I. IntroductionNot all the things showed in advertising or movies are able to see at first appearance.
For example: in Nolan’s Batman trilogy is possible to see products or stores of specific brands like Sacks Fifth Avenue, Nokia, Under Armour and many more. Knowing this, it is not very hard to believe that, according to University College London, an average person in United States is exposed to 2 million of advertising impacts in his life, as Science Daily cited. How can it be possible? It is possible through subliminal messages. The term is very famous but not a lot of people know about it, then it will be explained what is it and how it was and is still used in advertising and movies.
II. The Hidden MessagesA. The Concept1. Subliminal messages The subliminal perception is known as a stimulus that is unconsciously captured by the viewer and can affect his behavior.
According to Del Hawkins in his journal “The Effects of subliminal stimulation”, the subliminal perception refers to the registration of a stimulus below the threshold of perception. These types of stimulus are visuals or hearing. 2. FunctionSeveral times, the subliminal perception is used in advertising to provoke the buyer’s consumerism. 3.
Uses The most common techniques are the images camouflages or the hidden text messages in advertising announces, posters, movies, etc. also are used the hearing messages that we cannot capture but the brain register it, and the fast succession of images. Also, there are other kinds of advertising: the associative, where the buyer associates the product with a concept or image; and the product placement, where the announced products hidden in certain scenes, if it is watched carefully, can be detected by the viewer.B. Examples1. Advertising (Diapositiva Hungry? Eat Popcorn) In 957 James Vicary made an experiment, during a film projection, two short messages of 3 milliseconds with the phrases “Drink Coke” and “Hungry? Eat popcorn” were introduced between the frames; the popcorn sales increased 58% and the coke 18%.
(Diapositiva KFC) As it was said, the subliminal messages can occur with hidden images showed in a short time as in the KFC advertising. (Diapositiva Pepsi y Absolut) Or can be hidden in the packing as in Pepsi cans. Absolut parodies this kind of practices in his own advertising as in this poster. (Diapositiva Billete) Most of the subliminal messages make reference to sex and sexual organs. 2. Movies(Diapositiva Ojo de Gastón) But the use of the subliminal messages is not exclusive of advertising; also they can appear in movies or songs.
In “Beauty and the Beast” a skull appears in Gaston’s eyes when he is falling down from the castle; (Diapositiva Rey León) a very sounded case was the Lion King’s case where the word “sex” was formed in the starry night, this force Disney remove VHS of the movie and modified them. (Diapositiva Publicidad de Cigarros) Although it is not considered such as a really subliminal message, the product placement is very used in movies where brands appears in short times in scenes background.III. ConclusionThis kind of messages has been used by many companies and people influence in the others and make them buy certain things or just to make something more likeable to the viewers.
Many subliminal messages are really subliminal and we cannot see it with a naked eye but many others are just hidden messages in some place. This is how the advertising industry enters in our daily life without us noticing, and how it is helped by the science to do its job. The science serves the advertising in order to predict and influence in the buyer behavior at the shopping time. The subliminal messages can appear in many places, many more than we can imagine. They just wait to sell, and generally, they achieve their goal.
