Subliminal Advertising

Back in 1957 James Vicary conducted an experiment on movie goers as they watched the movie Picnic on the silver screen. During the movie he had 3 second advertisements that flashed throughout the presentation and the message instructed people to “eat popcorn” and “drink Coca-Cola”. The messages were text based subliminal messages and were displayed much faster than the human eye can see – they flashed on the screen for 3/1000s of 1 second – and they were displayed once every 5 seconds. According to Vicary, the movie watchers did increase their consumption of popcorn and coke. Popcorn sales sales during the movie went up by 57% and Coke sales went up by 18.1%. At the times the findings caused somewhat of a hysteria, further research started to be done into the influence of subliminal messages, and they were soon banned from being used within advertisements. However, a few years later, Vicary claimed his study was a gimmick and that the amount of data was “too small to be meaningful”. This was also realized to be a lie and that in truth, the experiment never actually took place, the whole thing was bogus, a gimmick, and simple scientific fraud.

 So does this mean that subliminal messages don’t work?

There is Dutch research from 2006 that suggests it does work with some extra elements needed. Other research showed that subliminal messaging could work if the person involved is tired and there is a relation with habits.

I personally believe all of this is rubbish. In the example of the Picnic film where James Vicary made up his experiment, if you could only see a message on screen for 3/1000s of a second, it would not be enough time to even remotely register into your brain, conscious, or subconscious mind, no matter how often they repeated that split second. To me it just doesn’t make sense, most ads need at least a few second to express their message and then need some more time for the user to take that message in. So I don’t believe quick subliminal messages are effective or work.

 There is another subform of subliminal advertising called: priming. This method of communicating I believe works. This is where subtle cues in the environment (pictures, text, sounds, etc.) can be used to influence us subconsciously (or without awareness) how we feel, think, and act towards a particular brand. An example of priming is when a person reads a list of words including the word table, and is later asked to complete a word starting with tab. The probability of them answering table is greater than if not so primed. Another example would be if someone was shown a sketch develop until they recognize the picture and then later shown that same sketch at an earlier stage. That would be an example of being primed. They would be able to identify the sketch at an earlier stage a lot sooner having seen the sketch in it’s entirety before versus someone who is seeing the beginning sketch for the first time.

I believe that Priming works and can be very effective. The effects of priming can be very long lasting. Unconscious priming can be even more effective. An example of this in advertising would be having commercials placed in happy programs. Some argue the good mood of the program would make the commercial more persuasive and receive more positive evaluations by its consumers. Another example would be the perception of advertised brands and products in prestigious magazines. The prestige of the magazine could “rub off” on the brands and products.

What I personally believe in the case of the perception of commercials placed in happy programs is that the effect of the priming is minimal. I think that as soon as the commercials go on, the whole mood of the program is actually destroyed because the commercials engage on a different viewer’s mood altogether. By the time you see the forth commercial your mood from the program is greatly diminished.

Those are my two cents on subliminal messages and priming.

Humor in Advertising

Humor. We love it. We use it. Humor is universal. There are roughly between

6000 and 7000 dialects spoken in the world but you don’t need to be a linguist to

recognize when someone is laughing.

Humor gets our attention – although in some ways better than others. There are many of us that have different tastes in humor so you must be careful when you use it to hit the right audience with it. Advertising uses humor to get our attention and I believe humor in advertising is one effective means of doing so. According to a study 69% percent of the ads having the highest impact, are ads using humor. Yet another study showed that humor in advertising, while impactful, does not translate into motivating the consumer into buying. This makes sense to me. What I believe is the strongest motivator to get people into buying what the ad promotes is the benefit to the consumer. Not just money savors as many ads promote but other benefits like good security, health, communication, and transportation. Also some other good promoting attributes such as: increased esteem, confidence, excitement, comfort, and care.

It’s perfectly fine that the advertising industry uses humor in its ads. “Depending on the medium, anywhere from 10% to 30% of all advertisements use humor.” (Weinberger, Spotts, Campbell, & Parsons, 1995) This implies that many advertisers believe that humor improves advertisement effectiveness. Humor makes ads at least fun and more interesting to read, if not in depth, then at least quickly. 

A very effective ad that used humor was the Telus ad for their Share Plus Plans that included some benefits. It was recently a full page ad in the Ottawa Sun that showed a giant Hippo sitting on a telephone pole with three colourful birds sitting on the pole to its right. The headline explained: Heavyweight plan, Featherweight commitment. Then it listed three benefits to the Telus Share Plus Plans. It was quite bold but very effective in my opinion. Much better than a typical car ad that is jammed packed with content that makes your head spin and you are at the point where you don’t know where to start reading.

