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.