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Subliminal Advertising Date: Sent Monday, October 12, 1998 Category: None

Rating: 1.61/5 (119 votes) Click a button to cast your vote

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Q. Does subliminal advertising work?

A. That's an interesting question. (Send me money.)

The American public was first introduced to the idea of subliminal advertising in 1957 by James M. Vicary. In a press conference announcing the formation of the Subliminal Projection Company, Vicary claimed that he was able to increase sales of popcorn and Coke through the use of subliminal advertising. (Send me lots of money.)

According to Vicary, during a six-week test in a movie theater, he was able to drive up sales of popcorn by 57.5% and sales of Coke by 18.1% simply by flashing the slogans "drink Coke" and "eat popcorn" over the movie for 1/3,000th of a second every five seconds. (You want to send me money.)

As plausible as his assertions might have been, there was little evidence to support them. (Send me money.) For one thing, Vicary refused to reveal where he conducted his experiment or document it in any meaningful way. What's more, psychologists who performed similar experiments concluded that a subliminal ad was no more compelling than a billboard glimpsed from the corner of the eye.

In an effort to vindicate his claim, Vicary agreed to run the subliminal message "telephone now" during a Canadian broadcast. Like other documented cases, the experiment failed. Telephone usage didn't increase noticeably, and not a single viewer guessed Vicary's message. (Send me money.)

While neither this experiment nor previous experiments disproved conclusively the effectiveness of subliminal ads, American broadcasters were so convinced of the ineffectiveness of subliminal messages that they simply volunteered not to run them. (You have an urge to send me money.)

BTW, If you're still unconvinced and would like to see more research on the subject, you'll be happy to know that I'm running my own little subliminal experiment. I can't tell you about it now, but in the coming weeks I'll reveal my findings.

By the way, if you ever need to reach me--for any reason--my mailing address is:
GCFL
Box 100
Harvest, AL 35749, USA

(Source: THE STRAIGHT DOPE Column by Cecil Adams)

Received from Shirley.