Subliminal Advertising
Looking for a new way to publicize your
product? Have you considered implanting suggestions in your current advertising
that link your product to sex and power?
The use of subliminal
advertising is the perfect way to go about that… The birth of subliminal advertising as we know it
dates to 1957 when a market researcher named James Vicary inserted the words
"Eat Popcorn" and "Drink Coca-Cola" into a movie. The words appeared for a single frame,
allegedly long enough for the subconscious to pick up, but too short for the
viewer to be aware of it. The subliminal ads supposedly created an 18.1%
increase in Coke sales and a 57.8% increase in popcorn sales. Many groups have
tried to figure out the reason why this accrues. “Thanks to Rapaille,
Bostwick and his colleagues now employ a kind of Freudianism Lite in all their market research.
“Our theory now is that people express things according to patterns,” he says.
“And so, in focus groups, we listen differently. We listen for slips of the
tongue. We listen for changes in inflection. We listen for long pauses. We ask,
Why did they pause? Our assumption now
is that nothing happens by random chance or accident.” That
is what one researcher said on the topic however, nearly 50years ago,
sociologist Vance Packard shocked the nation with “The Hidden Persuades”. “A stinging
indictment of advertisers’ attempts to massage and mold our inner thoughts,
fears and dreams for profit. The slim volume, with its unsettling portraits of
slimy “depth men” rooting about in the consumer subconscious, provoked
widespread outrage. “We have reached the sad age when minds and not just houses
can be broken and entered,” concluded the New Yorker. Thundered the Saturday
Evening Post: “The subconscious mind is the most delicate part of the most
delicate apparatus in the entire universe … It is not to be smudged, sullied or
twisted in order to boost the sales of popcorn or anything else.” This book went into detail and opened the eyes
of many consumers till this day.
In closeing Dr. Sam Cohen, president of PsychoLogics, also
represents this holistic, humanistic breed of hidden persuader was ask what he
thought on the topic and reply with, “If Poland Spring is the best prop to help me get rid of bad feelings —
which maybe I don’t know how to do so well — aren’t we doing a service, both to
the brand and to the consumer? What we’re doing here is we’re making brands
more meaningful. Which is helpful, because
we don’t all have time for therapy anymore. HMOs make it nearly impossible. And
so, from a clinical perspective, brands can be used as a sister, an assistant,
in promoting people’s better functioning.”
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