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Packaging is everything! A research team recently conducted an experiment with several hundred kids in their school lunchroom. The kids were given the choice of two identical hamburger lunches ... same meat, bun, fries and pickle slices. On one tray, the burgers and extras were wrapped in plain paper; on the other tray, they were wrapped in paper with McDonald's logos all over them. Without exception, every kid chose the McDonald's package.

Name brand products, such as dry breakfast cereals and canned goods, on most supermarket shelves are often placed side-by-side with store brand versions of the same products. In fact, in most of them, the store brand contains exactly the same ingredients. The only difference is the price, with the store brand listed about 15 percent cheaper.

Guess which my wife chooses? Why? She claims the store brands have an "off flavor." Despite all the evidence, she won't believe that the name and the store brand are produced and packaged at the same factories, and the only differences between them are the box and label designs.

Until fifty years ago, print and electronic media were minor influences on buying habits. Then television invaded American homes. The advertising mind control was minor at first, and most programs had no more than five minutes of commercials per every hour, a tradition passed on by radio. Many commercials were live, aired once by the performers of each program.

When top radio personalities like Bob Hope and Jack Benny inevitably starred in their own TV shows, they did one or two commercials per program for a single product: Hope for Pepsodent Tooth Paste and Benny for Jello. Of course, sales of those name brands were always highest on the day after a broadcast. That was only the beginning.

Now, TV commercials take at least 15 minutes of each prime time hour. None are ever live, and the exact same commercial is aired hundreds of times, often twice or within the same hour. If consumers were slightly influenced by early commercials, today they are totally brainwashed. The most invasive of all, the informercial, may play for years, blaring out the same message, mostly on late-night TV. Other infomercials, those involving buying good from home, are live, but the pitches are just as intense.

Is it any wonder that the children of today, having spent hours a day in front of the TV set, will hypnotically choose a McDonald-wrapped hamburger? No matter what's inside the package, we are conditioned to buy the advertised one we have been trained like lab mice to choose every time.

Learn more about this author, Ted Sherman.
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