The Origin of Subliminal Messages
Advertisers: “Got’em”
During my time in college, I recall being taught about a popcorn experiment in my communications class.
Apparently, it was a pretty big part of changing the way the general public looked at media and became sort of a myth in marketing circles.
Or something like that, I don’t know. I didn’t pay much attention because it was an elective, my major was engineering, and it wasn’t like I was ever going to be involved in communicating science or some-oh wait.
The 1950s was a turbulent time for trust in the U.S. The red scare was just dying down and people were throwing around the word communist towards anyone they didn’t agree with or saw as a threat. Luckily this was the only time in history this would ever happen….
Amid all the scares and panic, even though they were dying down, it didn’t help when people found out about a particular experiment conducted in New Jersey that influenced people's behavior.
The experiment was conducted by a market researcher named James Vicary in 1956, and he was so excited to share his findings that he called a press conference in New York a few months later in 1957, (back then that was quick). The experiment involved sneaky Jimmy here at a movie theater in New Jersey, flashing two slogans on-screen during a film called “Picnic”, over the course of 6 weeks.
The slogans were “Drink Coca-Cola” and “Hungry? Eat Popcorn”, they would flash at 1/3000ths of a second every 5 seconds. James called it subliminal advertising since the viewer wouldn’t consciously be aware of the slogans, but their subconscious would pick it up. He claimed this would influence behavior in viewers and was the next leap forward in advertising.
His proof? Over the course of the 6 weeks, the sales of Coca-Cola and popcorn in that movie theater were up 57.7% and 18.1% respectively.
Pepsi executives
James and his company, Subliminal Projection Co, were expecting the news to create a lot of buzz for the business. And he was right, except it wasn’t the kind of buzz he wanted.
Immediately Congress looked into drafting legislation against subliminal advertising. Michigan Senator Charles Potter asked the Federal Communications Commission if they had enough power to ban it outright. I know I didn’t pay attention in communications class but even I know that’s bad news for James.
Within a few months, New York State passed a bill banning subliminal advertising, and the National Association of Radio and Television Broadcasters, along with 300 other TV stations, did the same.
But the damage had been done, radio and television stations were curious and they started running their own tests. Some were broadcasting quick messages to check your doors, others were telling you to make coffee, and others were telling you to write to the station. Soon people were experiencing something akin to very-very mild mass hysteria.
People began reporting they were checking doors and windows, making coffee for no reason, and writing radio stations a letter. Others were worried about what would happen to the children if breweries and cigarette companies started subliminal advertising to children. It was a wild time in advertising.
But radio and television stations weren’t the only curious ones, scientists were curious as well. Obviously, Mr. Vicary’s experiment wasn’t all that scientific, where’s the control group? What were the variables? Were there post-experiment interviews? Where’s the data man?
Scientists asked Vicary to repeat the experiment. He refused. The Advertising Research Foundation asked him for detailed information. He refused. Other more targeted experiments weren’t giving the same results. Something was up.
Scientists/Researchers looking at James Vicary
Finally, in 1962 in an article in the magazine Ad Age, James Vicary; the pioneer of subliminal advertising, the man who caused legislation to be drafted, who re-lit the match of distrust among the population, confessed he made the whole thing up.
Yea, the experiment never happened. His company was going through a tough time and he thought of this crazy way to make a quick buck, and it worked! Some sources I could find, not all, say he was able to get about 4.5 million dollars out of the lie. But even if he made half of that or a quarter of that, a million is a lot to get for making up a lie.
But what about all those individual tests carried out by the stations? Well turns out that if you run an experiment telling people to do things they do on a daily basis, they might misremember and blame your experiment for the things they would have done regardless.
And some stations weren’t running their experiments at a fast enough speed, so those with quick ears were able to pick up on it.
Eventually, James Vicary had to shut down his company and disappeared from the limelight… Although some claimed to see quick glimpses of him, too fast for the eye to catch but on a subconscious level, they knew he was there.
Since then scientists have been extremely interested if there was at least some basis in Vicary’s claim, the man did study impulse buying and eye-blink analysis. But most if not all tests have been inconclusive or statistically insignificant.
Meanwhile, advertisers haven’t slowed, a “LIFE” magazine article from 1958 that described James Vicary’s reveal of subliminal advertisements, stated the commercials at that time were 3 minutes out of a 30-minute show. The last I remember a couple of years ago they were at 8 to 9 minutes.
There are also stations that speed up reruns of shows in order to squeeze in more ads, that’s on top of product placements within shows and movies.
And as far as subliminal advertising, there’s still a type of it that’s used. Plenty of commercials, shows, movies, and billboards, have been accused of hiding messages in their content but still, that's far from what James Vicary was peddling.
