Subliminal Advertising

[Innit]

In my recent citizenship class, we were discussing the nature and use of subliminal advertising. The teacher gave us a common example of subliminal advertising in movie screens, in which a flash of an image appears for a tiny proportion of a second in a number of intervals.

 

Here's a little extract from Wikipedia:

 

In 1957, market researcher James Vicary claimed that quickly flashing messages on a movie screen, in Fort Lee, New Jersey, had influenced people to purchase more food and drinks. Vicary coined the term subliminal advertising and formed the Subliminal Projection Company based on a six-week test. Vicary claimed that during the presentation of the movie Picnic he used a tachistoscope to project the words "Drink Coca-Cola" and "Hungry? Eat popcorn" for 1/3000 of a second at five-second intervals. Vicary asserted that during the test, sales of popcorn and Coke in that New Jersey theater increased 57.8 percent and 18.1 percent respectively.

 

It is clear that this strategy works, but it is in our subconscious mind that we notice these messages hidden within the movies, and our eyes pick it up, without us realizing it. Is there any sort of scientific reasoning for how this works? How our brain works in these situations?

[Glider]

In my recent citizenship class, we were discussing the nature and use of subliminal advertising. The teacher gave us a common example of subliminal advertising in movie screens, in which a flash of an image appears for a tiny proportion of a second in a number of intervals.

 

Here's a little extract from Wikipedia:

 

 

 

It is clear that this strategy works, but it is in our subconscious mind that we notice these messages hidden within the movies, and our eyes pick it up, without us realizing it. Is there any sort of scientific reasoning for how this works? How our brain works in these situations?

No, it's not clear that the strategy works. All attempts to replicate Vicary's results have failed and a long time ago, Vicary admitted that he had made up his data and that his claims for the effectiveness of subliminal advertising were a marketing ploy in themselves.

[Innit]

^ Is see. Yes, I hear that they no longer allow subliminal advertising, but they say that it was partially due to the fact that it was against our freedom, due to the fact that we could have been "wanting" to buy these drinks for reasons that we didn't know.

 

I don't know if I've heard wrong, but this is what I heard of it...

[iNow]

Currently, it is not allowed in the UK, but is still allowed in the US. Not sure about other locales.

 

 

 

Here is a cool study that was published in March of 2007. It's available without subscription, and is worth a look. There is a lot of other research in this field also. I like this one because it involved measurement with fMRI:

 

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VRT-4N6XNHG-2&_user=10&_coverDate=03%2F20%2F2007&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=e66f42854619950fbe18e6f5e8d1e202

Visual neuroscience has long sought to determine the extent to which stimulus-evoked activity in visual cortex depends on attention and awareness. Some influential theories of consciousness maintain that the allocation of attention is restricted to conscious representations [1] and [2]. However, in the load theory of attention [3], competition between task-relevant and task-irrelevant stimuli for limited-capacity attention does not depend on conscious perception of the irrelevant stimuli. The critical test is whether the level of attentional load in a relevant task would determine unconscious neural processing of invisible stimuli. Human participants were scanned with high-field fMRI while they performed a foveal task of low or high attentional load. Irrelevant, invisible monocular stimuli were simultaneously presented peripherally and were continuously suppressed by a flashing mask in the other eye [4]. Attentional load in the foveal task strongly modulated retinotopic activity evoked in primary visual cortex (V1) by the invisible stimuli. Contrary to traditional views [1], [2], [5] and [6'], we found that availability of attentional capacity determines neural representations related to unconscious processing of continuously suppressed stimuli in human primary visual cortex. Spillover of attention to cortical representations of invisible stimuli (under low load) cannot be a sufficient condition for their awareness.

 

 

And from the article that led me to the above study:

UCL (University College London) researchers have found the first physiological evidence that invisible subliminal images do attract the brain’s attention on a subconscious level. The wider implication for the study, published in Current Biology, is that techniques such as subliminal advertising, now banned in the UK but still legal in the USA, certainly do leave their mark on the brain.

 

Using fMRI, the study looked at whether an image you aren’t aware of *– but one that reaches the retina – has an impact on brain activity in the primary visual cortex, part of the occipital lobe. Subjects’ brains did respond to the object even when they were not conscious of having seen it.

[doG]

Here's a little extract from Wikipedia:...

It is clear that this strategy works, but it is in our subconscious mind that we notice these messages hidden within the movies, and our eyes pick it up, without us realizing it.

 

Another Wiki victim. You should double check the info you find on Wiki with other sources.

 

From Snopes:

 

Claim: An early experiment in subliminal advertising at a movie theater substantially increased sales of popcorn and Coke.

 

Status: False.

