subliminal advertising

I came across this Derren Brown video clip on You Tube called Subliminal Advertising.

His voiceover says:

…Those who work in advertising are masters of persuasion. They subtly weave their images and slogans into our daily lives knowing that we will register so much unconsciously. Then we walk into a supermarket and feel a sense of familiarity with a product we think we never heard of. Millions of pounds a year are spent on it. It’s brilliantly calculated and we all fall for it.

If only it were that easy to influence people. One problem is that there is just way too much advertising competing for people’s attention. It’s hard for a brand to stand out in the mind of a potential customer when she sees an estimated one million marketing messages a year.

However, I suspect people who saw this video clip view ad agencies much like this: guys who wear black tee shirts; have shaved heads who sit in a secret room where they devise a master plan to plant subliminal messages in unsuspecting minds, in much the same way Derren Brown did to them.

But it’s hard enough to get it right for the conscious mind, why target the unconscious mind?

Unless I missed something in my advertising schooling, I don’t recall subliminal marketing 101 or how to write for the unconscious mind. (maybe this could be a new class ;)

Is there really time to create well-orchestrated subliminal advertising campaigns?

Here’s the reality of advertising: politics, egos, budgets and the fickle client. This blog called “Why Advertising Sucks” illustrates this point perfectly. Here are two snippets from recent rants:

You will not be told of a new business presentation until at most 48 hours until the date of presentation. Chances are this notification will be on a Friday, so that you may spend the weekend “brainstorming.”

It’s as if we creative monkeys can only execute brilliance within the target specific parameters offered by the client. What this really seems to mean though is that quite often we’ve seen what the competition is doing and the people the competition is speaking to and think they’re on the right path so why not make a spin-off of what they’re doing…
Seriously, is it that hard to come up with a rationale that isn’t irrational and isn’t a carbon copy of the instructions given to the other companies’ creative team?

The reality is not as sexy or as sinister as Derren made it out be. What do you think?

Comments

[John Holdway]

Hi Sam
Thats pretty interesting. I wonder if he is revealing all of his secrets. Of course his real goal isn't manipulating the "ad men" but us the viewer. He is making himself interesting.

[Darren]

Here's an example;take the world famous Virgin logo.If you turn it slighty to the left so that where the underline and tail of the g form an X,you'll also notice the V forms a slightly hidden S and the i,r and part of the g form a broken capital E,spelling the word SEX.
So you have Sex/Virgin in one word.Very clever Mr.Branson.

[david koranda]

i think it is funny. i think they did a good job of planing messages on the road the way a good media planner or connection planner might.
but we usually need to reach more than 2 peole at a time so it becomes a little more difficult to orchestrate.
robert heath has done a great job of researching how the implicit and explicit memory work in regard to messaging. television works at all due to the implicit memory. but or to call it subliminal is ridiculous, it is not hidden or sneaky.
dk