While going through the required blog readings I found an small article that caught my eye. It was titled "Subliminal Messages Might Actually Work". The reason that I stopped to read this article is that we had been talking about this exact topic in one of my other marketing classes.
According to this blog post and the article linked to it there is a substantial amount of evidence that when we are exposed to subliminal messages our brain can and will register the information and store it without us even knowing. However, whether or not this information can impact our purchase dicisions is still being tested. Dr Bahador Bahrami of the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience states that he "believes that it's likely that subliminal advertising may affect our decisions -- but that is just speculation at this point." Studies are currently being done world wide to test this theory.
Although this may seem really cool (or maybe not) there are a lot of implications of sending subliminal messages to the public. Currently this strategy is illegal in many technologically advanced countries, such as England, but is still legal in the United States. By sending a stimulus that is below the level of conscious awareness many people will feel violated. We like to be in control of our lives and what we do. To think that advertisers are impacting the decisions we make as to what we buy will upset a lot of people. One heated response to this blog post states that "just plain old advertising can make people buy things against their will", which is true. When we see ads, pay attention to them and then register the information they can drastically impact the purchase decisions we make. So why the need for subliminal marketing?
Overall, I feel that this is a really new and interesting technique for marketing to use, in theory. However, I also feel like it will not go over well with the general public. As stated before, people do not like to think that they do not control their lives. Sending messages that are stored in our brain without us knowing seems like an unfair advantage for marketing companies to have. I say that while it is interesting and should be tested, if it is to be used marketing companies need to be prepared to deal with the public's reaction. For now, just stick to plain old advertising.
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2 comments:
Wow, nice article. I feel like i read about this type of thing in psychology. Its honestly kinda creepy
I agree. I have definitely heard about subliminal advertising theories in many of my classes, but never that it has actually been used. I would say that it is definitely creepy, and not fair. It's almost as though companies that use subliminal advertising are cheating the system and using sneaky techniques to get ahead of their competition!
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