Subliminal Messages in Advertising
How Advertising Messages Control the Minds of Consumers
By Michael McGrathSubliminal messages are suggestions that are offered below the level of conscious awareness.
They are messages that take the form of either visual images or spoken words. Such suggestions are hidden in other forms of communication such as still pictures, movies, music or other sound files.
These suggestions are designed to bypass ordinary awareness of perception and elicit a response from the subconscious.
Subliminal messages can be visual or auditory in nature and are designed to stimulate a response from the subconscious mind so that it affects the thinking processes and decisions that we make consciously. It is thought that they can have either a negative or positive influence on the decisions of the person in contact with them and are believed to heavily influence thoughts, beliefs, feelings and most importantly actions!
They came to the attention of the general public in the middle of the last century. Back in 1957 a researcher named James Vicary conducted a highly controversial experiment in a local movie theater. The words popcorn and coca cola were flashed during a movie for just a fraction of a second each. Vicary claimed that this sequence of subliminal messages resulted in a large increase of sales for both products. Vicary's experiment created hot debate amongst scientific experts.
The resulting press attention led to the banning of subliminal messages by several countries, including the USA and UK. However, Vicary later admitted that he falsified the data and results from the experiment. This brought the effectiveness of them into question something that has been aggravated because the Vicary experiment has never been duplicated successfully by anyone else. In fact, many people believe Vicary did not even carry out the experiment at all!
This has led many scientists to conclude that they have no effect on our decisions at all and in fact do not even reach any level of consciousness so are not perceived at any level.
In recent years, however, there have been a few high profile studies carried out by experienced researchers that have found subliminal messages to be much more effective than we have been led to believe. For instance a highly respected scientific researcher, named Bahador Bahrami, at Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience University College London discovered these kind of suggestions do grab the attention of the brain!
In fact there is a growing number of studies, and mounting evidence, to suggest that they do affect us at a deep level of mind.
In 1958 a book by Wilson Bryan Key called Subliminal Seduction made claims that subliminal techniques were widely used in advertising. If you take a look at YouTube you will clearly see many examples of subliminal messages still being widely used in advertising today!
Subliminal messages, when used in marketing and advertising, can be seen (when pointed out) to take the form of images. However, in personal development and self improvement programs these messages are usually auditory in nature. The suggestions are recorded at an audible (you can hear it) volume but become imperceptible when another track, such as music or ocean waves, is added to the recording. This is known as masking.
In some cases they are added to the recording so that one message enters one ear and another message enters the other ear. This is known as stereo confusion and is also a very popular technique in many hypnosis recordings (although not subliminal in nature).
On occasions they are also presented backwards which is known as back-masking. However this technique is controversial and even many devout advocates of subliminal technology doubt its effectiveness. Though there are those that believe back-masking is the most effective form of subliminal messages because it completely removes any input from the conscious mind. While the conscious mind is listening to the music or sounds on the track the subconscious is free to decode the backward suggestions.
I have personally found them to be very effective and although early experimentation indicates that they are not effective the latest studies, using sophisticated equipment, show otherwise.
However, as with everything we are told in life, there is only really one way to get a clear view of whether subliminal messages are effective and that is through experience! The only way you will know for sure is if you try them.
If you would like to learn more about subliminal programming and read free reviews of the best recordings and custom ones available go to Subliminal Messages. If you are interested in reading about the effectiveness of a very powerful subliminal messages program which allows you to create your own read the review at Subliminal.
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