ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines the co-evolution of consumer and brand psychology with emerging technologies and demonstrates how that alliance has revolutionized the way people make purchases and think about brands. Two contemporaries of Watson who made major contributions to advertising and motivational research were Edward Bernays and Ernest Dichter. The world inhabited by persuasion practitioners such as Watson, Bernays, and Dichter was based on Freudian psychoanalysis and behaviorism. In a 2009 TED Talk, advertising and branding expert Rory Sutherland shared a story that demonstrated the power of branding. For example, in films and television, audiences are focused on cognitively unpacking the story and being physically and/or emotionally aroused while brand messaging embedded in the content surreptitiously primes them for positive brand attitudes and later recall.
