After reading this article, I came away unsatisfied. What about the images hidden in print? I can remember examples of liquor ads having naked women hidden in the ice or curvaceous ladies hidden in cigarette smoke. (sorry, no cite)
Is the conclusion the same, the effect is no more than seeing a billboard on the interstate? These images aren’t “Buy now!” but, “Oooooo, look at this sexy woman! Don’t you want some DeWalts?!”
That was in “The Hidden Persuaders” book that Cecil referenced. I remember hearing that was bunk as well.
There was a recent flap on political advertising where the word “Bureaucrats” was scrolled across the screen such that “rats” was focused on for a suspicioulsy long time.
That sounds like a truth in advertising issue. 
The “spelling ‘sex’ in ice cubes” thing has even been proven to happen, it’s just claimed by some. I would imagine the effect would be even less. It’s one thing if something goes by your eyes too fast for you too note it. It’s another if something is right in front of you and you just don’t see it.
Damn, I was trying to rephrase something. I meant that the subliminal sex in advertising thing hasn’t even been shown to be real.
Actually, that was in an ad paid for by Republicans who were talking about Democrats. RATS showed up on screen, then zoomed out until you could read all of DEMOCRATS. Insulting, yes. But subliminal? I dunno.
BTW, the word “subliminal” literally means “beneath the senses.” I don’t understand how this applies to the kind of advertising we’re talking about. “Subliminal” would mean not being able to sense it with our sensory organs. This kind of advertising is obviously “senseable” (if that’s a word) but it’s so briefly or subtlely sensed that we’re unconscious of having sensed it. Seems to me a more appropriate phrase would be “unconscious advertising.”
Also, Cecil didn’t mention the obvious fallacy in the work of the guy who claimed to do research on subliminal advertising. Considering that film projectors show 24 frames a second, I believe it’s impossible for him to have embedded messages into film that would have flashed on for 1/3000th of a second. The best he could do would be 1/24th of a second.
I found the article rather incomplete as well. A few online references for those interested:
Subliminal Advertising - (Snopes.com) http://www.snopes.com/business/hidden/popcorn.htm
The Cargo-Cult Science of Subliminal Persuasion by Anthony R. Pratkanis. - (CSICop) http://www.csicop.org/si/9204/subliminal-persuasion.html
Subliminal - (The Skeptic’s Dictionary) http://skepdic.com/subliminal.html
In reference to print ads:
Wilson Bryan Key wrote a book titled * SUBLIMINAL SEDUCTION* Published in 1973 by McLuhan Associates Limited.
The book started of pretty convincing that some advertisers believed in and used this stuff. The embedded symbolism was obvious when highlighted. (Whether or not it actually worked - Hey, it couldn’t hurt!) It was very Freudian, usually about sex, but also family and mothering and demons and other “powerful” symbols.
Unfortunately, by the end of the book the interpretations were becoming a little stretched. I started wondering how much this told about Mr. Key as opposed to the advertiser’s intentions. It degenerated into be more of a Rorschach Test than actual fact.
Having said that I spent many enjoyable hours looking for and finding embedded symbolism. My favorites are the Penis and Scrotum in Joe Camel’s snout, and the Penis Castle in the Little Mermaid. I am amazed that Joe was banned for selling cigarettes to children, not for the Giant Sex Organs on the billboards.
I have no doubt that there are even now advertisers that consciously or unconsciously embed this symbolism in their ads.
No, Cecil said it was a “high speed projector” that flashed the messages “over the film”. This must have been done by some device other than the movie projector.
The device used is called a tachistoscope. Cecil called it a “high-speed projector”. It was not a standard film projector.
Here is Snopes on The Little Mermaid.
http://www.snopes.com/disney/films/mermaid.htm
There is actually a growing body of experimental evidence by cognitive scientists that suggests that the brain does process and react to subliminal input. For example, see http://www.csic.cornell.edu/201/subliminal.
The idea being, in very general terms, that the brain receives and acts upon more sensory input than it bothers to notify the “conscious self” of, and subliminal images fall into this category. It’s still a pretty big leap from there to subliminal advertising of course, but the concept is not entirely pseudoscience.