Subliminal Messages

Remember this old radio jingle?

I was 5 or 6 years old when I used to sit on the floor, my back jammed against the big old radio in the living room, every Saturday morning, listening to this song. I never tried to memorize it, but when I thought of it recently, all the words magically appeared in my head, along with the tune. I suppose that’s a primitive example of subliminal advertising being used many years before it became an advertising technique.
I’ve read several articles and books about such ads. Through clever use of words and pictures (and, I guess, music, too), people are manipulated into wanting certain products. I think Congress has even looked into this practice.
The repetitive presentation of the radio jingle of my youth was not actually subliminal advertising, because it was up front with the name of the product and the desire of the cereal folks that we buy their product and use it. It is similar to subliminal because we may memorize it without even trying to do so, which is obviously what happened in my case. The idea of subliminal ads is to suggest something to us secretly. For instance, theaters used to plant messages on the screen. The message said, “Hungry? Eat popcorn.” It appeared only for a millisecond, but was repeated. The viewer never did know he was seeing it, but his brain saw it and remembered it. Studies showed that popcorn sales increased when those ads appeared.
Too deep a subject to investigate here, suffice it to say that true subliminal ads appeal to us in a much more subtle way. We are rarely, if ever, aware of them, but marketing research has proved that the psychological manipulation of our minds really works. So, beware. And eat your Cream of Wheat.