Subliminal Messaging

By Roger Colins

Spot anything other than Ned? Subliminal messaging seeds thoughts and ideas in the back of our heads without our conscious awareness.  Negatives are a prime example of this effect. The brain doesn't hear negatives. If told not to think of a green house, you'll immediately think of one. Most commonly, the trick is used in advertising, marketing and sales. Subliminal messaging is essentially a form of hypnosis as the victim's will is being toyed with. Here's a short example. __________________________________________________________ 'If it were the right price, you'd buy it, wouldn't you?' tag question. No one can answer no, so 'Yes' 'You have the paint range selected personally by you.' customer nods in understanding, not agreement. 'After we send it to the factory you can have it in about three weeks.' nods again 'So, when can we make the appointment?' Close. The salesman has already made you say yes, then, makes you think of something unrelated. This is in order to distract for a moment while you try to connect his first line to the next. You know you said yes but to what, you can't remember any more. There is no connection and he has managed to confuse, just for a second. Lastly, while you're listening and thinking, the salesman jumps you with an assumption, once again cutting off your thought process. You're on the spot, don't want to disappoint the lovely man and just settle for agreeing to the sale. The 'Yes' was the subliminal message and how it works are the connections to it. As far as the top name brands are concerned they just want to remind you that they are still the best. Coca Cola, Nike, Apple all bombard the general public with slogans and labels. Although we will look, we not think about it. The image is just there to reinforce their grip on the market. Subliminal messaging is more subtle. In addition to the logo flashing across a screen, they throw in a clip of your favourite pop music to make it more appealing. This tells you that they have the same taste as you in music even if you don't have the same taste in drinks, trainers or computers. Subliminal messaging can more subtle than even that. I like to think of it as liminal messaging. This trick here is to encourage actively conscious thought on the subject matter. Take 'The Wolf of Wall Street'. Scorsese is well known for cinematic violence and his movies have an attractive quality because of it. He has however done movies without violence but even though they are just as good if not better, they have not done as well at the box office than those with the trademark blood and swearing. More than that, after having walked out of a movie jam packed with more swear words than any other in living memory, can you honestly say you will swear less after having watched it? Monkey see, monkey do and if we are not careful about looking out for the tell tale signs of subliminal messaging then we have no defence against it and soak up every last bit of it. Positives, negatives, blunt and subtle. The news and media are no different. They learnt this trick by sheer accident and now it's used as the gold standard. Instead of trying to cover up a scandal or ignore a humanitarian catastrophe it is simply easier and more effective to report on it and every other to saturate our expectations. If a nuclear bomb were dropped on China, seven nuclear bombs say, there would be world war. Imagine there were no scandalous reports in the current day media and had not been for a number of years. Along comes a nuclear bomb of presidential assassination or phone hacking or sexual assault, there world be the media equivalent to world war. No one would put up with it. As the media is now a soapbox for everyone's worst sins, we put up with it because it appears to be the norm, accept that because it is being reported someone else is going to do something about it and are resolved that it is not our problem. If China were hit with actual, nuclear bombs, I do not believe people would let it slide unless everyone were being hit with them too. Subliminal messaging is clever but not as clever as an on-the-nose-double-blind. It's fun, entertaining and just like a Martin Scorsese movie.

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