The Lowdown On Subliminal Advertising

What Is It?
A subliminal message is a signal or message embedded in another object, designed to pass below the normal limits of perception. These messages are indiscernible by the conscious mind, but allegedly affect the subconscious or deeper mind. Subliminal techniques have occasionally been used in advertising and propaganda; the purpose, effectiveness and frequency of such techniques is a very debated subject.

Is It Effective?
An important question about subliminal perception is: How much of the message is perceived? That is, is the whole message sensed and fully digested, or are only its main and simpler features? There are at least two schools of thought about this. One of them argues that only the simpler features of unconscious signals could be perceived. The second school of thought argues that unconscious cognition is comprehensive and that much more is perceived than can be verbalized.

How Has It Been Used?
Here are some instances from our popular culture where subliminal imagery has been employed from catching a criminal to artistic statements in film. But the question still remains – how much is perceived from subliminal perception?

• In 1978, Wichita, Kansas TV station KAKE-TV received special permission from the police to place a subliminal message in a report on the BTK Killer in an effort to get him to turn himself in. The image, which appeared for a split second, showed a pair of glasses (an image thought to hold significance to him) and text that read Now Call The Chief. The attempt was unsuccessful, and police reported no increased volume of calls afterward. The notorious serial killer, Dennis Rader, was eventually caught in2005 and later convicted.
• Before the re-election of French president François Mitterrand in 1988,a subliminal picture of him was mixed in the title sequence of French national television daily news show, and it appeared for several consecutive days.
• The subject was also prominently featured in the 1999 film Fight Club.Pictures of the main character, Tyler Durden, flash onscreen at various points during the earlier parts of the film, before Durden is introduced. Also, Durden is shown at his job as a projectionist, splicing pornographic flash frames into a film he is showing. A picture of a penis flashes before the end credits. (We weren’t supposed to talk about Fight Club, but we did anyway).
• During the 2000 U.S. presidential campaign, a television ad campaigning for Republican candidate George W. Bush showed words (and parts thereof) scaling from the foreground to the background on a television screen. When the word BUREAUCRATS flashed on the screen, one frame showed only the last part, RATS. The FCC looked into the matter, but no penalties were ever assessed in the case.
• In the British alternative comedy show The Young Ones, a number of subliminal images were present in the original and most repeated broadcasts of the second series. Images included a gull coming into land, a tree frog jumping through the air, and the end credits of the movie Carry On Cowboy. These images were included to mock the then occurring matter of subliminal messages in television. Although they may fall foul of the FCC guidelines, these very subliminal images do appear in the U.S. box set of DVDs entitled Every Stoopid Episode.
• In a December 16, 1973 episode of Columbo entitled Double Exposure, Robert Culp’s character returns to the crime scene and is incriminated by a subliminal cut that he placed in a movie.
• A McDonald’s logo appeared for one frame during the Food Network’s Iron Chef America series on 2007-01-27, leading to claims that this was an instance of subliminal advertising. The Food Network explained that it was simply a studio glitch.
• In Formula One racing, the paint scheme of many cars would carry messages intended to look as if they were of banned tobacco products in many Grands Prix races where tobacco advertising was banned. A similar procedure was used by NASCAR driver Jeff Burton after the AT&T Mobility advertising was banned by a court order in 2007.