Follow the Yellow Brick Road

Looking over this... this is a pretty serious blog post. I sometimes get absorbed in what I am doing and lack the context that might lighten it up. Anyhow, its Friday, and I think writing my blog is a way to clear my mind up ahead of the fun of the weekend... At last!

Type "subliminal messages" into Google and it is easy to get stuck in YouTube videos locating the word "sex" everywhere and anywhere in a sequence of adverts, the origins and date of which are dubious to say the least. Researching this area is difficult because of the large number of conspiracy theorists who like to imagine that corporations are secretly controlling the minds of the masses.

The debate nevertheless resurfaces periodically, as more believable messages are found. Whether these are the outcome of chance, or whether they are spliced into adverts because their producers believe that they should capitalise on any chance that they would work, must vary. But some are hard to miss. Now is an opportune time to be on the lookout, in the run up to the US presidential election.

The use of such messages were discovered in an early advert for Bush:



And already there are accusations that similar techniques may be employed on behalf of the McCain campaign:





Maybe that is just Fox News...

The most famous study of subliminal messaging was produced by James Vicary in 1957, who claimed his flashes of text during a film had boosted popcort sales. He later admitted that he had lied. Yet still, in 2007, marketing expert turned hypnotist Jim Brackin made a new version of Vicary's experiment, which was played at MARKA, an international branding conference with supposedly positive results.

Obviously, the dividing line between subliminal messages and general production techniques is very much blurred. That mood is subtly created by music is foundational to all film and TV production, and often the music is not explicitly to be noticed, being just background atmosphere. But this hardly counts as subliminal. An article in the Independent gives an insight into the continuing scientific interest of things that are subconsciously experienced. We need not be talking of anything so obvious as hidden textual statements here. We can only pay attention to a certain amount of our surroundings at any one time, but this does not mean that the rest of our environment does not have an effect.

I work in program and website development, and here, as in any media role, it is important to be sensitive to the background feel of what you produce. I work closely with a designer who comes up with graphics that reflect the mood that we are going for in our product. Often enough these are not to be foregrounded, and are style points that are very subtle. But are we endulging in "subliminal messages"?

Well, they aren't exactly messages. But they certainly do have an effect. Perhaps their impact is restricted to short term emotional states. Yet the chance that they could have greater effect does sometimes worry me. It seems that working in media requires a certain amount of responsibility, at least until the depth of our work is properly understood.