I disagree with your opinion about ads being about memory and pure repetition - many of them are trying to be memorable, but we can tell with most ads that the company is trying to create a brand image more than a purely-memorable experience. Your argument is not very far removed from the “emotional inception” argument that the author makes a good case against wrt bedsheets and gas.

I also don’t think it has to rely on tricking anyone. If you see an ad that ties X product to relaxation, you don’t need to think “other people will be tricked by this into associating X product with relaxation” to want to buy it to signal that you’re a chill person. All you need to think is “other people will understand that I mean to associate myself with the message of relaxation when I buy this”.

I think Roderic Day was correct to add this essay to his otherwise-about-communism site because it shows yet another area in society where we assume people are acting irrationally when really they’re just following their interests - the narrative of irrationality being used to deny the support many people have had for their own communist governments. He has a couple good essays on “brainwashing”, and this was filed under the tag that he also put on those.