Picture & picture: Subliminal Marketing

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SUBLIMINAL MARKETING

History of tue Subliminal Maketing

The vicary movie experiment

A subliminal message is a signal or message embedded in another medium, designed to pass bellow the normal limits of the human mind's perception. These messafes are unrecognizable by the conscious mind, but in certain situations can affect the subconcious mind and importantly, the unconcious mind, and can negatively or positively influence subsequent later thoughts, behaviors, actions, attitudes, belief systems and value systems. The term subliminal means "beneath a limen" (sensory threshold). This is derived from the Latin words sub, meaning under and limen, meaning threshold. You can see it but not notice it.

Documented resarch began as early as 1863, with the findings of Suslowa, who determined that there was a real threshold between conscious and subliminal. He proved, trough electrical impulses, that there was a point at wich conscious became subliminal. This set the stage for others to explore the complexities of the human mind.

W.R. Dunham, MD, stirred the pot in 1894 with his work "The Science of Vital Force". He covered a lot of topics, including subliminal messaging, wich he concluded was akin to mental telepathy. He was convinced that one peson could silently communicate with another via their subliminal minds. Although considered wacky, he was lying the groundwork for subliminal advertising.

In 1957, James Vicary (1915-1977), a market researcher, conducted an experiment at a movie theater in Fort Lee, New Jersey. Vicary placed a tachistoscope (a device wich flashes a series of images rapidly onto a screen) in the movie projection room.

During the screening of the movie "Picnic" (Directed by Josua Logan in 1955), he flashed several messages (Drink Coca-Cola" and "Hungry? Eat popcorn") on the movie screen every five seconds. The messages lasted on 1/3000 of a second at a time, way bellow the level of conscious perceptibility.

As a result of the message flashed, Coca-Cola sales increased by 18.1%, whilst popcorn purchases jumped by a significant 57.8%. This clearly demostrated the incredible persuasive power of subliminal advertising or subliminal messages to persuade consumers to buy things that they normally wouldn't buy.

Even though this is preety convincing but there's a problem about this: The Vicary movie experiment was a hoax. james Vicary actually faked the results of the experiment.

Problem is, few people know about this today. Even fewer have looked into the history of subliminal messages to find out what actually happend.

In 1957, Vance Packard (1914-1996), an American journalist, social critic and author, wrote "The Hidden Persuaders", a book on the many now motivational research marketing techniques used to persuade consumers to buy products in the US. In this book, Packard never used the word "subliminal", but he did brefly mention the Vicary movie experiment.

The news media quickly picked up on the Vicaru study and publicized it widely. All that media attention created a huge public interest and outcry over the supposed dangers of subliminal messeging.

Public outrage over being influenced by subliminal messaging was so great that the New York Senate actually passed a bill outlawing the hechnique. The National Association of Radio and Television Broadcasters banned the use of subliminals by its members.

However, others saw the potential in subliminal messaging. Movie theaters, television and radio stations began trying out subliminal messages for the public good, warning drivers of "slippery roads" during icy weather, "mail cards now" at Christmas, etc. Even the US Army got involved to examine if subliminal messages could be used for "educational" purposes.

All this attention and public exposure made James Vicary rich as corporations saw the potential of subliminal messages and began seeking Vicary's services to help them in their advertising. He actually set-up a company called the "James Vicary's Subliminal Projection Company" to cash-in on all this interest in subliminal messaging.

After all that, the US Federal Communication Comission did an experiment in 1958 to determine if subliminal messaging actually worked. Goverment officials and the press were invited to take part in the experiment, wich flashed a subliminal message "Eat Popcorn" at 5-second intervals during a television show. The experiment was a flop.

No one was tempted to go look for popcorn and apparently the only response was froma a Senator who reportedly said, "I think i want a hot dog". Eventually, public attention in subliminal messaging died down and the James Vicary's Subliminal Projection Company went bust in June 1958.

Later, when challenged to duplicate the experiment by the Psycologist Corporation, James Vicary wasn't able to repeat the results of his previous experiment. The second time he conducted the same experiment, there was no significant increase in popcorn or Coca-Cola sales. Eventually, in 1962, James Vicary admitted that he had faked the whole thing. By then, the media had lost interest in the subliminal messaging controversy.

