Buyology - Martin Lindstrom [36]
To no one’s surprise, the fMRI scans revealed a pronounced response in the volunteers’ nucleus accumbens—the area we now know to be involved with reward, craving, and addiction—when they viewed the actual cigarette packs. But what was more interesting was that when the smokers were exposed to the nonexplicit images—the red Ferrari, the cowboys on horseback, the camel in a desert—over a period of less than five seconds, there was an almost immediate activity in the craving regions of their brains as well, in the exact same regions that responded to the explicit images of the packs and logos. In fact, the only consistent difference was that the subliminal images prompted more activity in the volunteers’ primary visual cortex—as might be expected given the more complex visual task of processing those images.
More fascinating still, when Dr. Calvert compared the brains’ responses to the two different types of images, she found even more activity in the reward and craving centers when subjects viewed the subliminal images than when they viewed the overt images. In other words, the logo-free images associated with cigarettes, like the Ferrari and the sunset, triggered more cravings among smokers than the logos or the images of the cigarette packs themselves—a result that was consistent for both Camel and Marlboro smokers.
We also discovered a direct emotional relationship between the qualities the subjects associated with Formula 1 and NASCAR—masculinity, sex, power, speed, innovation, cool-ness—and the cigarette brands that sponsored them. In other words, when consumers were exposed to those red Ferraris and racer jumpsuits, they subconsciously linked those associations to the brand. In short, everything Formula 1 and NASCAR represent was subliminally transformed, in only seconds, into representing the brand.
In answer to the question, does subliminal advertising work, one would have to say yes—chillingly well. But why?
One reason is that since the subliminal images didn’t show any visible logos, the smokers weren’t consciously aware that they were viewing an advertising message, and as a result they let their guard down. Pretend that it’s thirty years ago (back when cigarette ads were legal), and you’re a smoker. You see an ad in a magazine or on a billboard. You know the ad is for cigarettes because the Camel logo is prominently positioned in the bottom corner. Immediately you raise your guard. You know that smoking is bad for your health, not to mention expensive, and that you’ll be giving it up any day now. So you consciously construct a wall between yourself and the message, protecting yourself from its seductive powers. But once the logo vanishes, your brain is no longer on high alert, and it responds subconsciously—and enthusiastically—to the message before you.
Another explanation lies in the carefully manufactured associations that the tobacco industry has established over the past few decades. In 1997, in preparation for the ban on tobacco advertising that was about to come into place in the United Kingdom, Silk Cut, a popular British tobacco brand, began to position its logo against a background of purple silk in every ad that it ran. It didn’t take long for consumers to associate this plain swath of purple silk with the Silk Cut logo, and eventually with the brand itself. So when the advertising ban came into effect, and the logo was no longer permitted on ads or billboards, the company simply created highway