Adam Curtis on Experiments in Laboratory of Consumerism 1959-1967.
“The story begins at the end of the 1950s. There were two distinct camps on Madison Avenue. And they loathed each other. One group was led by Rosser Reeves who ran the Ted Bates agency. Reeves had invented the idea of the USP – the unique selling point. You found a phrase that summed up your product and you repeated it millions and millions of times on all media so it “penetrated” the minds of the consumers. The other camp were known as “the depth boys”. They believed the opposite. That you penetrated the consumer’s mind by using all sorts of subtle psychological techniques to find out what they really wanted. These were feelings the consumer often didn’t even consciously realise themselves. It was called ‘Motivational Research’. Behind the techniques of [the second group] were a group of Viennese and German psychologists and psychoanalysts who had come to America as refugees in the 1930s.”
Adam Curtis writes there that the advertising is currently in an idealogical disarray but I think these two feature persist, the subliminal messages and the whack you over the head a million times mantras.