James Vicary's confession that he had hoaxed the entire subliminal message experiment was not widely publicized.

That's how the history of subliminal messages really started. As a result, to this day, many people still bring up the Vicary experiment as proof that subliminal messages do work, not realizing that it's actually an urban legend.

In 1970's

Wilson Bryan Key (1925-2008)

After all the controversy in the 1950's, the history of subliminal messages took a new turn in 1973, when Wilson Bryan Key (1925-2008), author of several books about subliminal adverising and subliminal messaging, published "Subliminal Seduction". Key belived that mass advertising was using embedded subliminal messages to appeal to consumer's primal instincts, in order to persuade them to buy things that the wouldn't notmally buy.

According to Key, the word "SEX" was found in nearly every ads of the day. Not only that, Keys also claimed that there were (or perhaps more accuarately, imagined that he saw) images of naked women, orgies and other sexual activities in pictures of ice cubes, drinks, plates of clam, food, etc.

Just like the 1950's, this sparked off another media frenzy, and everybody opposed the supposedly embedded subliminal messages in normal everyday advertising. In 1974, the FCC actually announced that subliminal techniques, "whether effective or not, were contrary to the public interest" because it involved "intencional deception of the public". The FCC further warned that any station using subliminal tachniques would lose its broadcast license. Key went on to publish another theree books ("Clam Plate Orgy", "Media Sexplotation", "Age of Manipulation"), all on the same premise that the public was being brainwashed by embedded subliminal messages in advertisements.

To be fair to Key, he did get a couple of things right. Her argued that the power of advertising lies in controlling cultural symbols, for example in linking virility to liquor bottles and safery to soap. According to keys, such subtle twists of meaning shape the cultural enviroment and influence people's subconcious.

Ad of Gilbey's London Dry Gin,
released in July 5 of 1971 in
the back cover of TIME magazine.

However, his claims that advertisers were using sexual symbols and orgies in everyday advertising (even fot household items such as washing detergent and soft drinks) made it difficult to take him seriously.

Thereafter all that media attention on the supposed dangers of subliminal advertising actually resulted public became curious and interested in trying subliminal messaging on themselves.

It's a bit like people deliberately touching a wall to see if the paint is really wet after they notice a sign up there watning NOT to touch the wall because of wet paint! Anyway, all this created a market of self help subliminal media, especially subliminal tapes. These tapes usually consisted of music or sounds of nature, over wich subliminal affirmations were recorded at a very low level. Listeners would be able to hear the messages but were supposedly influenced on a subliminal level.

At first, subliminal tapes, and later videos and computer sofware, were sold through direct marketing at first, but gradually spread to retail stores by the late 1980's. At their peak, some estimates of subliminal cassette tapes sales reached as much as US$50 million annually.

Did you know thet some department stores and supermarkets actually played subliminal messages under the "Muzak", or background music to reduce shop-lifting?

An article in TIME magazine in 1979, titled "secret voices", reported that nearly 50 department stores in the U.S. and Canada were using subliminal messages in the music systems to reduce shoplifting and employee theft. On East Coast chain was reported to have reduced theft by 37%, amounting to the phenomenal savings of $600, 000 over a nine-month period.

A similar story in the "WALL STREET JOURNAL" in 1980 started the installation of a subliminal message system in a New Orleans supermarket accounted for a drop in pilferage loss from almost $50, 000 per six months on the astounding figure of less than $13, 000. Cashier shortages found to be effective. Were statements like, "I take a great deal of pride in being honest. I will not steal. I am honest".

Coca-Cola ad released in the south australia area in 1995
made by a "funny" artist, who though that the scene matched the slogan.
Removed 10 days later after the discovering of the "hidden picture".

In the 90's another attempt at subliminal messaging was released in the form of self-help tapes. This coincided with the rising popularity of the new-age movement, and all of the awareness associated with that. This proved to be a short-lived thing, and several studies failed to prove any worthiness to the tapes at all.

From then and until nowdays the subliminal advertising is around us. Despite of all the studies and doubts about the results of the subliminal marketing it keeps being used by publicist and experts as a way to atract costumers and sell their products, and it looks like it works.

