The subconscious sell: Surrealism’s enduring impact on advertising

To suggest that surrealism has had a powerful effect on the discipline of advertising is a significant understatement. There is a strong argument that the movement created the defining intellectual framework for effective advertising – even if our industry prefers to play down the association.  

Surrealism, emerging from the ashes of Dada, emphasises the supreme power of dreams, the necessity of overcoming rational thought, and liberation from conventional restraints – especially morality. It was codified as a distinctive movement in the Surrealist Manifesto, published by Andre Breton in 1924. Breton was heavily influenced by Freudian Psychoanalysis and its emphasis on the power of the subconscious. In this way we can see surrealism as an artistic rebellion against reason itself.

It is the duality between reality and surreality which surrealism wrestles with, that makes it so powerful in advertising, a discipline that works with both the conscious and subconscious mind to achieve its effect.

Of course, there is advertising that is more overtly real as well as work that is clearly surreal. Reality in advertising tends towards situations that create empathy and relatability, tapping into shared experiences and inviting viewer to see themselves in the narrative. Our recent work for EE provides a perfect example of this approach, the reality of peoples experiences shown to them in acts of raw empathy.

Pure surreality, by contrast, operates in the realm of dreams. It bypasses the conscious, rational mind and speaks directly to our hidden desires, fears, and fascinations. Today we give little attention to exactly how absurd the Cadbury’s Gorilla is, but it can only be described as a dream drawn from the subconscious, one that defies all rationality. While Alexander Orlov, the aristocratic Russian meerkat who built an insurance empire by clarifying the distinction between “Compare the Market” and “Compare the Meerkat” is pure surreality.

Beyond the purely real and exclusively surreal lies the vast body of successful work from the category mixing reality and surreality to play games with people’s expectations and cultures conventions. Even our Christmas advertising for Waitrose last year, while set the realistic environment of a family home on Christmas Day, veers off into seriality as a detective arrives on the scene to solve the mystery of a missing pudding elevating the piece into a crime drama worthy of Christie.

To suggest that advertising sometimes uses surreal imagery is to dramatically underestimate the impact of the surrealist movement on what we do for a living. Consumers understand the techniques used in much advertising like metaphor, magical transformation or simply a celebrity turning up in our local Asda, only because we are familiar with dreams. After all, we construct them in our own subconscious every single night of our lives as we hastily try to make sense of the irrationality and chaos of our world and the desires and drives we all have.

For the rationalists there is some support for the effectiveness of surreality in the concept of ‘System One’ and ‘System Two’ thinking – popularised by Daniel Kahneman. While this approach should be treated with caution by the serious marketer, the framework suggests that by the time our rational faculties have determined that gorillas don’t play drums and meerkats don’t run comparison websites, the emotional impact has already been made. This is surrealism as a tool for disarming rational scrutiny, which is helpful but far from the full story.

The real intellectual lineage for surrealism’s role in advertising is not Kahneman but Freud. The surrealists were heavily influenced by Freudian psychoanalysis, with its emphasis on the unconscious mind, repressed desires, and dream interpretation. When advertising employs surrealist techniques, it accesses parts of the mind – desires and drives – that remain hidden from conscious awareness. This recalls the controversial analysis of adveritisng by Vance Packard in “The Hidden Persuaders” and Edward Bernays’ post-war application of his uncle Freud’s theories to marketing. As the ‘father of public relations’ Bernays was not shy about his belief that people could be manipulated into behaving in advantageous ways for businesses and politicians.

For decades, advertising practitioners have been keen to distance themselves from accusations that we deliberately influence the subconscious. We’ve embraced metrics, attribution models, and performance marketing partly to present ourselves as rational business partners rather than psychological manipulators, fearing the regulatory consequences of the latter. But in this rush to rational legitimacy, have we allowed the value of what we are really capable of on behalf of our clients to be driven out of advertising? Have we diminished the recognition of advertising’s true power and therefore our ability to demand a fair value exchange from the clients we serve.

In today’s hyperrational marketing world, surrealism reminds us that advertising operates most powerfully at the boundaries between the conscious and unconscious mind. The most potent campaigns often defy logical explanation, speaking instead to something deeper and more primal within us. Perhaps it’s time to acknowledge that advertising’s ability to influence through the creation of surreal dreams isn’t something to be embarrassed about its our superpower. It is possibly also the reason that the TV ad – or any immersive audio visual experience – remains the most effective form of advertising ever devised, for what else can recreate the quality of a dream outside people’s minds.

