Subliminal Advertising: Effective?

I've always been interested in the subject of subliminal advertising, which basically asserts that a hidden message can be read by a subject's unconscious and influence their decision making on a product, and how it affected consumers. The above ad is an older ad yet classic example of the subject by the Absolut vodka makers, who constantly come up with creative ads. This one, however, titled "Absolut Subliminal" is almost a counter-subliminal ad as they are almost alerting to the reader that the ad has to do with something subliminal messaging by including "Subliminal" within the copy. The whole concept of subliminal advertising doesn't work unless the viewer isn't aware of what is going on! Thus, alerting them to subliminal activities defeats the purpose. However, the ad also features the words "Drink Absolut Vodka" spelled backwards within the ice cubes if you look closely at the light shadings. The image on the left is the actual ad that ran, while the image on the right is an enhanced image with its contrast changed in order to see the ad better. Honestly, I could not see the words in the real ad until looking at the enhanced image. They were not prominent enough. Does subliminal advertising work? I've tried to find out. Two years ago in my AP Psychology class, my group did our final presentation on that very subject. We created our own little mini experiment by mixing subliminal images with normal ones in a slide show for a various product and surveyed other classes to see if they noticed a difference. The experiment was guided by our teacher and we found that there was little to no correlation between the students being more apt to favor one product over the other based on the ads. Most students didn't even notice the subliminal messages and wrote that they thought the experiment was a waste of time on the feedback survey. Does that solve the debate? No, of course, but from my experience, subliminal advertising such as shown above does not seem to work.

Put the pants on already

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nys0i_FRjTI

Combing back over the top rated commercials from last year's Super Bowl season, I came across the often-played "I wear no pants" Dockers ad. The link above shows the ad, which features aimless men in their underwear singing about the perils of not wearing pants. The men then unite and head in search of pants as a sort of pants-less tribe. To be honest, my initial reaction to when I first saw the commercial back during the Super Bowl was one of confusion. Yes, it's funny to see people not wearing pants running around in a commercial, especially guys instead of scantily-clad women as per usual, but I don't think the campaign by Dockers makes sense. As a former employee at JC Penney's, our most successful casual/dress pants were Dockers and I had always viewed them and the advertising materials we were given to use for their booths as conservative and professional. This ad signaled what I noticed to be a change for the brand's identity as when I came back to work this past summer, we began completely re-designing our Dockers area. We were sent new styles of pants aimed at younger men instead of workplace professionals, and even the store signs were revamped to accomodate for the new, fresh attitude. In the end, the commercial didn't seem to fit the brand identity at the time, but as time went on, it signaled the forthcoming of a new brand identity.

Man Law!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmIyGisR8Zc

Alright, we've all probably seen the Bud Light Man Law commercials from 2006, but I just couldn't resist bringing the campaign back on this page as an example of a funny but effective campaign for a product. I think Bud Light did a fantastic job with creating a group of pop culture celebrities (wrestler Triple H, NFL running back Jerome Bettis) and other actors to talk about somewhat random topics that every guy has thought of regarding beer at one point or another, while at the same time promoting Bud Light. You get genuinely interested in the debate at hand (in this case, whether you can bring home beer from a party) and don't even realize you're being pushed a product until the end. I don't know why Bud Light did away with this campaign after little more than a year or so, but I think it's one of the better ones they've ever had. I certainly enjoy it more than the current NFL coaches press footage campaign and I think it does a much better job communicating and selling to the audience.

Levi's Misses the Boat

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSG807d3P-U

The link above is a banned commercial I from the UK that I saw on a special about infamously banned TV commercials. While I didn't think the spot was overly sexual or anything, I guess the UK thought the woman in her underwear was inappropriate. Funny how here in the US we probably would think nothing of it. Besides that fact, the spot was for Levi's jeans. The commercial lasted over a minute with some sort of woman-spy storyline going on that I just did not connect with. New idea for Levi's: Don't try to put us in a James Bond movie plot only to have a woman put on your jeans to advertise the product. Top this with the fact that the African American man in the bathroom seemed to be completely unnecessary. I just do not think Levi's hit a homerun with this ad. I didn't understand it. And neither did the Brits! Strike three, you're out.

Going for the kill

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0CuRZOHmak&NR=1

While I was watching tv the other day, an anti-smoking ad came across the screen that caught my attention. In the ad, which is in the above link and currently getting significant tv play, a smoker lights up and we are taken to the image of a doctor squeezing out the plaque and build up from the aorta of a 32 year old smoker. It'd disgusting and pretty graphic. But I think this is a very effective ad. We see too much of those dumb, ineffective "above the influence" campaigns that often don't even seem to mention that they're promoting anti-drug behavior these days. This is exactly the scare tactic wake up call that people need to see the dangers of smoking! Tell me what you think.