With the growing technology advertising, selling techniques have taken a varied road-map to market their brands. In today’s world, where there are many options, it’s difficult to evaluate a product or service based on its advantages, features, and services alone. So brands come with many advertising techniques to influence their audience and spread awareness about their product & service; thus, advertising plays a major role in influencing the audience.
Subliminal branding is one of the strategies many brands use to engage with their audience and influence them by creating a subliminal perception of their brand.
Subliminal messages have been around us in our life in day-to-day activities whether consciously or subconsciously.
From where did this all start? Let us dive into the history.
Subliminal advertising has been around since the 1950s, in 1957 a market researcher, James Vicary in the cinema repeatedly flashed the slogans ‘ drink Coca-Cola& eat popcorn’ throughout a movie. To which he claims resulted in sales of popcorn rising to 18% and sales of coke by 57%. This rise in sales by flashing the slogans he termed subliminal advertising.
But when the research was done, the manager of the cinema told that the experiment had no impact on the sales of popcorn and coca-cola.
With all the arguments Vicary confessed that he hadn’t done enough research, and he regretted the whole assumption which he made.
This incident resulted in fear and outrage among the people. The audience started panicking as such advertising is controlling their brain. Since then, subliminal advertising is banned in the UK.
Subliminal Psychology
Subliminal messages are also referred to as hidden messages, i.e., ‘below the threshold’. It’s the lowest level of our sensation components that we can notice, whether it’s visual, audio or touch.
The messages that our conscious brain cannot grasp right away unless you stare at it for a second and pay attention to the message
For example, the massive chaos concerning the Myntra logo, Myntra changed its logo after an activist filed a complaint against the brand that the logo depicts women’s private part.
Myntra was simply a logo for the audience; however, after the massive concern on the Myntra logo, people started seeing it in a very completely different approach like two sides of the coin — a few accepted it was right and a few denied it.
Another Example for Subliminal Psychology, The Amazon application logo, changed its logo because some observers said that blue duct tape resembles The Nazi Dictator.
The same way subliminal perception works, unless and until somebody repeatedly flashes the message, it grasps the eye of our subconscious mind. Subliminal messages are extremely elusive it doesn’t catch the attention right away.
Subliminal marketing cannot control the audience, it can just influence the audience for a few seconds, a minute, or maybe an hour.
There is still no strong evidence of whether subliminal advertising influences consumer buying behavior.
The study reveals that subliminal marketing can only influence your behavior when you’re already aware and loyal to the brand.
Some of the famous examples of subliminal marketing
The question arises: Does subliminal marketing influence a customer’s behavior?
Subliminal marketing does influence our behavior, but they are not as strong to control our minds completely.
Subliminal messages can divert our attention for a short time, but if the customer is loyal to the brand, then subliminal marketing doesn’t impact much on the behavior of the customer.
Subliminal Marketing gives a little push to our subconscious side but it does not hold enough attention to shift our view. There is no clear studies or evidence proves that subliminal marketing influence consumer decisions.
