Subliminal Advertising

How I think about subliminal advertising

Subliminal advertising is a technique, which consists of a feature in an advert that creates a desired response without the audience being consciously aware. The most controversial form of subliminal advertising is where the sub text relates to sex; the idea being to create arousal from the audience and thus sell their product/idea. The argument is not only is it not necessary, but that it does not work, regarding sexual content and arousing responses. I believe it works in some cases where it is more obvious (usually, there are comical connotations but the audience still associates it with a sexual response and, depending on the product, does make it popular) rather than hidden.

An example of subliminal advertising being effective is this Burger King poster. It has obvious connotations of oral sex such as the woman with her mouth wide open and the long, thin burger coming towards her. This is the main feature and because of its obvious connotation, it catches people’s eye straight away. This draws them towards the title: “It’ll blow your mind away”, with “it’ll blow” in the biggest font. Although it’s not particularly discreet, people see the funny side of it and, therefore, notice it and remember it, which makes for effective advertising. In addition, the burger on the bottom of the poster is called a seven incher referring to a colloquial expression referring to the size of one’s manhood. Next to that is eventually the description of the product and the price.

Lastly, next to the burger king logo is the slogan, “It just tastes better”, and it possibly infers that their burgers are better than oral sex, also referring to colloquial, sexual terms with the word, “taste”.





This is a close up shot of a cocoa-cola can from an advert. The ice on the rim of the can supposedly forms the sexy outline of a woman lying on her side. Personally, it took me, with the added help of the drawn outline, some minutes to see the woman. It would therefore be harder to spot were it zoomed out into the original focus in the advert. This could be a coincidence that someone with a one-track mind has simply noticed, or it could have been edited in. If that’s the case, I think it‘s quite useless. I still couldn’t tell even having been told it was there. This is what I mean by unnecessary and a waste of time. True, it has been noticed but only on further, close-up inspection which most people wouldn’t think to do in the first place.

            Overall, I believe subliminal advertising is very effective as it catches the audience’s eye, along with appropriate additional layouts and colour schemes to make a successful advert. However, adverts aren’t looked at for too long. Television adverts are only 30 seconds long and posters to be noticed by people walking by on their way to somewhere; they have to be eye catching and if they’re not instantly appealing, people will ignore it. In my opinion, subliminal advertising, though it doesn’t need to be in your face or spelled out, must at least have obvious connotations that’s not too difficult to understand so it will be noticed and hold one’s attention long enough to read further into the product, as this is what advertisement is for. In addition, the theory of causing certain responses unconsciously within an audience may be true, but I don’t think it would cause arousal