The Power of Subliminal Messages In Advertising

In 1957 a market researcher, named James Vicary, produced findings that seem to support he's claim that people can be influenced by subliminal messages. He claimed that he was able to manipulate the buying behaviour of patrons at a movie theatre simply by flashing the messages "drink Coca-Cola" and "eat popcorn" in between the frames of the movie. These messages were flashed for such a short time that viewers were unaware of what was happening.

Once his findings were published the general public were, understandably, outraged and this lead to the practice being banned in the USA, the UK and Australia. However, Vicary later admitted that his findings were completly fabricated and that the study was a hoax. Even after Vicary's confession many scientists have attempted to replicate the experiment in the hope that they could prove once and for all that subliminal messages do work. Unfortunately these studies have mostly failed to produce any sufficient empirical evidence to support the claim.

However, lately researchers have shown that if you can take advantage of, or create, the correct conditions then subliminal messages can be highly effective and even subliminal advertising can work! . Johan Karrenmans, of the Department of Social Psychology in Radboud University, Holland, along with his colleagues devised and conducted a study that has shed some light on what is a hotly debated subject. He and his colleagues conducted experiments into the effectiveness of subliminal advertising in 2006 and their results were very surprising to many.

Through the use of subliminal messages they wanted to determine if they could make volunteers chose one brand of beverage over another brand. The drink chosen was Lipton Ice and for comparison they chose Spa Rood, a brand of mineral water. Each drink was as popular as the other in Holland being rated for taste and its ability to quence thirst and relieve a dry mouth.

In every scientific study there are at least two groups. One group are chosen to be the "genuine pigs" and test the scientist's theory (the "test" group") and the other are given nothing or a placebo (the control group). The two groups are then compared to see if the "test" group show any measurable difference due to the scientist's input.

Karremans and his group devised a study in which they requested that 61 volunteers performed a meaningless task. The task assigned was merely asking the volunteers to count how many times they saw a lower-case b appear during a consecutive string of capital Bs. It really didn't matter how many instances of the lower-case b was observed as this was just a means of occupying the conscious mind.

The B strings appeared for 300 milliseconds each. Before these strings were shown, a string of Xs always appeared. The Xs were in fact hiding a 23 millisecond subliminal message! The "test" group were given the desired subliminal message "Lipton Ice" while the "control" group were given a string of jumbled letters that made up the non-sensical word "Nipeic Tol".

After completion of their visual task, both sets of volunteers were asked to press a key indicating which drink they preferred between Lipton Ice and Spa Rood. They were then asked to rate how thirsty they were and how likely they would be to order either of these drinks if they were sitting on a terrace. They were informed that these questions were a part of a completely separate study.

The researchers found that volunteers who rated themselves as thirsty were more likely to choose Lipton Ice but only if they were in the "test" group (those that had received the Lipton Ice subliminal messages). It seemed that the subliminal message only had an effect if it was directly related to the volunteer and was relevant to him/her i.e. they were thirsty so they picked up on the subliminal message "Lipton Ice" and chose that product to quench their thirst.

There was obviously something going on. So in a second study they created a more ideal environment by splitting the 105 volunteers into two groups. They made one group thirsty by giving them a very salty piece of candy just before they had to perform their task.

80% of the thirsty volunteers, who had been exposed to the Lipton Ice subliminal message, chose Lipton Ice. While out of those who had not received the Lipton Ice subliminal message only a mere 20% chose it.

This deserves repeating!

80% who didn't receive the Lipton Ice subliminal message chose the other product while 80% of those that received the subliminal message "Lipton Ice" chose Lipton Ice! What's more, when the volunteers were asked to rate their level of thirstiness, the study showed that the thirstier they were the more likely they were to chose Lipton Ice! It seems that subliminal messages do have a profound impact on our behaviour when they are relevant to us! At the end of his paper Karremans clearly states that, "Priming only works when the prime is goal-relevant." The researchers are have plans to create a study to determine how long lasting these subliminal effects are on our behaviour.

This offers support to the view and belief that subliminal programming does indeed work. After all a subliminal message recording is simply chosen because it IS relevant to the purchaser. If it wasn't relevant and "goal-driven" you wouldn't buy it!

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