by April Wilson

Created on: January 21, 2010   Last Updated: January 24, 2010

Subliminal advertising is a myth, along with backwards masking (the idea that messages hidden in a song that you can hear when it's played backwards can somehow affect conscious decisions.) It's just not real.

There was a time when movie theaters used subliminal advertising to increase popcorn and coke sales.  An image of coke or popcorn or candy would flash for a single frame, too fast for people to consciously recognize it.  As a result, supposedly sales increased.  Later when this was tested under more controlled circumstances it was proven not to work.  There are many factors that could have increased popcorn sales in the non-controlled environment of a movie theater.  Are the people on a date? Do the management and employees "expect" better popcorn sales, and therefore behave in a manner that is friendly and encourages more sales?  Do other people in the theater see someone else with popcorn and candy and then want some? 

Unless there was a mass exodus out of the theater at the exact time the subliminal message played, there is no way to correlate sales with the message itself, especially if theater employees knew ahead of time this message was being used, and their own behavior might have been altered.  Either way, subliminal advertising is illegal.

The real principle behind subliminal advertising was to get people to want something and not think much about why they wanted it, just to do it. If people could be controlled that easily we'd have a lot more to worry about than how we're going to sell X number of widgets.  Oddly this is really the principle behind how ALL advertising works.  If someone stopped to really think about it, most of the advertisements that influence them, wouldn't.

They'd realize that the juicy plump burger with fresh ingredients, all perfectly separated out so the camera catches every item on television, is NOT how their burger is going to look when they go through the drive through.  Their burger is going to look more like someone stepped on it after wrapping it up. 

Rather than looking for "tricks" to try to sell things to consumers that they don't really want, why not create a product worth buying? Spend the time and do the work to create something people just have to have, then you'll garner the most powerful form of advertising and behavior influence of all... word-of-mouth.

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