 

Vicary's studies were largely forgettable, save for one experiment he conducted at a Ft. Lee, New Jersey movie theater during the summer of 1957. Vicary placed a tachistoscope in the theater's projection booth, and all throughout the playing of the film Picnic, he flashed a couple of different messages on the screen every five seconds. The messages each displayed for only 1/3000th of a second at a time, far below the viewers' threshold of conscious perceptibility. The result of displaying these imperceptible suggestions — "Drink Coca-Cola" and "Hungry? Eat Popcorn" — was an amazing 18.1% increase in Coca-Cola sales, and a whopping 57.8% jump in popcorn purchases. Thus was demonstrated the awesome power of "subliminal advertising" to coerce unwary buyers into making purchases they would not otherwise have

considered.

 

Or so goes the legend that has retained its potency for more than forty years, which includes the belief the Federal Communications Commission banned "subliminal advertising" from radio and television airwaves in 1974, despite that fact that no studies had shown it to be effective, and even though its alleged efficacy was based on a fraud.

 

You see, Vicary lied about the results of his experiment. When he was challenged to repeat the test by the president of the Psychological Corporation, Dr. Henry Link, Vicary's duplication of his original experiment produced no significant increase in popcorn or Coca-Cola sales. Eventually Vicary confessed that he had falsified the data from his first experiments, and some critics have since expressed doubts that he actually conducted his infamous Ft. Lee experiment at all. ....

 

FWIW, Snopes is not necessarily trustworthy either but this does contradict Wiki. One should be able to deduce from this that one or both sources are WRONG.

[pioneer]

Subliminal adveritising makes use of the fact that the unconscious mind can pick up data faster and at higher data density than the conscious mind. The unconscious mind is more data neutral and simply records the data and relies on the ego or conscious mind to give it a valence tag.

 

For example, if the advertiser had a female in a bathing suit and also a subliminal line for the unconscious, the subliminal line would also get the same type of emotional tag or valence, as the ego gives the pretty girl. If the pretty girl had been substituted for a car wreck, that would become the valence tag for the subliminal and would make it feel negative.

 

If we had a movie that had romance, sex, fighting, car chases, brutality, murder, sadness, renewal, etc., and played a subliminal message every ten minutes for "buy popcorn", most people would become indecisive. Even male and female may alternate valances with the females liking the more mushy parts and hating most of the fighting, while the males may feel less about the mushy parts and react better during action scenes. The net result, the subliminal would get all messed up. When the girl wants the popcorn the guy may say wait. When he is ready, she says forget it. Then she changes her mind only to have the guy delay again. In the end, the valence starts to cancel to where neither want any popcorn.

[Glider]

^ Is see. Yes, I hear that they no longer allow subliminal advertising, but they say that it was partially due to the fact that it was against our freedom, due to the fact that we could have been "wanting" to buy these drinks for reasons that we didn't know.

 

I don't know if I've heard wrong, but this is what I heard of it...

Well, it's kind of right. In the UK it was banned for ethical reasons. Whether or not subliminal advertising works (and there's no real evidence that it does), it's considered unethical to attempt to manipulate the public in such a way.

[doG]

Whether or not subliminal advertising works (and there's no real evidence that it does), it's considered unethical to attempt to manipulate the public in such a way.

 

The public is still manipulated in such a way though. One example I can think of is Excedrin. They have a variety of analgesic mixtures on the pharmacy shelf. Two in particular are Excedrin Extra Strength and Excedrin Migraine. Both of these are exactly the same each having the same amount of the same ingredients as the other. One is simply the other packaged to imply that it is a special mixture for migraines when it's no different than the other. It's a reasonable marketing ploy that sells more of their products to migraine sufferers than other similar products that don't specifically advertise their product as a migraine specific product. It's not really advertising to the unconscious mind but it does work in much the same way.

[Glider]

I see your point, but it is more like outright lying as opposed to subliminal manipulation, and as everybody knows, lying isn't considered unethical if you're in advertising (mind you, nor is subliminal advertising or any other method to get people to pay for crap they don't need).

[Revenged]

The public is still manipulated in such a way though. One example I can think of is Excedrin. They have a variety of analgesic mixtures on the pharmacy shelf. Two in particular are Excedrin Extra Strength and Excedrin Migraine. Both of these are exactly the same each having the same amount of the same ingredients as the other. One is simply the other packaged to imply that it is a special mixture for migraines when it's no different than the other. It's a reasonable marketing ploy that sells more of their products to migraine sufferers than other similar products that don't specifically advertise their product as a migraine specific product. It's not really advertising to the unconscious mind but it does work in much the same way.

 

We have the same in the UK... Migraleve yellow is just co-codamol... Co-codamol tablets can be bought for 75p for 32 tablets whereas Migraleve yellow is £3.50 for fewer tablets... but both are exactly the same... But it's the same is true for paracetamol, ibuprofen, anti-histamines...etc. In fact most drugs brought at the pharmacy have a cheaper unbranded version that is identical to the branded version...