The Power of Advertising

My mum worked in advertising for a while and never stopped saying the phrase 'the power of advertising', it always made me laugh. I have always been interested in advertising and think that I really experienced its power one Saturday morning while I was in high school.

I had had a late Friday night and mysteriously woke up early (too early for a weekend), at around 7.30am, there was an advert for Twix on TV using the slogan 'Twix: It's all in the mix'. The ad showed the way the product is made while a smooth musical groove played in the background. It's strange because I really didn't feel that hungry, but I practically jumped out of bed and walked to the local shop for the Twix that I was now desperately craving! To this day I can't really explain my actions....we had food in the house, it was a cold morning, and I was probably tired enough to fall straight back to sleep had I given myself the chance.

It made me think of subliminal messaging and advertising, here are some notable instances:

Before the re-election of French president Francois Mitterrand in 1988, a subliminal picture of him was mixed in the title sequence of French national television daily news show, and it appeared for several consecutive days

The subject was also prominently featured in the 1999 film Fight Club. Pictures of the main character, Tyler Durden, flash onscreen at various points during the earlier parts of the film, before Durden is introduced. Also, Durden is shown at his job as a projectionist, splicing pornographic flash frames into a film he is showing.A picture of a penis flashes before the end credits.

During the 2000 U.S. presidential campaign, a television ad campaigning for Republican candidate George W. Bush showed words (and parts thereof) scaling from the foreground to the background on a television screen. When the word BUREAUCRATS flashed on the screen, one frame showed only the last part, RATS. The FCC looked into the matter, but no penalties were ever assessed in the case.