History Of Subliminal Messages

In 1897, Dr. E.W. Scripture, Ph.D. then the director of the Yale Psychology Lab published a book called The New Psychology. In it he talked for the first time about some basic principles regarding subtle persuasion that could be employed by embedding hidden messages.

Later, American psychologist Harry Levi Hollingworth wrote that advertisers could potentially use subliminal messages to impact sales.

During World War II a machine called the tachistoscope was invented to help pilots recognize enemy planes. It worked by very briefly flashing pictures of enemy airplanes.

However, it was not until 1957 that the term 'subliminal messages' first became known to the wider public through a purported experiment that took place in a New Jersey movie theatre.

It was claimed that the projection of the words "Drink Coca-Cola" and "Hungry? Eat popcorn" using a tachistoscope for 1/3000 of a second at five-second intervals resulted in increased sales by significant amounts.

Although James Vicary who founded a company called the Subliminal Projection Company and coined the phrase 'subliminal advertising' later claimed that the experiment was a hoax, it led to a public outcry about the potential uses of such technology and was subsequently banned in many countries.

There have been numerous instances since then of a claimed or real use of subliminal messages.

However, all have been put down to technical glitches, mistakes or or otherwise inadvertent embedding.

It is little wonder of course, as the use of such subliminal messages would not only be illegal they would supposedly not work - so what would be the point

It is interesting to note that although the original experiment by James Vicary was later claimed to be a hoax, in 2007, a recreation of the same experiment was made to mark it's 50th anniversary.

The findings of the International Brand Marketing Conference MARKA 2007 in which 1,400 delegates tool part by watching the opening credits of the original film Picnic were to say the least interesting.

Of those exposed 81% chose a a brand that was subliminally broadcast over one that was not.