What most people don't know is that a) it was never outlawed and b) it's
currently practiced, such as in shopping malls ("do not steal, do not steal")
and so on.
________________________________
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Monday, November 05, 2007 9:11 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: [funsec] When marketeers lie
An amusing story from today's Wall Street Journal:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119422046839181941.html?mod=todays_us_marketplace
For a Time in the '50s, A Huckster Fanned Fears of Ad 'Hypnosis' November 5,
2007
At a New York press conference 50 years ago, a market researcher, James Vicary,
announced he had invented a way to make people buy things whether they wanted
them or not. It was called subliminal advertising.
He had tested the process at a New Jersey movie theater, he said, where he had
flashed the words "Eat Popcorn" or "Coca-Cola" on the screen every five seconds
as the films played. The words came and went so fast -- in three-thousandths of
a second -- that the audience didn't know they'd seen them. Yet sales of
popcorn and Coke increased significantly.
"Subliminal Messages -- Friend or Foe?" a newspaper headline asked in early
1959, and the public took sides. Critics called subliminal advertising
"merchandising hypnosis" and "remote control of national thought." Rep. William
A. Dawson (R., Utah) called it "S.P." or "sneak pitch." "Contemplate, if you
will," Mr. Dawson said, "the effect of an invisible but effective appeal to
'drink more beer' being poured into the subconscious of teenage viewers."
All three television networks vowed they wouldn't permit subliminal advertising
in their broadcasts. Several state legislatures considered bills outlawing it.
In 1958, an independent Los Angeles TV station announced it would begin
transmitting subliminal ads, starting with public-service messages, such as
"Drive Safely" or "Join the Army." The station was deluged with letters, phone
calls and petitions from people who were afraid they would be persuaded to do
or buy things against their will. The station canceled its test.
Brainwashing was a very real fear in the late 1950s. A few dozen American
prisoners of the Korean War, indoctrinated by their Chinese jailers, had
publicly defected to communism. Meanwhile, people were spending more time
staring at screens, exposed to new kinds of ads based on motivational research.
Vance Packard's best-selling exposé, "The Hidden Persuaders," published in
1957, had warned people of the "mass psychoanalysis" that was turning them into
"Pavlov's conditioned dog."
A newspaper columnist, George Dixon, wrote, only partly in jest, "We might be
made to unconsciously absorb the suggestion that it is always Christmas and
normal to be flat broke." It didn't take long before rationality reasserted
control of the national brain. People began trying to replicate Mr. Vicary's
experiment.
The Canadian Broadcasting Corp. flashed the message "Telephone now" 352 times
on a 30-minute program. Of the more than 500 viewers who responded to a
follow-up survey, 51% said they felt compelled to "do something" after watching
the show. Many said they felt like having something to eat or drink. Only one
said she felt like making a phone call.
In another test in San Francisco, 150 viewers, most of them television and
radio broadcasters, watched a 25-minute film with an advertising message
flashed every five seconds. The viewers then got a ballot with nine product
names from which to identify the advertiser. Only 14 people chose the right
name, a soft drink. More than twice as many chose a brand of chewing gum.
The Federal Communications Commission ordered Mr. Vicary to demonstrate his
device in Washington before a panel of government officials. The message "Eat
Popcorn" was transmitted during an episode of "The Grey Ghost." Sen. Charles E.
Potter (R., Mich.) was heard saying to a colleague, "I think I want a hot dog."
The advertising industry's trade publication, Printer's Ink, observed, "Having
gone to see something that is not supposed to be seen, and having not seen it,
as forecast, the FCC and Congress seemed satisfied."
Subliminal ads, supporters assured people, were strictly "reminder" ads. "They
might move you to do something you like doing, but they'll never make a
Democrat out of a solid Republican, and they'll never make a Scotch drinker out
of a teetotaler," one advocate told Gay Talese of the New York Times.
In 1962, Mr. Vicary, in an interview, admitted that he had fabricated the
results of the popcorn test to drum up business for his market-research firm.
Subliminal ads were tossed into the invention junkyard.
"All I accomplished," he said, "was to put a new word into common usage."
Write to Cynthia Crossen at [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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