Does Subliminal Messaging really work?

Although live hypnosis is different than subliminal messaging they are sort of tied together in the sense that they both have to do with reprogramming our way of thinking. And as a leading hypnotist, I also carry my own line of subliminal audio products for our clients. Now, I admit that if I tried every single minute for the rest of my life to convince everyone in the world that subliminal messaging works, I would still never be able to do so. I mean heck, there are people alive today that still will not accept that we landed on the moon.

And so, this blog post is not meant to prove or debunk whether subliminal messaging actually works. But rather, it is to simply show that despite whether you believe that subliminal messaging works or not, the fact that it is still often used does show that there is something behind it and therefore, very real.

In 1978, Wichita, Kansas TV station KAKE-TV received special permission from the police to place a subliminal message in a report on the BTK Killer (Bind, Torture, Kill) in an effort to get him to turn himself in. The subliminal message included the text "Now call the chief," as well as a pair of glasses. The glasses were thought to be of significance to the killer because when BTK murdered Nancy Fox, there was a pair of glasses lying upside down on her dresser. So, police felt that the glasses would stir up some remorse emotion and included them in the subliminal message. Although the attempt was unsuccessful and police reported no increased volume of calls afterward, the fact that they tried this method demonstrates an acknowledgment in the effectiveness of subliminal messaging.

Before the re-election of French president François Mitterrand in 1988, a subliminal picture of him was mixed in the title sequence of French national television daily news show, and it appeared for several consecutive days.

The subject was also prominently featured in the 1999 film Fight Club. Pictures of the main character, Tyler Durden, flash onscreen at various points during the earlier parts of the film, before Durden is introduced. Also, Durden is shown at his job as a projectionist, splicing pornographic flash frames into a film he is showing. A picture of a penis flashes before the end credits.

During the 2000 U.S. presidential campaign, a television ad campaigning for Republican candidate George W. Bush showed words (and parts thereof) scaling from the foreground to the background on a television screen. When the word BUREAUCRATS flashed on the screen, one frame showed only the last part, RATS. The FCC looked into the matter, but no penalties were ever assessed in the case.

In the British alternative comedy show The Young Ones, a number of subliminal images were present in the original and most repeated broadcasts of the second series. Images included a gull coming into land, a tree frog jumping through the air, a man gurning, and the end credits of the movie Carry On Cowboy. These were included to mock the then-occurring matter of subliminal messages in television. Although they may fall foul of the FCC guidelines, these images do appear in the U.S. boxset DVD Every Stoopid Episode.

Shaun Micallef's Australian 'Micallef P(r)ogram(me)' shows contained strange subliminal messages that can be seen on the DVD's. As they are of random, humorous statements, questions, etc., they are not regarded as advertising. They were usually images of politicians, as is the case with his more recent Newstopia.

In Warner Brothers' 1943 animated film "Wise Quacking Duck", Daffy Duck spins a statue which is holding a shield. For one frame the words "BUY BONDS" are visible on the shield.

The December 16, 1973 episode of Columbo titled "Double Exposure", is based on subliminal messaging: it is used by the murderer, Dr. Bart Keppler, a motivational research specialist, played by Robert Culp, to lure his victim out of his seat during the viewing of a promotional film and by Lt. Columbo to bring Keppler back to the crime scene and incriminate him. Lt. Columbo is shown how subliminal cuts work in a scene mirroring the real life James Vicary's experiment.

A McDonald's logo appeared for one frame during the Food Network's Iron Chef America series on 2007-01-27, leading to claims that this was an instance of subliminal advertising. The Food Network replied that it was simply a glitch.

In Formula One racing, the paint scheme of many cars would carry messages intended to look as if they were of banned tobacco products in many Grands Prix where tobacco advertising was banned, though many of these were jokes on the part of the teams (for example, Jordan Grand Prix ran Benson and Hedges sponsorship as "Bitten and Hisses" with a snake-skin design on their cars). A similar procedure was used by NASCAR driver Jeff Burton after the AT&T Mobility advertising was banned by a court order in 2007.

On November 7, 2007 Network 10 Australia's broadcast of the ARIA Awards was caught out for using subliminal advertising in an exposé by the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation).

In June-July 2007, Sprite used a type of obvious subliminal message, involving yellow (lemon) and green (lime) objects such as cars. The objects would then be shown inconspicuously in the same setting, while showing the word "lymon" (combining the words lime and lemon) on screen for a second at a time. They called this "Sublymonal Advertising." The previous year, Sprite used a similar advertising campaign, but this time it was tied in to The Lost Experience, an alternate reality game.

In Week 11 of The Apprentice: Martha Stewart in which candidates have to create an ad for the Delta's former low-cost commercial airlines Song, the team Matchstick used a 1/48th of a frame image at the bottom-right corner with the Song Airlines logo.

So again in closing, people will ultimately decide for themselves whether subliminal messaging works or not. But is it real? We believe that the above information not only shows that it is real but also makes you wonder…why would folks put so much work and effort into something that simply has no merit whatsoever? Seems like an awful waste of time.

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