Subliminal

A Paper on Subliminal Messages Subliminal messages, in my opinion, do affect our decision making. It may not be very obvious but very effective. Advertisements cleverly make use of this fact to unconsciously lure consumers to a certain product. Advertisements try to enhance brands. And one of the most important things for a brand is its logo. In the following link, http://www.graphicdesignblog.org/hidden-logos-in-graphic-designing/ we find quite a few logos with subliminal messages, some more than the others. FedEx is very interesting as it has placed an arrow between ‘E’ and ‘x’ “conveying speed, direction and reliability of this amazing courier service.” Because the logo consists of alphabets without any style, the arrow goes unnoticed. Similarly, the Big Ten Conference has cleverly engraved 11 into its logo (that is not obvious) to mention that the conference has/had 11 schools. However, with the recent changes to the number of schools in the Big Ten conference it will be interesting to see if they make any changes to the logo. Currently, the number of school stands at twelve. Before 2005, majority of the sponsors in formula 1 circuit were cigarette brands namely Mild Seven, Benson and Hedges and so on. The most prominent sponsor was Marlboro for Scuderia Ferrari. When cigarette advertisements were banned on the cars or anywhere during the race, cigarette sponsors left the sport. Ferrari unveiled their cars with white bar codes on them. As a follower of formula 1 race and a big fan of Ferrari, the bar code pattern was obvious. To me, it was Marlboro. As shown in the picture, a person without the knowledge of what a Marlboro box looks like would have that image in his/her mind and would connect the dots when he/she sees a box of Marlboro. Subliminally, it promoted Marlboro to be cool, just like the scarlet car it was on. http://www.mizozo.com/sports/04/2010/29/ferrari-and-marlboro-accused-of-subliminal-adverti....html Links: http://www.graphicdesignblog.org/hidden-logos-in-graphic-designing/ http://www.mizozo.com/sports/04/2010/29/ferrari-and-marlboro-accused-of-subliminal-adverti....html