Subliminal Messages : Subliminal Stimuli

As marketers, it is important for us to make ourselves familiar with these subliminal messages and use them to our advantage. Our job is to market, promote, and brand products

Subliminal messages are messages that are perceived in the unconscious mind that most of the time we are not aware of. These messages are mainly designed to influence that way we think and feel. They are used to get people to buy products from their company. Subliminal messages can be perceived auditory or visually. Subliminal messages should not be legal and should be banned from being used in advertisement for it can lead to negative results. There should be another way to advertise that. Doesn’t involve manipulating our minds into buying the products.

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Subliminal messages are words, images, or sounds that may arise in television, radio commercials, TV shows, movies, print ads, or recorded music. Mostly, when subliminal messages are seen or heard, they are not acknowledged for what they are. In fact, they may be ignored by the conscious brain and be beyond the level of conscious perception (“What are Subliminal Messages?”).

Subliminal messages are prearranged thoughts or ideas placed into the subconscious mind. Subliminal messages involve reacting to stimuli that are above your physiological threshold but below your perceptual thresholds. So basically your brain processes the messages without you knowing. The two main types of subliminal messaging are auditory and visual. In these two categories there are also subcategories. According to Anthony Pratkanis and Anthony Greenwald, who are Psychology professors, have defined these four different subcategories as:

What are subliminal messages? How are they perceived? According to the dictionary, the definition of subliminal is existing or operating below the threshold of consciousness (Subliminal). This means messages are sent, but most of the audience cannot see the messages unless it is made visible. Shrum says “We expected that participants who watched the movie would form a detailed mental representation of it that....was coded both visually and acoustically.” Messages are sent by flashing an illustration on a screen. This is usually perceived by using a tachistoscope or something similar to

First off, subliminal messages in advertisements can guide your decision and in fact, influence our purchasing behavior. This is because researchers have shown that if the conditions are right, subliminal advertising to promote

     When we think about subliminal perception we usually think of a big publicity stunt for a company. What many people don’t know is that subliminal perception can really be effective. Any person might say, “Naw, I can’t fall for that I’m not stupid enough to fall into their trap.” For most other cases subliminal perception will attack a person in their sub-conscious state of mind. In one form or anther, subliminal perception takes many forms. It could be presented in an audio, visual, and in the most likely places we don’t tend to find subliminal perception.

Muscarella, Brintazzoli, Gordts, Soetens, and Van Den Bussche (2013), conducted a study that focused on both, subliminal and supraliminal advertisements incorporating familiar brand logos. They intended to measure behavioral effects after a short, medium, and long intervals. However, they did mention that there is controversy with subliminal advertising, and that it is highly unlikely to influence consumers. For the first primed experiment, consisting of twenty four psychology students, were to perform a lexical decision task on target letter strings. There was logo primes within these letter strings. There was two separate groups for this experiment. The first group was received the conscious condition where the primes were presented to them

This report conducts an analytical study on the possibilities of mind wandering and how these activities are triggered, analysing what is happening in our brain, and how aware the human consciousness is while operating at this time (Barron et al; 2011).

Dave Ramsey, America’s most trusted financial adviser and a radio show host, once said, “We buy things we don't need with money we don't have to impress people we don't like.” (Ramsey). Ramsey’s quote reflects the state of consumerism that our society is going through. Most of us can easily relate to this quote, let’s be honest most of us have been there done that and then later question our genuine need for whatever we have bought. Regardless, if we feel guilty or not we ought to ask ourselves why and what made this purchase seems so important and necessary at the time. Although this might not come as a surprise to most of us, the answer would be the advertisement industry. In 2016, The United States has spent more than 198 billion U.S dollars on advertising, making America the leader in advertisement in the world (Statista). These ads are designed to force consumers to keep buying things that are unnecessary by sending subliminal messages and applying psychology to trick the consumer into a spending spree. In his short story, “Subliminal Man”, J.G. Ballard uses science fiction approach to illustrate to his readers the preposterous techniques that the advertising industry has been using to boost consumerism. Ballard believes that the consumer’s brain has been tricked into buying against their well, by using technology and applying subliminal technics. Ballard short story questions the effect of consumerism on our moral values, lifestyle, and behavior. Ballard claims that

Advertisers and marketing companies are mostly interested in subliminal manipulation because by targeting consumers’ subconscious mind, they can control their involuntary actions, emotions and beliefs. The subconscious part of our mind is able to process around 20,000 pieces of information per second, where as our conscious part can only cope with about forty. This function explains why any subliminal message that our subconscious receives, can be received and responded to by consumers without them ever being aware of it. This form of mind control can be very powerful if used correctly, it could influence consumers to want and buy a product without their control (Winder).

The viewer sits on the couch, nestled inside a cozy, warm blanket with a large bowl of buttery and salty popcorn on his lap. His heart starts racing as the movie reaches its climax. Just as his lungs stop breathing and his eyes grow wide with fascination, the channel changes to an old advertisement that he’s seen a thousand times. Ads like that one appeal to the three main techniques that have subliminal messages to viewers. These different techniques have proven to be effective with television watchers. Advertisers use these three techniques to target a certain audience.

In 1957, it was an essential year for subliminal advertising, when Vance Packard published ‘The Hidden Persuaders’. He was the first to talk about the persuasive use of subliminal methods, and the historical Vicary’s experiment. Further research has been increased ever since, aiming to find the answer whether subliminal messages are implemented in advertisements, and do they truly work. (Bermeitinger et al., 2009)

This was greatly adapted in the 1950’s and has moved onwards, becoming more common in the present. Subliminal advertising largely started in movie theaters, where in cinemas they would strew messages saying “drink Coca-Cola (Sheehan, K. B. 2013).” The “drink Coca-Cola” was a phrase that would appear on the screen during the start of the movies and during the intermission and it would subconsciously impulse the viewer to buy Coca-Cola from the food court. Coming into the future this method is used in videogames where while playing you are met with company logos upon starting the game and thereafter shown products from other companies that are placed within the game. Some of the oldest advertisements that appear are from canned beverage companies and now newcomers such as car companies are coming into play, all the while polluting our screens with more subliminal advertising. The introduction of subliminal advertisements into video games has become the next step for many companies taking advantage of a person getting engulfed in the game screen in front of them. In relative concept, companies are taking advantage of the real estate that is your television or your computer and even your mobile phone to get you to buy their products.