The first recorded subliminal experiment was conducted by James Vicary in 1957. He claimed that an experiment in which moviegoers enjoying a movie called Picnic were repeatedly shown 0.03-second advertisements for a popular cola drink and popcorn, raised their foyer sales by 58% and 18%. Since the publication of his test the effectiveness of subliminal messages in advertising has been hotly debated. A CIA critique of subliminal messages titled ‘The Operational Potential of Subliminal Perception’, claimed that ‘Certain individuals can at certain times and under certain circumstances be influenced to change their behaviour without awareness of the influence’. Because of this, hypnotic messages were all but illegal in the US when the FCC ruled that the use of subliminal cuts could result in the loss of a broadcast license. In the UK and Australia hypnotic marketing was also banned, so it has been impossible to verify Vicary’s early claim for certain. That is until a remarkable opportunity presented itself.

To celebrate its 50th anniversary, the Vicary test was replicated at the International Branding Conference, MARKA2007 as part of the Hypnosis, Subconscious Triggers and Branding demonstration. The 1,400 delegates watched the opening credits of the movie used in the original research, PICNIC into which hypnotic messages had been planted at six second intervals. Then, the delegates were asked to choose between two fictitious brands. One brand ‘Delta’ had been prompted using the hypnotic messages and the other ‘Theta’ had not.

When choosing between the two brands, 81% of the audience chose ‘Delta’ in preference to ‘Theta’. This suggests a convincing substantiation of Vicary’s results. ‘Even though this technique was meant to have been banned, variations of the original techniques are still being used in marketing right now, this demonstrates the powerful influence of hypnotic messages’ the presentation demonstrated. ‘The subliminal cut was the mother of all hypnotic techniques and today her children walk all around you. They are everywhere, in posters, press advertising, on the radio and the T.V. They are the permissible siblings of a banned parent.’

Real life examples were then revealed of the three most common hypnotic techniques present in marketing today. Each example was chosen because of its ability to change the behaviour of the public and its ability to prompt increased purchase of the product advertised. The first was the most watched advert on youtube in 2007, the Cadbury ‘Gorilla’. This Cadbury’s Dairy Milk chocolate advert features a gorilla banging away on drums to a Phil Collins soundtrack. The clip reached cult status and has been seen around 10 million times on the internet claimed a chart, published by the TellyAds.com website. Commercially the ad was responsible for multiplying Cadbury’s market share by 30%

The second example shown was the U.K’s most loved ad ever as voted by Channel 4 viewers, the Guinness ‘Surfer’. Despite being originally shown nearly 10 years ago this ad has left its mark because it still has front of mind awareness and very high levels spontaneous recall amongst the public.

Both ads use a number of well known hypnosis and subliminal techniques to promote their products. This is by no means unusual. An analysis of the 20 most popular ads ever reveals that all of them use some form of hypnosis or subliminal techniques to sell their message.

It seems that despite early attempts to ban it, the use of hypnosis and subliminals to increase market share are widespread in advertising.

By: Jim Brackin

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