I grew up in the 70's when subliminal advertising was all the rage. I used to love finding all the skulls in the ice of the whiskey ads. There was a big hullaballoo about it, resulting in the practice being banned, but I could still find those skulls!That was a botched job, then. The point is to make the message as visible as possible, without actually being the centrepiece. People tend to ignore the background, and focus on the front and centre. Not many people can remember the background to Mona Lisa. That doesn't mean it's hidden, or that people don't see it. That just means it's overlooked. Hiding stuff doesn't make it "subliminal", it makes it invisible. "Hidden in plain sight" is the way to go.
Subliminal advertising was all the rage; that means that everyone was doing it, including people who didn't have a clue about it.
Mainly people who didn't have a clue about it, in fact. The people who don't really know anything but they follow the trends, just because "everyone is doing it".
Another big stink involved "backwards masking", the practice of embedding messages in music. In fact a whole industry evolved out of that one, putting subliminal self-help messages onto cassettes to get you to stop smoking, or be more confident, or astrally travel.. etc...
Hypnopaedia (learning in your sleep or under hypnosis) works, but those tapes don't. Yet another example of people jumping onto the bandwagon with everyone else. Tell people that in controlled laboratory conditions, under expert supervision, and applied right, those tapes have an infinitesimal effect on people, and pretty soon every music studio is producing them by the truckload, ranging from "stop smoking in your sleep" to "bigger breasts through hypnotic suggestion". Of course those wouldn't work.
QUOTE(mthrnite @ Mar 21 2007, 07:32 PM)