"Subliminal advertising", by Derren Brown, a mind control master.

Showing the effects of subliminal advertising in two publicity agents.

We now the history but...

Why use a subliminal message?

It's not just our conscious thinking, but also our subconscious thinking that often holds the key to our actions.

Most people still belive that their lives are the way they are because of outside factors like background, enviroment, education, family, economy, fate or luck. Howevet, it is not these outside circumstances that ultimately determine our lives that make the difference between happiness and succes on the hand, or frustration and failure on the other hand.

It's actually the beliefs, thoughts, attitudes and behaviors held at the deepest levels of your mind, as well as your conscious thoughts that make you life what it is today. Think about this. Outside influences are not the most important thing preventing you from accomplishing your goals. Your own thoughts are. Our lives are often what our thoughts make them. It's out thinking that makes our lives what they are. Thinking, we are all a product of our own thinking.

Subliminal programing is a way of form or remove negative thoughts, attitudes, habits and behaviors and communicate suggestions directly to the subconscious to affect conscious change to achieve a potential.

Based in those theories the advertisers use our minds to increase their sales.

Logo of the Italian concessioner
"Alfa Romeo". We can see a Dragon "eating"
what it apears to be a human body.

TOP TEN OF BANNED SUBLIMINAL ADS

10.- DEMOCRAT BUREAUCRATS

During the 2000 US presidential race, a TV commercial created by George Bush's campaign team used subliminal messaging over pictures deriding presidential candidate Al Gore's proposals on prescription drugs. A series of words flitted across the screen troughout, yet something smelled funny. When the phrases "BUREAUCRATS DECIDE" appeared just after Gore's name was mentioned, the finla fragment of the second word "RATS" flashed up for a fraction of second, one-thitieth to be precise. At such a speed, the bold lettering was scarcely perceptble except to the subconcious mind, but the implication was obvious. Gore and his party were associated with vermin. The matter was investigated by the FCC, but while the ad was taken off the air, no penalties were imposed and Bush denied allegations of subliminal skullduggery.

9.- Laid by the best.

This ad appeared in Britain's Yellow Pages but was pulled because of the suggestive content it contains. When, by flipping upside down the ad and crop the lady's head and daintily held chamagne glass, and it suddenly doesn't look like her neck she's touching but a mor sensitive, exposed part of her anatomy. What's being offered here? On the face of it, flooring - though the headline "Laid by the best", is revealed as a somewhat insubtle sexual innuendo. Apparently less insidious marketing strategy than a lascivious joke, the ad did nevertheless run before the fuss it provoked, and its illustration has also been found on other materials such as matchbooks ans cocktail napkins, mischevous maybe, but still concealed magery subliminally playing on the fact that sex sells.

8.- McDonal's: I'm lovin' it.

On January 27 of 2007, viewers watching Food Network's "Iron Chef America" may have noticed a brief flash of red that apperead fot a split seccond towards the end of a show when the challenger's entries were being assessed and two men raised their glasses. What had audiences seen but barely been aware of- all but invisible to the naked eye? A McDonald's logo that popped up for a singlle frame together with the hamburguer giant's slogan "I'm lovin' it". Following the revelation, accusations of subliminal advertising were met with claims that it was a "technical error" by the television network, but skeptics unsurprisingly weren't convinced. How could such a thing occur accidentally? A McDonal's spokesmans said: "We don't do subliminal advertising".

7.- Konami slot machine Jackpot

In February of 2007, a gambling operator in Canada pulled the plug on 87 Konami slot machines and removed them from the floor of Ontario's casinos after an investigation uncovered subliminal trickery taking place before bleary-eyed players. The games displayed a 5-of-a-kind jackpot symbol combination on screen for a fifth of a second as the reels started to spin on every go. The concerns were clear - even if the imagery was not "picked up subliminally", such signals could encorage people to keep trowing their money awar for longer, spurred on by the subconcious feeling of wining. Watched in slow motion, the flashing became apparent, though Konami declarer they were due to a technical bug. Perchaps their spokespeople had been taking lessons from the McDonals's team!