Adveritsing doesn’t merely employ suurrealist techniques, increasingly I think that advertising only exists and only works because of surrealism and its ability To suggest that surrealism has had a powerful effect on the discipline of advertising is a significant understatement. There is a strong argument that the movement created the defining intellectual framework for effective advertising – even if our industry prefers to play down the association.  

Surrealism, emerging from the ashes of Dada, emphasises the supreme power of dreams, the necessity of overcoming rational thought, and liberation from conventional restraints – especially morality. It was codified as a distinctive movement in the Surrealist Manifesto, published by Andre Breton in 1924. Breton was heavily influenced by Freudian Psychoanalysis and its emphasis on the power of the subconscious. In this way we can see surrealism as an artistic rebellion against reason itself.

It is the duality between reality and surreality which surrealism wrestles with, that makes it so powerful in advertising, a discipline that works with both the conscious and subconscious mind to achieve its effect.

Of course, there is advertising that is more overtly real as well as work that is clearly surreal. Reality in advertising tends towards situations that create empathy and relatability, tapping into shared experiences and inviting viewer to see themselves in the narrative. Our recent work for EE provides a perfect example of this approach, the reality of peoples experiences shown to them in acts of raw empathy.

Pure surreality, by contrast, operates in the realm of dreams. It bypasses the conscious, rational mind and speaks directly to our hidden desires, fears, and fascinations. Today we give little attention to exactly how absurd the Cadbury’s Gorilla is, but it can only be described as a dream drawn from the subconscious, one that defies all rationality. While Alexander Orlov, the aristocratic Russian meerkat who built an insurance empire by clarifying the distinction between “Compare the Market” and “Compare the Meerkat” is pure surreality.

Beyond the purely real and exclusively surreal lies the vast body of successful work from the category mixing reality and surreality to play games with people’s expectations and cultures conventions. Even our Christmas advertising for Waitrose last year, while set the realistic environment of a family home on Christmas Day, veers off into seriality as a detective arrives on the scene to solve the mystery of a missing pudding elevating the piece into a crime drama worthy of Christie.

In truth, to suggest that advertising sometimes uses surreal imagery is to dramatically underestimate the impact of the surrealist movement on what we do for a living. Consumers understand the techniques used in much advertising like metaphor, magical transformation or simply a celebrity turning up in our local Asda, because we are familiar with dreams. After all we construct them in our own subconscious every single night of our lives as we hastily try to make sense of the irrationality and chaos of our world and the desires and drives we all have.

For the rationalists there is some support for the effectiveness of surreality in the concept of ‘System One’ and ‘System Two’ thinking – popularised by Daniel Kahneman. While this approach should be treated with caution by the serious marketer, the framework suggests that by the time our rational faculties have determined that gorillas don’t play drums and meerkats don’t run comparison websites, the emotional impact has already been made. This is surrealism as a tool for disarming rational scrutiny, which is helpful but far from the full story.

The real intellectual lineage for surrealism’s role in advertising is not Kahneman but Freud. The surrealists were heavily influenced by Freudian psychoanalysis, with its emphasis on the unconscious mind, repressed desires, and dream interpretation. When advertising employs surrealist techniques, it accesses parts of the mind – desires and drives – that remain hidden from conscious awareness. This recalls the controversial work of Vance Packard in “The Hidden Persuaders” and Edward Bernays’ post-war application of his uncle Freud’s theories to consumer manipulation.

For decades, advertising practitioners have been keen to distance themselves from accusations that we deliberately influence the subconscious. We’ve embraced metrics, attribution models, and performance marketing partly to present ourselves as rational business partners rather than psychological manipulators, fearing the regulatory consequences of the latter. But in this rush to rational legitimacy, have we allowed the value of what we are really capable of on behalf of our clients to be driven out of advertising? Have we diminished the recognition of advertising’s true power and therefore our ability to demand a fair value exchange from the clients we serve.

In today’s hyperrational marketing world, surrealism reminds us that advertising operates most powerfully at the boundaries between the conscious and unconscious mind. The most potent campaigns often defy logical explanation, speaking instead to something deeper and more primal within us. Perhaps it’s time to acknowledge that advertising’s ability to influence through the creation of surreal dreams isn’t something to be embarrassed about its our superpower. It is possibly also the reason that the TV ad – or any immersive audio visual experience – remains the most effective advertising form ever devised, for what else can recreate the quality of a dream outside people’s minds.

As Breton wrote nearly a century ago, surrealism seeks to “resolve the previously contradictory conditions of dream and reality.” In the best advertising, this contradiction isn’t just resolved; it’s transformed into something more powerful than either could be alone.