ group declined to comment beyond its statement.

On a Thursday earnings call for Belo Corp., one of the companies that has been fighting the disclosure measure, CEO Dunia Shive suggested that broadcasters would continue to fight the new disclosure rule.

“I don’t think the conversation is over with respect to being able to continue talking about if we will ultimately have to include ad rates online,” she said, Broadcasting & Cable reported.

Belo spokesman R. Paul Fry told ProPublica that the company merely “want[s] to continue the dialogue on this subject.”

The FCC also said today it would review the new rule after a year to see if any changes need to be made before all stations will be required to come into compliance in July 2014.