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The Tactics Used By The Media

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We live in a society that has compromised and diluted our so called “free will.” Everything that we do, say, and buy has been motivated and influenced by the media and what our world has deemed adequate and acceptable. Some of what is portrayed to us by the media is obvious, but often, companies use covert tactics to manipulate us into becoming the optimal consumers, those who will buy what we are told, despite whether or not need or even want the products that are being displayed to us. One of the brilliant tactics used by corporations is called subliminal messaging. Webster’s Dictionary defines the word subliminal as, “Relating to things that influence your mind in a way that you do not notice.” (1) Subliminal advertising is a means of …show more content…

This term subliminal advertising was popularized in a 1957 by a book called The Hidden Persuaders by Vance Packard. This book displayed a study based on a movie theater in Fort Lee, NJ that was supposedly using subliminal commands and messages within certain films to increase their sales of popcorn and Coca-Cola. (2) Vicary claimed that he has created a phycological experiment to determining the effects of such subliming messages on the consumers that paralleled what was said to be happening in the theatre. He supposedly, “…arranged for the words “drink Coca-Cola” and “eat popcorn” to be flashed briefly on screen every five seconds during screenings of the film “Picnic.”” (2) Vicary displayed the words for a single frame,which was, allegedly, “ … long enough for the subconscious to pick up, but too short for the viewer to be aware of it.” (5) Due to the messages being forced on the consumer, Vicary claimed that Coke sales within the theatre sky rocketed by 18% and popcorn sales sky rocketed by 58%. (6) In his book, he stated that these results prove that the minds of the individuals that he tested were influenced by the subliminal messages in the films. (2) This lead him to draw the conclusion that simply putting words on a screen for a period of time not recognizable to the conscious mind can influence human behavior. In this case, Vicary said that the

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