Subliminal advertising has been a controversial topic since the 1950's, when the first experimental tests in subliminal persuasion were conducted. Larson defines subliminal persuasion as involving "words or pictures, flashed on a movie or television screen so rapidly, played on an audio channel so softly, or disguised in a magazine ad so skillfully that viewers or listeners do not consciously recognize them" (Larson, 1992, p. 42). Although these subliminal messages are not consciously recognized, it is believed that they are "absorbed subconsciously by the receivers" (p.42). In this way, the subliminal messages are presumed to influence the unconscious impulses of consumers. The topic of subliminal persuasion is controversial because some people do not believe it is really possible to influence buying behavior on an unconscious level. In addition, the topic is controversial to those who believe in it because it raises a number of ethical questions regarding fair practices in advertising.
In the 1950's, a marketing expert named James Vicary conducted the first experiments to see if people could be influenced by subliminal messages in films. vicary's subliminal messages were less than a second long, and they were inserted within films that the research subjects watched. One of the messages urged the viewers to buy Coca-Cola. Another message urged them to buy popcorn. According to Vicary's study, when the viewers took an intermission, "sales of Coca-Cola went up by 18 per cent, those for popcorn by nearly 58 per cent" (Clark, 1989, p. 119). Later efforts to reproduce Vicary's findings failed to show the same results. In fact, a few years after his studies became public, Vicary admitted that he had fabricated his test results "because his business was failing and he had hoped to revive it" (p. 119).
Despite Vicary's hoax, people continued to be interested in the subject of subliminal advertising during the late 1950's. In...