I wrote this at 4am this morning and was actually physically falling asleep as I wrote it! so I hope that it makes sense!
Subliminal messages in advertising took place over 2 key periods, the first in the late 50’s focusing on James Vicarys claims that he had inserted split-second “invisible messages” into films telling people to “buy popcorn” and “drink coke”.
This was discussed in the book: “Hidden persuaders” by Vance Packard (1957) in which he talked of a new jersey cinema that played split second clips to customers urging them to purchase branded goods.
These images cannot be seen by the naked eye but are supposedly taken in by your subconscious mind and then later transferred to your conscious mind- making you want to do these things or consume goods.
Vicary fed the press with information about how he had influenced movie goers with his subliminal techniques and just to add credibility to his claims he citied studies that verified his claims that subliminal advertising had increased popcorn sales by 57.5% and coke cola sales by 18.1%.
Packard focused on industrial psychology being used to manipulate the general public into wanting to buy things.
This caused a negative stir among the masses, cold-war era consumers feared this “new” brainwashing and mind-controlling technique, Newsday called it: “The most alarming invention since the atom bomb”, The national association of radio and television broadcasters banned the use of subliminals by it’s members and the NY senate unanimously passed a bill outlawing the technique.
All of this media attention only served to confirm that subliminal messages not only existed but that they were a powerful and dangerous tool, It also served to make Vicary a very rich man, and far from shunning the controversial new practice corporations clamored for his services.
Movie theaters, TV and radio stations began trying out subliminals, running subliminal slots and sub-audible radio time, where they would charge for “soundless” slots for their “hidden” messages to be embedded into peoples brains.
However the media eventually became suspicious of subliminal persuasion tactics and as a result the FCC held an official demonstration in 1958 limited to government officials and the press.
The phrase “eat popcorn” was flashed at 5 second intervals during a TV programme, however afterwards no-one found themselves to be craving popcorn, needless to say, James Vicary eventually shut his business down, “subliminal projection company” in June of 1958, later admitting in an interview that he had fabricated the whole thing to boost business.
Little did he know that that “fabrication” would become the pre-cursor to a much-debated controversial subject that would be around for years to come, especially in education institutions.
Wilson Bryan Key rekindled the frenzy that was “subliminal advertising” in the 1970’s with his book: “subliminal seduction” which unlike Packard’s book, which concentrated more on industrialism (and was backed up with industry sources), Key ignored the industry and went on to claim that pretty much every ad out there for liquor, cigarettes and other such everyday items was riddled with hidden imagery such as skulls, sexual imagery and donkeys that he believed had the power to invoke emotion and cause consumers to buy things because they were subconsciously being told to.
Keys belief was that the general public could not see these messages as every element of these ads had been carefully selected with a certain banality to ensure that they could not be seen for what they really were.
Again there was a media frenzy of religious and political speakers striking out against this “subliminal conspiracy”, legislations were put in place to try and prevent subliminal selling.
One of the things that came out of this was the surge of subliminal self-help tapes ranging from “acne aides” to “parenting help”, even prisons were using them to try and change the ways of their criminals!
In subliminal seduction Key discusses the hidden messages in various ads and their effects and goes on to say that the only way you can protect yourself from this type of mind invasion is to learn how to decode them for Key believed that the only way for them to be effective was if the viewer was consciously unaware of them.
However Moore disagrees and argues that subliminal stimuli are often so weak that they are not noticed by observers and that if they are- they are nullified by all the other stronger stimuli present at the same time” I have to agree with Moores statement, I find it absurd that a weak image that cannot be seen or processed by your conscious mind can have that much of an effect.
In the 1990’s subliminals had returned but this time were known as a pulse or a visual drumbeat, the 80’s saw subliminals become a marketing gimmick and now we have to wonder just why they are in ads? My guess is just to keep the “idea” going and for a bit of fun, I certainly don’t think that this subject should be taken too seriously and I seriously doubt that subliminals work, possibly in a lab, strapped to a chair with nothing else to see but subliminals, but not in the real world where we are faced with daily distractions and a richness of visual information at the ready.
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