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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.

Ruth Shalit The return of the hidden persuaders Driven by a booming economy, a corporate obsession with brand-building and a feelgood philosophy, a motley crew of ex-grad students, starry-eyed admen and hypnosis gurus are probing the consumer unconscious to sell soap.

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."

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