subliminal advertising

After pondering for a while, I came to the conclusion that it was now time for me to write about something else other than the world cup. So as a marketing major, I decided to converse on this topic.

Subliminal Advertising

What is subliminal advertising?

-If you attended the July 4th fireworks and saw the “Hood” balloon floating on the sky. I don’t know about you, but I depict that as a subliminal advert.

-In the Donald Trump show, right after the candidate is fired he steps inside a cab waiting with the “Yahoo Job”sign on the cab.

- The Famous one- subliminal messages being flashed in theaters telling people to drink soda and eat popcorn.

-Another interesting one is the research done by Wilson Bryan Key, a professor at the University of Western Ontario. Key found that the ice cubes in the Johnny Walker Scotch ads had images of screaming faces, skulls, and other horrific images. These types of images were in dreams experienced by alcoholics. After seeing these ads in Key's presentations, alcoholics who hadn't drunk for years suddenly had an urge to have a drink. :)

I will now take the example of my experience on the July 4th. As I sat down to see the Fireworks at the Charles River Esplanade, when I looked up in the sky one of the things that first struck me as wide-eyed eagerly waiting person was the floating HOOD balloon. The balloon was still floating peacefully even after the fire works had started. I am estimating that there were few million people that night and now the question is who will not remember this brand? Hood definitely was not doing any explicit advertising. The balloon was just floating peacefully and yet it managed to capture our attention and successfully might have also transformed other milk buying customers to the HOOD buyers!

One reason the subliminal advertisement is a dangerous conduit for innocent people like us is without knowingly it would have successfully brainwashed us .Now imagine, I am at a store and having trouble picking the right milk. You guessed it right… HOOD will be it :)

Also while watching the World cup, I have noticed the advert for “AVAYA” quite a lot. This no doubt is another form of subliminal advertisement. Subliminal advertising is a technique of exposing consumers to product pictures, brand names, or other marketing stimuli without the consumers having conscious awareness. Once exposed to a subliminal marketing stimulus, the consumer is believed to decode the information and act upon it without being able to acknowledge a communication stimulus. Thus, it is believed that one can influence behavior by surreptitiously appealing to the subconscious mind with words and images. If this were true, then advertisers could manipulate consumer behavior by hiding subliminal messages in their ads.

The advertising industry, a prominent and powerful industry, engages in deceptive subliminal advertising which most us are unaware of. By bypassing our unconscious mind using this techniques, advertisers tap into the vulnerabilities surrounding our unconscious mind, manipulating and controlling us in many ways. (If not then why all of a sudden I would start buying the HOOD product) Half of their dominating influence can be attributed to their use of subliminal advertising. Using the latest computer technology, they have unparalleled resources to manipulate each image to target a specific weakness in us. Subliminal messages gain their potential power from the fact that they may be able to circumvent the critical functions of the conscious mind, and it has often been argued that subliminal suggestions are therefore potentially more powerful than ordinary suggestions.

There have been lot of positive and negative connotations on “subliminal” form of advertising and I am not going to any more detail. I am sure most of know about the picture of the girl by Sigmund Freud :)

I guess, the bottom line here is that: People should be aware of the way hidden messages can be used in advertising. This way they will not be manipulated by the sneaky advertisements that may be out there, because, although there have been many studies conducted, the question still remains unanswered, "Do subliminal messages exist in advertising or do they not?"

Do subliminal messages violate the code of advertising? Will this change the way advertising is regulated? How could we detect subliminal messages inserted into creatives? ----This is for you guys to answer!

BUT PEOPLE out there….. Be aware of this MALICIOUS scheme.

And NO, I am still not over the fact that Portugal lost………………