Should You Use Subliminal Advertising In Your Web Videos…And How Would You Do It?

The story is a bit of an urban legand.  Depending upon the version you hear, it goes something like this; a movie theater owner in the 1950’s was looking for a way to increase revenue.  So he had the projectionist splice clips of the words “Eat Popcorn” and “Drink Coke” into the movies that the theater was showing.

Immediately, sales of popcorn and Coke skyrocketed.  The only problem is, there is no proof that this entire story ever actually happened.

Yet, subliminal advertising is something used…all the time these days…by both major and small-time businesses.  The basic theory is that our conscious minds can only process so much information (this is the stuff we actually see).  However, our subconcious takes in all the information presented to us (including the stuff that happens so fast we never conciously see it).

And this is the theory where subliminal advertising comes into play.  The idea is if you flash a message so quickly to a consumer that they can’t see it…the message still gets embeded in their brain.  Or optionally, you can hide a message inside an image.

Kind of like Coke did here with the image of a sexy woman laying down:

But come on, does this stuff really work?  The truth is, no one really knows…there is no definitive proof one way or another.

But the businesses, both large and small, who routinely use subliminal advertising swear by it.

Take for example Guthy-Renker.  This is the big informational company that puts out many of the informericals you see on TV.  They do the products like Proactiv Solution, Sheer Cover, Malibu Pilates, Scalp Med and more.

And they openly admit they weave subliminal advertising into their informericals.  In fact, Greg Renker says “To this day we embed a command in our infomercials that say “You will buy now”.  We have tested subliminal and no subliminal and it definitely works.  There is no ERA guideline that says we can’t do it”.

So how would you go about embedding subliminal message like this in your web videos?  Well, it would be a tedious process.

Remember, the theory is that your “command” appears so fast in your video that no one conciously see’s it.  In the case of web video, which is typically 30 frames-per-second, you’d want just one of those 30 frames to display your command.

In other words, during every second of video (30 frames), one of those frames has your command.  So in a 2 minute video, your command would flash 120 times (that’s a lot of editing):

Now I’m not playing the “moral police” here.  And I’m not saying whether you should or should not use subliminal messages like these in your web videos.  That’s entirely up to you.

But if anyone wants to try this…and report back on the head-to-head results they receive…I think many blog readers here would be interested in the results.