Buyology - Martin Lindstrom [31]
Accusations of subliminal manipulation have been leveled at musicians from Led Zeppelin (play “Stairway to Heaven” backward and you’ll supposedly hear “Oh, here’s to my sweet Satan”) to Queen (“Another One Bites the Dust” played backward allegedly yields “It’s fun to smoke marijuana”).
And in 1990, the parents of two eighteen-year-old boys from Nevada who had attempted suicide took the British heavy-metal band Judas Priest to court, charging that the band had inserted subliminal messages—including “Let’s be dead” and “Do it”—inside its song lyrics. Though both boys were high school dropouts from severely troubled families, one of the boys who survived the joint suicide attempt was later quoted in a letter as saying, “I believe that alcohol and heavy-metal music such as Judas Priest led us to be mesmerized.”5 The suit was later dismissed.
Much of the time, when subliminal messages show up in our culture, they’re selling sex. Take the 1995 Yellow Pages advertisement for an English flooring company called D.J. Flooring, whose motto is “Laid by the Best.” When held upright, this ad features an image of a woman holding a champagne glass, but tip it over, and what you see is an image of a woman masturbating. In a montage of print ads someone showed me once, I saw an ad for an exercise machine that showed a bare-chested young man with rippling abs on which were imprinted—or was I, and everybody else, imagining it?—the silhouette of an erect penis. A second ad, for a ketchup company, featured a hot dog and, poised over it, a dollop of ketchup coming out of a bottle that resembled a human tongue. And a recent example shows a woman with her manicured fingers resting on a computer mouse that rather uncannily suggests a clitoris.
In 1990, Pepsi was asked to withdraw one of its specially designed “Cool Can” designs from the market when a consumer complained that when the six-packs were stacked a certain way on a shelf, they produced a pattern spelling out s-e-x. A Pepsi advertising manager denied any ulterior motive, saying only, “The cans were designed to be cool and fun and different; something to get the customer’s attention,” while a Pepsi spokesman insisted that the message was an “odd coincidence.”6 Sure was.
But not all subliminal messaging is as subtle. Today, some stores play tapes of jazz or Latino music (available through more than one Web site) that conceal recorded messages—imperceptible to our conscious minds—designed to prod shoppers into spending more or to discourage shoplifting. Among the messages: “Don’t worry about the money,” and “Imagine owning it,” and “Don’t take it, you’ll get caught.” According to one vendor, in stores that broadcast these tapes overall sales are up 15 percent, while store thefts have fallen by 58 percent.
And if, as I’ve long believed, subliminal advertising can be understood as subconscious messages conveyed by advertisers in an attempt to attract us to a product, then it is even more prevalent than anyone has ever realized. After all, in today’s overstimulated world, countless things slip beneath our conscious radar every day. Consider the Gershwin standard that plays in the clothing store while we’re shopping for a swanky new summer suit—sure, we can hear it, but we’re too distracted to consciously register the fact that it’s playing. Or what about the small print on a snazzy product package—it’s right in front of our eyes, but we’re too overstimulated by all the bright colors, fancy typography, and witty copy to actually read it. Or what about the aromas that are pumped into casinos, airplane cabins, hotel rooms, and just-off-the-assembly-line