What You See is Not Always What You Get

Imagine two seventeen year-old Catholic high school girls writing about subliminal advertising in the early 1980’s and discussing images that included s-e-x.  Well those “rebels” were me and my friend Raquel.  We wrote our “team” term paper on subliminal advertising for a creative writing class.  Newell and Shanks (2014) describe a subliminal message as one that is received subconsciously but stimulates a response in the brain.  Our research, which did not include internet by the way, led us to a book written in 1974 by Wilson Key titled, Subliminal Seduction. The book was slanted toward the heightened concern that we were being brainwashed by the unscrupulous advertisers that were out to make a buck.  In fact, as I recall, our paper was filled with moral arguments on how this form of advertising was corrupting our society.  We were in Catholic school after all.

Since then there has been much debate on the effectiveness of subliminal advertising.  According to Mlodinow (2012), the concept has had enduring existence-be it positive or negative-within our culture.  Included in the definition of subliminal advertising is product placement within movies, television programs, sports events and political rallies (Newell & Shanks, 2014).   Recently, a group of students in Chile set out to study whether product placement was an effective method to promote brand awareness and recognition (Valenzuela-Fernandez, Martinez-Troncoso & Yanez, 2015).

The group used college students for the research and the goal of the study was to ascertain whether the level brand awareness was affected by how it was displayed in the movie.  The students were separated into 3 groups to watch edited versions of movies where the brand was either displayed as part of the background, used by the main character or the brand was actually connected to the storyline.  According to the results of the research, if the brand was used as part of the storyline it received the highest level of recall and more importantly a higher participant response with the intent to purchase the product.   When the product was displayed with no tie to the plot or usage by the actor it received the lowest results in both categories (Valenzuela-Fernandez, et. al, 2015).  What does all this mean?  Maybe a study of whether brand awareness is heightened when used by actors while performing a sex scene is warranted.  Whew, I said s-e-x again.

References

Key, W. B., 1925. (1974). Subliminal seduction: Ad media’s manipulation of a not so innocent america. New York: New American Library.

Mlodinow, L. (2012, April, 22). Reality or fraud? Truth behind subliminal ads. New York Post. Retrieved from: http://nypost.com/2012/04/22/reality-or-fraud-truth-behind-subliminal-ads/

Newell, B. R., & Shanks, D. R. (2014). Unconscious influences on decision making: A critical review. The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 37(1), 1-19. doi:10.1017/S0140525X12003214

Valenzuela-Fernández, L., Martínez-Troncoso, C., & Yáñez-Wieland, F. (2015). Influence of placement on explicit and implicit memory of college students. Comunicar, 22(44), 169-176. doi:10.3916/C44-2015-18