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Other than saying that the last thing that any American needs today is yet another Obama teleprompter speech, today's message is completely apolitical...

Breakthrough works like Vance Packard's 1957 best-seller Hidden Persuaders made Boomer college boys like me aware of the techniques that Madison Avenue would be using to enhance media advertising and in-store marketing messages.

One technique, the playing of background music in retail stores and supermarkets, was highly touted as a way to subliminally jump-start shoppers' buying urges.  For half a century the subliminal music strategy has been universally accepted and implemented by virtually every retailer from Macy's to the local mom and pop grocery store.

Lately, however, the dreaded PA system phrase "Attention Shoppers!" -- followed by any manner of annoying propaganda -- is being heard more and more. Usually, the interruption comes at the very moment when you have begun humming along with the elevatorized version of some monster acid rock hit from your youth; at the very moment that you are about to grab extra snacks and beverages that had originally been scratched off your shopping lists in an effort to stay within the weekly grocery budget and the AMA's height/weight recommendations.

Hearing that some obscure product has been marked down or that the pharmacy will be conducting a blood pressure screening next Tuesday or that your plastic store key fob might get me a nickel-a-gallon discount at the store owner's down-the-street gas station with a 50-buck purchase is not only enough to break the subliminal music spell but also enough to make me return any subliminally-selected items to the nearest available shelf space.

I don't know about you, but I had never heard the In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida guitar solo played on the cello before and, quite frankly, I was really grooving on it when the amateur announcer's voice began droning.  By the time the nitwit had finished with his loud, boring announcement the store's Muzak system was playing a lame oboe arrangement of Harper Valley PTA.

I don't know about you, but if I wanted to hear raspy-voiced fumferers direct each other from one department to another or be subjected to the incessant paging of incoming phone calls, I could have gone to work instead of to the store.

I don't know about you, but if I wanted to spend too much money while being continuously aggravated I could have taken a trip on the NY State Thruway.

I don't know about you, but the only time I'd be happy to hear some dopey kid or his manager come on the PA is if "Attention Shoppers!" is followed by "the store is on fire...all of the emergency exits are wide open so get out of here as quickly as you possibly can." 

I don't know about you, but if I owned or managed a store I'd want to make my customers happy that they came to my place to spend their hard-earned money. 

Uninterrupted music and a moratorium on amateurish announcements would be a welcome change from life outside the store and the subliminal selling would help to stimulate the economy in the process.

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