6.- Husker Du: Get it

In a classic case of subliminal advertising from 1973, a TV commercial for the children's memory game "Husker Du", shown in the US and Canada, featured sub-visual cuts, with the phrase "Get it" flashed no les than four times, for a frame each time, during its one-minute run time. Some sharp-sighted parents noticed something suspicious and filed complaints with the FCC. The games manufacturer claimed to be shocked at the revelation, with a misguided employee carrying the can, and the commercial was remover from airplay. Did the message to persuade people to follow its command, thus driving up sales? It's hard to say. Nevertheless a warning was issued against similar practices, since, "Whether effective or not, such broadcasts clearly are intended to be deceptive".

5.- Daffy Duck: Buy bonds

Subliminal ads were banned in Canada after the outrage sparked by the "Husker Du" commercial, having already been outlawed in the UK and Australia, but despite regulations against them, are not strictly illegal in the US. An earlier example of a message that fell below the threshold of normal perception used mass media is to be found in the Warner Brothers' 1943 animated film "Wise Quacking Duck", in which the famous cartoon character "Daffy Duck" spins a statue. It only lasted a frame or two- but at such subliminal speed, the message may have held power to induce a wartime viewing public into boosting the country's coffers without their conscious awareness.

4.- Ferrari's Marlboro barcode.

If this next entry counts as subliminal marketing, then it's the psycological technique in one of its subtlest - if not sneakiest- of guises. A controversial barcode design sported by the Ferrari's Formula One cars had watchdogs seeing red with claims that it smelled of an attempr to subconsciously evoke the Marlboro brand, sponsors of the world famous motor racing team. Tobacco advertising has been banned from F1 for some years, but Philip morris, the chigarrete maker, continued to pump millions to preserving their tie with Ferrari - and the seemingly anonymous red, white and black striped symbol did bear uncanny resemblance to the bottom half of a packet of Marlboros. The companies denied the claims, but in 2010 the vehicle's livery was dropped in response.

3.- Coca-Cola: Feel the curves!

This ad is definitely hides a subliminal image, but can you see what it is? Look closely inside one of the ice cubes the Coke bottles is nestled in on and you'll see an image of a woman apparently perfoming oral sex. Released in South Australia in the mid-1980's, the offending artwork went unnoticed until it was spotted on the back of a Coke truck. At this point the tagline, "Feel the curves", intended to promote the reintroduced bottle shape, suddenly sounded ruder that it should. Upon its discovery, Coca-Cola recalled and dumped the thousands of the posters distributed, and the graphic artist who designes the picture lost his job.
2.- KFC Lettuce Dollar Bill.

In 2009, KFC took the innovate step of running a commercial containing a hidden image and actually inviting audiences to try to fin it, with the prize of a free sandwich given to the first 1,000 people who could report what they saw. Viewers were compelled to seek ouy and replay the ad in slow motion in a kind of treasure hunt to detect the secret message. What was it? A tiny image of a dollar bill mixed in the lettuce of a bun. The ad was rejected by ABC because of the network's policy against subliminal advertising, despite the chicken chain's objections that there were no subconscious tricks but instead an intent to publicize something. They ind of have a point - but even so the concept of subliminal advertising taken so logical conclusion seems scarcely less devious.

1.- Australia's ARIA awards.

An alleged attempt at commercial mind control occurred in 2007 during Australia's ARIA music awards. In front of more than a million viewers, logos of the major event's sponsors - including "Chupa chups", "Olay", "Telstra", "KFC" and "Toyota"- were surreptitiously inserted throughout the broadcast in bursts of as little as one twenty fifth of a second.

The rapid cuts, ranging from one to the four frames per seconds, were too short to be consciously processed by the average viewer, yet some keen-eyed audience members sensed all was not as it seemed. Despite the ban on subliminal down under, it seemed to be a deliberate attempt to imprint the brand names in people's minds - and create a preference for their products - beneath surface attention. The broadcaster, Network then, called a "different creative treatment".

Now lets take a look to some of the most subliminal advertisments, feel free to se the galery:

Benson & hedges advertising appereaded in the back cover of the TIME magazine April's edition of 1976. Here we can see a phallic form in the left hand of the man while holding the back of the woman.

In this ABSOLOUT ad we can read the words "ABSOLOUT VODVA" written in the ice cubes.