The Telus ad was good, however humor in advertising is generally tough to produce effectively and well. In fact a poorly executed ad campaign can insult people, and even do damage to its brand. An example of this was the advertising campaign for the Mic Mac Mall. Many people got offended by it’s messages that were meant to be interpreted lightly and humorously.

Is it worth taking those risks to make a humorous ad? Well in general its common knowledge to know the difference between what is offensive and what is humorous. There are many comedians who push the envelope though. However in advertising I would say if you stay away from touchy subjects then it’s worth the risk to put out a humorous ad.

With an ad that is meant to be funny not everyone will be on board, because you simply can’t please everyone and make everyone laugh. In general a younger audience will be laughing more often and an older audience will laugh less. However if you get a large portion of the target audience to be on board and laugh with you then you’ll hit a winner.

Is Food Advertising linked with Childhood Obesity?

Food advertising encompasses a large amount of the ad time we see on television. On children’s shows food ads make up 50% of the advertisement time. These ads are almost completely dominated by unhealthy food products; 34% for candy and snacks, 28% for cereal, 10% for fast food, 4% for dairy products, 1% for fruit juices, and 0% for fruits and vegetables. Children also rarely get to see public service announcements or advertising for healthier food

There is certainly a problem there when it comes to exposure to unhealthy food on television. Exposure plays a big role in feeding your child the right messages when it comes to healthy or unhealthy food choices, but more importantly is environment. To have a healthy child at a healthy weight is it crucial that the child is in an environment that will allow him or her to be healthy. At a young age the child will follow the parents example and eat simply what is presented to them. So the responsibility to raise healthy children that are not overweight is the responsibility of the parents at an early age. Then the parents should teach their son or daughter to make healthy food choices and hope all will go well when they are on their own. The environment that child is brought up in will be a much higher determinant whether they become overweight or obese then the commercials they see on television. Very often I see that if the parents follow healthy eating habits their children do too. The opposite is true as well; if the parents eat unhealthy their children will have a harder time eating healthy because they will have to work harder for it.

That being said it’s a shame that children are exposed to so much poor food advertisement. In general a lot of food advertisement that is out there are for snacks and fast meals. There is almost never or very rarely advertisement for fresh fruits and vegetables, or natural whole ingredients that are not branded. Advertising often always covers foods that are packaged, and processed. And the times they do want to target the health conscious, they will talk about low calorie foods like from Weight Watches that are heavily processed and are more manmade than gathered from the earth.

 

Nutella 2010 Ad

Advertising does play a role in making people obese because the wrong messages are sent about health in typical advertising. For useful information you have to dig for it yourself. A prime example was the old advertising for Nutella (the one I linked is different but follows a similar example). As I remember it showed a girl climbing a rope in gym class and everyone was staring in awe. Then when you wonder how the girl managed to do it, her mother explained from the kitchen that she was served Nutella in the morning to give her the strength and energy she needed. The ad ended with the mother saying, “I make sure I serve my children Nutella every morning”. So the message is that Nutella will make your child energetic and strong. Well while the chocolate from Nutella will give your child a moderate boost of energy it’s definitely not in the best form. Nutella is not a good quality chocolate and really, I think its common sense to know that it’s not eating Nutella everyday that you are going to be a glowing example of health and vitality. What really would give your child a big boost of healthy all natural energy that would last some time would be a glass of green juice or a homemade vegetable and fruit smoothie, but who would advertise that? Well V8 comes close and it tastes pretty good.

Advertising is meant to promote products and services; it’s not meant to be a public service to prevent obesity. Public service announcements will be in charge about promoting health to children on television and they should invest more money in doing so. I also believe schools should educate children on good health and explain the causes and effects of poor food choices beyond the obvious. And most importantly parents should educate themselves and their children on good health.

Advertising’s role is to sell a product in the best way they can. If that means making a food look extra delicious and delectable then they are doing their job. They are pushing the envelope a bit when they promote junk food in this way but still, it’s their job to promote their product. Ethics in advertising has gone a long way. Ads used to promote cigars and cigarettes unrestrictedly. Now since people became aware how damaging they are to your health they are not advertised and in fact they have warnings and imagery of the effects of smoking right on the boxes. Maybe in the future junk food advertising will do the same.