You are feeling sleepy....

I have never been able to see nudes in ice cubes. I've tried but have never had the pleasure. Subliminal advertising is curious topic. Most of the people who believe this insidious technique is being practiced on them are the same people who simply don't like advertising. While I agree there is much to dislike, the thought that advertisers can fool you into buying something without knowing where your motivation comes from seems to be an oddly paranoid theory. Unfortunately for advertisers most overt techniques don't work so projecting a logo on the screen for a micro second is hardly likely to have any considerable effect. In fact most ads appear below the threshold of normal awareness - they simply have no impact, often because they are not relevant.

Relevance is, I believe, the most important goal for advertising in the 21st Century. Flashing logos on the screen is an irrelevance and serves no meaningful function. If you can't engage with the brand what is the point of the communication.

My guess is that the idea for including the 'subliminal' message was probably that of a 22 year old who reveres the notion as a form of post-modern irony, the advertising equivalent of reviving big collared, polyester shirts and Starsky cardigans. Amusing but pointless.

The presenter of the MediaWatch show is priceless though. I thought she was a parody character - but apparently not. Very worthy.

Thanks to Fran's Random Thoughts for the link.

Comments

Addict-o-matic

A cool resource for you to try. Aggregates search topics from a number of sources. Thanks to Brand DNA (again) for the heads-up.

Johnny Bunko competiton

The Great Johnny Bunko Challenge from DHP on Vimeo . There's a young chap in Indiana, one Alec Quig , who has written to me about creating a career based on a polymathic degree, from which he has recently graduated. He's an interesting young man and his concerns about going forward in life are the anxieties we all face at crossroads in our lives when we are forced to make choices. Dan Pink's latest book The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You'll Ever Need might help: "From a New York Times, BusinessWeek, and Washington Post bestselling author comes a first-of-its- kind career guide for a new generation of job seekers.There's never been a career guide like it.the fully illustrated story (ingeniously told in Manga form) of a young Everyman just out of college who lands his first job. Johnny Bunko is new to parachute company Boggs Corp., and he stumbles through his early days as a working stiff until a crisis prompts him to find a new job. St

Sexist Advertising and stereotypes

Advertising lives in the short-form world. Because mass media is so expensive the 30 second commercial is conventional and because there is so much clutter simplified signals are essential to 'cut through'. One form of communication short-hand used as a default is the stereotype - "A stereotype can be a conventional and oversimplified conception, opinion, or image, based on the assumption that there are attributes that members of the "other group" have in common. Stereotypes are sometimes formed by a previous illusory correlation, a false association between two variables that are loosely correlated if correlated at all. Though generally viewed as negative perceptions, stereotypes may be either positive or negative in tone." In the 1950's and 60's when men dominated advertising stereotypical impressions of women as inferior or subservient were not only commonplace but usual. It was normal to show women as housekeepers, largely because most wer

ThoughtSpurs

Search This Blog