Transcripts

Patrick Kiger:
There's actually research that shows that because velvet makes colors look more vivid that it has kind of a powerful psychological effect when people look at it. The sheer visual impact of the colors is irresistible.

Patrick Kiger, author of the book, Poplorica knows a lot about interesting and influential pop culture. For example the movie ET marked the beginning of product placement in films.

The story line of ET was to have the alien lured in by candy and M& M's was the first choice actually and they demurred. They weren't really sure about being involved in a science fiction movie. But Reese's seized upon this and Reese's Pieces became the thing and they sort of flew off the shelves after the movie came out. And that was kind of the germination of this idea of placing products.

And back in the '50s Ford introduced the Edsel one of the biggest product failures of all time.

At the time there was a belief that this new science of psychology that could be used to get consumers to buy things that they really didn't want. You know if you pushed the right buttons or wrote the right script and read it to them that they would buy whatever you wanted. And so they did this with the Edsel they produced a car that was not particularly well designed, it completely flopped because people just didn't want it. It really forced the auto industry to go back to the drawing board and to try to figure out how to make cars that people wanted. And that's when you really started consumer research and focus groups.

For transcripts visit our website somethingyoushouldknow.net I'm Mike Carruthers and that's Something You Should Know.