Classical Conditioning _ Persuasion Blog

about XEH or YOF. So, you are clearly doing a lot of cognitive work, just not persuasive cognitive
work here in the Central Route sense of it. You’re on the Peripheral Route, Ding-Donging your way
to a new attitude, making something out of nothing.
Classical Conditioning In The World
Remember simple Ding-Dongs from school. We can see applications of this theory in the teaching
and learning of classroom rules and discipline. Teachers will flip the lights off and on to signal the
class to be quiet. Now flashing lights clearly will not naturally cause children to be quiet. This is an
association the teacher taught the students. The same reasoning applies with our use of bells and
whistles and other signals. We use classical conditioning to train students in very basic procedures.
Consider a ubiquitous feature on the American scene: the Brand. Levi’s. McDonald’s. IBM. Ford.
Apple. Corporations spend billions of dollars every year in creating, maintaining, protecting, changing,
and rebuilding that precious asset, the Brand. And how do they do it? It’s all one big Ding-
Dong. They repeatedly associate a symbol, a word, a logo, an image that is their unique mark and
they bond it with attributes they want. The Gap will show you all the cool old school guys – John
Wayne, Humphrey Bogart, Marilyn Monroe – who wore khakis. Apple presents simple, cool, understated
themes and images. However the company wishes to appear, they Ding-Dong those qualities
with their logo, and voila, the Brand.
Consider this mockery of the Gap campaign (“Famous People Wore Khakis”) with a real ad featuring
Steve McQueen and a fake ad with Adolf Hitler.
The contrast highlights the classical conditioning. Take the attributes of the famous person and associate
them (Ding-Dong!) with your brand.
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