Subliminal Imagery

Early experiments into the power of subliminal imagery have themselves burned a mark on the retina of the public consciousness, particularly in America where commercialism is at it's height. The idea of subliminal imagery was made public in 1957 when a market researcher by the name of James Vicary invited a cinema full of journalists to watch a short film about fish. The experiment has since entered popular folklore but this is no urban myth. During the short film the journalists gorged themselves on popcorn and soft drinks as the film had secretly instructed them to do. The messages ‘drink coke' and ‘eat popcorn' had appeared on the screen consecutively for periods lasting only 1/300th of a second each. In a previous experiment, conducted on the cinema goers of Fort Lee, New Jersey over a period of six weeks, sales of Coca-Cola rose by 18.1% and those of popcorn by 57.5%

September 1957, the headline on page 44 of Printer's Ink , an American advertising journal, reads: INVISIBLE ADS TESTED: New Process for TV and Movie Commercials Stepped up Product Sales in First Test. The author was James McDonald Vicary, a self-styled motivational research consultant, and this article would be the start of a new idea that would capture the imaginations of people worldwide: subliminal advertising.

The article gave details of a press conference that had taken place eight days previously. Fifty reporters from various newspapers and magazines were invited to a New York cinema to witness something amazing. The journalists settled in their seats and the screen before them flickered into life. A short film was played and the lights were turned up, the audience were then asked if they had spotted anything unusual. No-one had. What was going on?

Vicary revealed his secret, while the film was playing he'd used a modified tachistoscope to project images onto the screen. These images were flashed on screen so fleetingly, remaining for less than a 1000th of a second, that the human eye could not perceive them. According to Vicary, although the human eye missed these images the brain did not. The journalists sitting in the audience had received a hidden message without even noticing it. If anyone present was unsure of the practical application of such a device, Vicary had a press release ready to spell it out.

The press release gave details of a sixteen-week experiment recently conducted in a New Jersey movie house. Over that period just under 50,000 cinema-goers were exposed to the messages 'Eat popcorn' and 'Drink Coke' whilst they watched a film. The results were impressive – Coke sales up 18.1% and popcorn sales up by 57.7%. Vicary claimed that his technique put the ideas directly into a subject's brain without him or her being consciously aware of it. So the implanted ideas would be experienced as spontaneous thought as opposed to considering a sales pitch. In a normal