Hypnotic language in Advertising
The first recorded subliminal trial was conducted by James Vicary in 1957. He suggested that an experiment in which moviegoers watching a film called Picnic were repeatedly exposed to 0.03-second advertisements for Coca-Cola and Popcorn, raised onsite sales by 58% and 18%. Since the revelation of his test the effect of subliminal messages in marketing has been hotly contested. A CIA abstract of hypnotic messages titled ‘The Operational Potential of Subliminal Perception’, claimed that ‘Certain individuals can at certain times and under certain circumstances be influenced to change their behaviour without awareness of the influence’. Because of this, hypnotic messages were all but illegal in the US when the FCC ruled that the use of subliminal messages could result in the loss of a broadcast license. In the UK and Australia hypnotic marketing was also banned, so it has been impossible to verify Vicary’s first claim one way or the other. That is until a remarkable opportunity presented itself.
To commemorate its 50th anniversary, the Vicary trial was replicated at the International Branding Conference, MARKA2007 as part of the Hypnosis, Subconscious Triggers and Branding presentation. The 1,400 delegates watched the opening credits of the movie used in the first study, PICNIC into which hypnotic suggestions had been positioned at six second intervals. Then, the delegates were asked to choose between two fictitious brands. One brand ‘Delta’ had been prompted using the subliminal messages and the other ‘Theta’ had not.
When choosing between the two brands, 81% of the audience chose ‘Delta’ in preference to ‘Theta’. This suggests a convincing substantiation of Vicary’s results. ‘Even though this technique is 50 years old, there are more sophisticated techniques being used in advertising all around us, this demonstrates the powerful influence of hypnotic suggestions the presentation demonstrated. ‘The subliminal cut was the mother of all subliminal techniques and today her children walk all around you. They are everywhere, in posters, press advertising, on the radio and the T.V. They are the acknowledged siblings of an outlawed parent.’
Actual, current examples were then revealed of the three most common subliminal techniques present in advertising today. Each example was chosen because of its ability to change the behaviour of the public and its ability to dramatically increase sales. Most notable was the most watched advert on youtube in 2007, the Cadbury ‘Gorilla’. This Cadbury’s Dairy Milk chocolate advert features a gorilla playing drums to a Phil Collins backing track. The clip reached cult status and has been looked at around 10 million times on the internet claimed a chart, published by the TellyAds.com website. Commercially the ad was responsible for expanding Cadbury’s market share by 30%.
The second example shown was the U.K’s greatest ad ever as voted by Channel 4 viewers, the Guinness ‘Surfer’. Despite being originally shown nearly 10 years ago this ad has left its mark because it still has instant awareness and very high levels spontaneous recall amongst the public.
Both ads use a number of well known hypnosis and subliminal techniques to promote their products. This is by no means unusual. An analysis of the 20 most popular ads ever reveals that all of them use some form of hypnosis or subliminal techniques to sell their message.
It seems that despite early attempts to ban it, the use of hypnosis and subliminals to increase market share are widespread in advertising.
A Fellow of the Institute of Direct Marketing (IDM), Jim Brackin is Director of Insight at EspConsultancy.co.uk the market research specialists. After a successful career in advertising and marketing Jim qualified as a Hypnotherapist, and is a Master Practitioner of Neuro-linguistics.
Article Marketing Automation by Article Marketing Robot
Processing your request, Please wait....
