Are there hidden messages in advertising? Did the movie patrons really buy more popcorn when the cinema operator slipped a secret message into every 16th frame?

Consumers are paranoid about being manipulated and no evidence exists to suggest that subliminal advertising is effective in persuading consumers to buy products.

Let’s stick with the facts:

Subliminal advertising does not happen.

No controlled experiment has ever found any evidence of planned subliminal advertising and the inefficacy of it is thoroughly proven in hundreds of studies, the myth persists.

Jim Goodnight said aptly "that advertising is the art of the blatant message, not the hidden one."

As much as people are paranoid about the alchemy that is subliminal advertising, it does not exist:

- there ain’t a camel in the cloud,

- and there ain’t naked boobs in the ice.

Sheri Broyles published a great meta-analysis on the topic in the Journal of Consumer Affairs, and re-printed here.

So, if there is no secret to it, how does it really work? What makes some ads more effective than others? Is traditional advertising dying in the face of the social media onslaught? Are you wasting your money with advertising?

Those are big questions that deserve more space than I have here, so the follow up to this post is over here.

Have fun,

Dennis