Atracción Subliminal

Dahania Pimentel

Prof. Felicia Atkinson

Composition II

13 November 2009

Subliminal Attraction

Has the consumer been manipulated by the media in order to buy or consume more products? Are people positive that their needs are being established by themselves and not by a company who is seeking to gain profits? People around the world are constantly being confronted by media regarding age, gender, race, social status, and etcetera. Marketers are constantly looking for new ways to sell their products to consumers before their competitors. For that reason, “campaigns of persuasion has become the basis of a multimillion-dollar industry” (Packard 3). Companies are always seeking to persuade people to buy products, to acquire new personalities, and, in some cases, to behave in a certain way. For instance, one of the most famous ways to persuade people is through subliminal messages. These messages are imminent, and people can find them everywhere. For that reason, it is important to understand what subliminal messages are, how they are used to influence behavior, and what and where the most common subliminal messages are used so that consumers can make an informed decision about buying, what in reality, the marketers are selling.

The first concept to understand is the word ‘subliminal’ which is defined as an adjective that “[employs] stimuli insufficiently intense to produce a discrete sensation but often being or designed to be intense enough to influence the mental processes or the behavior of the individual.” (‘Subliminal’). Based on this definition, subliminal messages are hidden messages which could be nonverbal messages, written messages, or images that people cannot read, but their mind can. Subliminal messages gained significant public attention in 1957. Since then, researchers and marketers began experimenting with them along with people in order to understand how they influence people’s behavior. According to the article “Can You Sell Subliminal Messages to Consumers?,” researchers experimented with subliminal messages in order to prove the authenticity of its influence on consumption behavior. For example, the authors show a case in which a theater in New Jersey flashed subliminal messages on its movie screen during the showing of the movie ‘Picnic.’ These messages appeared on the face of the actress Kim Novak every 32 seconds and urged the audience to “Eat popcorn” and “Drink Coca-Cola” over a course of six weeks. Nearly fifty thousand people viewed these subliminal messages which resulted in increased sales for Coke of 58% and 18% for popcorn (Block and Bergh 59). Companies’ approach is to sell more products to the consumers; this is what leads them to develop techniques such as subliminal messages within their products in order to affect consumer behavior (Packard 3). According to Vance Packard, in order to develop those techniques, markets divide human mind process of retaining messages in three different levels. The first level is the “conscious” level in which people are aware of what is happening, and they can also explain the reason for their behavior and attitude. The second level, according to Packard, is the “preconscious and subconscious” level in which people vaguely know what is happening within their behavior and attitudes, but they would not share it with other people. Finally, the third level is where people are not aware and cannot explain their behavior. The last level is the more used by marketers in order to meet their goals of profitability (Packard 25). However, subliminal perception is a subject that no one wants to believe exists, but it is almost impossible to find any kind of ad in newspapers, magazines, radio, or television that does not have a hidden purpose in it (Key 11). In the book “Subliminal Seduction” by Wilson Bryan Key, the author gives a complete research of different commercial ads and the hidden messages that they have. Key’s purpose is to make people aware of how ads that appear innocent and clean are instead full of messages that human eyes probably cannot see, but the mind is able to catch and retain them. Key also tries to define subliminal perception in simple terms as “inputs that communicate with the unconscious” (Key 18). However, hidden pictures or written messages are not the only kind of subliminal messages that exist. The nonverbal attitudes that television’s commercials show to audiences every day are also part of subliminal messages. In these kinds of ads, there are no hidden messages, such as images or written messages; instead they show attitudes performed by actors or different characters that stimulate the audience to acquire certain products or attitudes (Garretson and Burton 118).

Many authors have tried to explain how subliminal messages work. For example, Wilson Brian Key, in 1973, published a book in which he attempted to show to the public the existence of subliminal messages in ads. Key also explains in his book that “the mind unconsciously […] assimilates and structures unseen portions of the anatomy in a search of meaning” as the explanation of why subliminal messages influence behavior (Key 42). In simple words, the conscious mind has the privilege of accepting, rejecting, or modifying perceptions. For instance, if the conscious mind listens to someone say that they are beautiful, it could accept, reject, or modify it. However, if it is the subconscious mind that listens to this statement, then it just accepts it and believes that it is beautiful (Key 42-43). Consumers are suspicious about the use of subliminal messages in their daily life; they try to ignore them, and they do not believe that companies are using messages that only their unconscious mind is aware of. Many advertisers take advantage of this and try to embed subliminal messages into their advertisements in order to attract more people to their products. According to the book “The Hidden Persuaders” by Vance Packard, the author states that there eight marketing needs that are hidden to the public, but the merchandise world uses those needs for their own benefit while advertising products. The hidden needs are used to create an unconscious loyalty to certain products; therefore, people keep buying them, and the company keeps gaining profits. The first marketing need is to sell ‘emotional security,’ which means that companies strive to sell products that make the consumer feel secure and supported. The second need is to sell ‘reassurance of worth,’ which means they want to sell products that make the consumer feel that what he/she is doing is worth it and that it will benefit him/her. ‘Selling ego-gratification’ is the third hidden need by which marketers advertise their products to consumers in order to motivate them so that, by the time they buy the products, consumers will feel gratified.

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