Subliminal tricks in Marketing
The earliest recorded subliminal investigation was conducted by James Vicary in 1957. He suggested that an experiment in which moviegoers enjoying a movie called Picnic were repeatedly shown 0.03-second subliminal cuts for Coca-Cola and Popcorn, enlarged onsite sales by 58% and 18%. Since the revelation of his investigation the effect of subliminal messages in marketing has been hotly debated. A CIA appraisal of subliminal messages titled ‘The Operational Potential of Subliminal Perception’, suggested that ‘Certain individuals can at certain times and under certain circumstances be influenced to act abnormally without awareness of the influence’. Because of this, hypnotic messages were effectively banned in the US when the FCC ruled that the use of subliminal cuts could result in the loss of a broadcast license. In the UK and Australia hypnotic marketing was also outlawed, so it has never been possible to verify Vicary’s earliest claim one way or the other. That is until recently.
To commemorate its 50th anniversary, the Vicary test 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 earliest experiment, PICNIC into which subliminal messages had been located 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.
The effects were startling as, 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 marketing all around us, this demonstrates the powerful influence of hypnotic messages’ the demonstration told us. ‘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 illegal parent.’
Actual, current examples were then revealed of the three most common hypnotic techniques used 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 banging away on drums to a Phil Collins soundtrack. The cult advert has been seen around 10 million times on the internet claimed a chart, published by the TellyAds.com website. Commercially the ad was responsible for snowballing 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 front of mind awareness and very high levels spontaneous recall amongst its target audience.
Both ads use a number of well known and legal hypnotic 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 regular speaker at industry events, Jim Brackin is Director of Insight at EspConsultancy.co.uk the research and marketing specialists. After a successful career in advertising and marketing Jim qualified as a Hypnotherapist, and is a Master Practitioner of Neuro-linguistics.
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