Saturday, December 1, 2007

subliminal advertising on TV

Subliminal advertising is defined promotional messages that the consumer is not consciously aware of. One way a company can use subliminal advertising is on a television program. The other day I came across an example of subliminal advertising on youtube. In the video, they play a clip from a program on the food network frame by frame. For one single frame, the screen turns red and you find a McDonald's logo with their famous slogan "I'm lovin' it". Because TV programing today has so many frames per second, the advertisement goes unnoticed by the general audience, but the advertisement can still unconsciously reach the viewer's brain. What I found particularly interesting was the correlation between McDonald's fast food restaurant, which is notorious for its fatty and unhealthy food, and the fact this advertisement was on the food network, whose audience is generally not the type that would frequent McDonalds.