To be at the top, advertisers need to go above and beyond, which can sometimes lead to deceitful practices. One of the most famous experiments conducted by marketing researcher and psychologist James Vicary in 1957 during the presentation of the movie Picnic. The words "Hungry? Eat popcorn. Drink Coca Cola" were projected for 0.003 seconds every five seconds. This increased Coke sales by 18.1% and popcorn sales by 57.7%." (Love). Although five years later Vicary admitted that the experiment results were false, this incident caused a major storm of controversy. .
The top five most used subliminal messages are related to sex, drugs, food, fear, and violence and are usually very vulgar and provocative. This is one of the main reasons why we are so addicted to sex, drugs, food, fear, and violence. (Chang). These messages are roaming through our subconscious thoughts continuously causing us to innately desire them. Since all humans, at some point in their lives, crave or desire sex it is the most commonly used and most effective subliminal message. The reason why corporations and the government like to use these five topics the most is because they are very effective at selling their idea or product. (Chang).
Media wizards are a creative bunch. They produce their messages through visual effects, sound effects, words that have positive or negative connotations, headlines that SCREAM! But their words and their illusions aren't magic. They are simply messages, each constructed with a purpose, to inform, to persuade, to sell, or to influence behavior. (Gourley 9). In other words media wizards or advertisers, politicians, and paparazzi utilize hidden or subliminal messages to govern society. According to Gourley, "All advertisements have a subtext or an underlying message. It is never stated directly. Instead it is implied or suggested through the use of symbols such as characters, words, images, music, and special effects used to construct the message.
