by bvonahsen » Sun Jun 04, 2006 2:05 pm
Long time ago I read <!--EZCODE LINK START--><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0451061489/102-5009508-0027338?v=glance&n=283155" target="top">Subliminal Seduction</a><!--EZCODE LINK END--> by Wilson Bryan Key and his following books. Makes sense, is based on psychology and it works, so of course they use it.<br><br>Subliminal content is everywhere but is most readily seen in liquer and cigarette ads. You rarely see a "droopy" cig, it's almost always emmm... "erect". If it isn't, there will be a reason why in the ad.<br><br>People have repressed fantasies and desires and by playing to those desires you can trigger a response, positive or negative, it doesn't matter, to your product. The customer is attracted to the product but doesn't know why. All they know is that they get a vague feeling of satisfaction. Sometimes of course, a cigar is really just a cigar, but really, come on, most of the time it isn't.<br><br>Subliminal content takes many forms, from back-masking in the record industry, to single frames placed in a movie. One of the most famous of the latter is the death mask image in "The Exorcist". Or take a look at the cover of <!--EZCODE LINK START--><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/customer-images/0451061489/ref=cm_ciu_pdp_images_0/102-5009508-0027338?%5Fencoding=UTF8&s=books&index=0#gallery" target="top">Subliminal Seduction</a><!--EZCODE LINK END--> <br><br>See the little guy smack dab in the middle standing in the ice cubes? Guess what he's up to. As Wilson explains in his sequel to the book, he had no idea that that particular image was even there. It was a surprize to him.<br><br>The big problem is that it can be very hard if not impossible to tell if you are correctly percieving subliminal content that has been purposely put there, or if you are doing it yourself and injecting your own issues into what you see. All the better, from the advertisers point of view. But there is no question that they do in fact use subliminals in their ads and a lot of times it isn't even an image that you have to stare at a while to see. Sometimes, again, in a lot of smoking and drinking ads, the subliminal content is in the social and body language of the actors in the ad. Different power or sexual relationships may be indicated by how the people are shown relating to one another. This is then linked to the product by the ad copy in some way. And of course, these techniques get results from the manufcturers if only a statistically significant percentage of people respond to the ad. It does' have to work with eveyone.<br><br>The way to combat this is to do some iner work and be aware as much as one can to your repressed issues. The more you can open yourslf up to yourself, I believe, the less you'll be subject to or vulnerable to subliminal content. That might be one reason why psychiatrists were demonized for a long time in film. We didn't want people getting to wise and up setting the economy now didn't we? <p></p><i></i>
