Broadcasting Telecasting (Oct-Dec 1957)

MONDAY MEMO from WALTER WEIR, executive vice president, Donahue & Coe SUBLIMINAL PROJECTION: IS IT WORTHWHILE OR WILL IT JUST PASS AWAY? Some years ago, seeing what was happening in research, I went out and bought a copy of Warren's Dictionary of Psychology. No advertising man who wants to be able to contribute to even small shop talk today — let alone understand what's being said — should be without this helpful little volume. Naturally, when I first heard about subliminal projection, I hurried to my dictionary and looked up the term "subliminal." I found it means "below the threshold" and is applied to stimuli which are "not sufficiently intense to arouse definite sensations, but which nevertheless have some effect upon the responses or mental life of the individual." I also came upon the terms subliminal learning and subliminal stimulus. The former means "acquisitions in the form of neurograms or habit equipment, which cannot be directly recalled," and the latter "a stimulus of such slight intensity, saturation, etc., that it fails to produce any conscious effect." As Dr. August A. Fink, director of market research for Paul Klemtner & Co., brought out in a paper read before the Copy Research Council on Oct. 16, "Ordinary advertising exposes consumers an estimated several thousand times a day to advertising messages or brand names, in many cases very briefly. The person flipping through a magazine, riding a subway, passing billboards in his car, or window displays on foot is exposed countless times to brief stimulation of brand names and other images. These exposures are certainly subliminal in the sense that they are rarely remembered or talked about. "Curiously enough," observed Dr. Fink, "advertising men have long struggled to make these exposures supraliminal; to provide some attention-getting device, some 'stopper' that would cause the consumer to linger long enough to receive an impression which he could recall and talk about. Now the tables are turned, and very expensive gadgets and techniques will be used to prevent a supraliminal effect. The rationale for this technique must be curious indeed!" THE DIRECT, STRONG APPROACH IS BETTER It is apparently assumed — both by those promoting the technique as well as by those horrified by the thought of it — that a sufficient number of weak impulses can somehow add up to one good strong one. Any mother who has tried playing the gentle woman in getting her children to go to bed at night knows this is a decidedly unproved theory. Any businessman, with even a rudimentary knowledge of economics, faced with projecting a strong impulse or a weak one — especially when he knows that projecting the weak impulse will cost exactly the same as projecting the strong one — -will, I think, make the proper choice. I have been exposed to subliminal projection. As far as I am concerned, if a particular picture employed as the carrying vehicle happens to involve the ascent of Mount Everest, life at McMurdo Sound, or a gathering of the Ku Klux Klan — in fact any subject predominantly white — then I doubt that the viewer will derive any stimulus at all, since the projected word or slogan could not be seen, even unconsciously. I believe, if I were using SP, I would be careful to choose a movie built around Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, a spelunking expedition, or a minstrel show. I think I would also check the eye-blink rate of my audience, just to be sure there wasn't too much synchronization between that and the flash rate on the screen. CURIOSITY WILL ATTRACT SOME VIEWERS I have no doubt that the advertiser who uses SP for the first time on television will amass a fantastic audience — if he advertises what he intends to do widely enough and gives his message sufficient supraliminal projection to sink in. But I would hate to reap the whirlwind of controversy that will quite likely follow and I certainly would hate to be the second advertiser to use it. I am aware that subliminal projection could prove considerably less painful than many consciously-seen tv commercials. However, as I said before the American Marketing Assn., subliminal projection can never be a satisfactory medium for long copy; therefore, its use would be not only limited but decidedly sub-limited. I am still of that opinion. Advertising, probably because its users and practitioners are always on the lookout for the Sure Thing, is a business of fads and fancies as well as of talent and tested procedures. Like the 24 or 27 Townsend Points (how many were there?) for which a number of respected advertisers spent a lot of good money just a few years back, subliminal projection, too, I am sure, will pass away. Walter Weir; b. Philadelphia, March 27, 1909. Joined production department of N. W. Ayer & Son, Philadelphia, in 1928, later moved into copy; between 1934 and 1938, served with several now-defunct agencies, and in 1938 became head of J. M. Mathes creative department. In 1941 he went to Lord & Thomas (now Foote, Cone & Beldingj as vice president in charge of creative department and in 1942 to Kenyon & Eckhardt in similar capacity. Mr. Weir set up own agency in 1946, later taking his accounts to Donahue & Coe when he joined that agency in 1951. As executive vice president, his duties include client service and new business. Currently doing a book on the writing of advertising copy, Mr. Weir recently attracted much attention for his spirited debate with Vance Packard, author of The Hidden Persuaders, before the American Marketing Assn. At that time he alluded to subliminal projection, the subject examined in this article. Broadcasting December 16. 1957 • Page 121