I’m skeptical. First, when one is watching something on TV, and especially when it involves obvious editing, it’s impossible to know what really happened. As others said, they can film 499 attempts, and only show you #500, which turned out the way they wanted. They can also splice things together, omit bits, and juxtapose things in seemingly meaningful ways that are altogether misleading.
The second problem with TV is that there are a couple additional influences on the participants that don’t jibe with everyday experience. The first is purely, “If I cooperate, I get to be on TV?!” Talk shows and reality TV demonstrate abundantly that there’s a significant portion of humanity who considers even abject humiliation a fair price to pay for “fame.” Second, this introduces the phenomenon of role-playing and social expectations. People will define their “job” in the interaction in such a way to facilitate the producers’ ends, because they know that is the whole object of the enterprise. Note that this is not about people being “stooges,” who could then blow the whistle on Brown.
I’m inclined to agree that the joke is on the audience more than the people in the videos. For instance, I watched Brown’s alleged "NLP " trick on Simon Pegg, and it involves a classic conjuring trick - obtaining and reading/changing a secret writing. I think it’s much more likely that Brown or an accomplice obtained Pegg’s sealed envelope and changed out the message than that he was so influenced by subliminal bike-related references in a two minute conversation that he not only decided he wanted a BMX bike on the spot, but completely forgot that he had wanted a leather jacket.
Recent issues of Skeptical Inquirer have had a couple stories of James Randi obtaining secret writings, and it is very clear that a.) people who *know *that they’ve had their writing in a safe place, without interruption, are often mistaken and b.) clever conjurers use both standard and ad hoc methods for obtaining, peeking at, or making it look like they have prior knowledge of secret writings, with such smoothness and ingenuity that it’s easy for people to be fooled.
The “instant conversion” bit is practically a point-by-point replay of a stage hypnotist’s show. My personal interpretation of these events has been that certain people (many of the people inclined to attend such events) are somewhat suggestible, very amenable to role-playing, and will exchange personal integrity for public attention, and the conversion video dovetails with that very well. Again, nothing so mystical as NLP or forced hypnotism, more seeking out people with a certain personality style, and exploiting their foibles to encourage them to play along.
Don’t get me wrong, he’s very talented. I just don’t believe he’s doing what he’s telling the audience he’s doing.