Subliminal Advertisements

The eye is incredibly complicated and powerful. Like a camera, it opens, focuses, captures images, and then processes them through our brain. Although our eye allows us to see everything on the surface, it fails to realize what lies beneath, and this can be expressed through Freud's Psychoanalytic Theory: The Conscious, Pre-conscious, and the Unconscious.
Focusing on the Unconscious, Freud used an iceberg as a metaphor to explain the human mind.
Only 10% of an iceberg is visible (conscious) whereas the other 90% is beneath the water (pre-conscious and unconscious). The Pre-conscious is allotted approximately 10% -15% whereas the Unconscious is allotted an overwhelming 75%-80%
But how does this apply to advertising?
I chose subliminal advertising, because it's the most mysterious, most influential advertising in my perspective. We don't look for the subliminal, it looks for us, and we are left with these unknown feelings that we repress in our unconscious.

Here is an advertisement I found many years ago on the Internet and looked at for a while.

This ad appeared in the British Yellow Pages. I first found it peculiar how the company used a woman with a drinking glass as their mascot. Quite unrelated if I do say so myself. I read the headline they used. "Laid By The Best" Of course, they are crediting themselves as the best flooring company around, right? I was also thrown off by the typography of the ad. There are 4 different fonts used here, and I thought that was quite unorganized. I also read the telephone number and lack of address and thought to myself "Well, where the hell is this place?" So what is going on here? Is it a joke? It could have been. Then I saw the side of this advertisement I wouldn't even dream would be published anywhere. The same site I found the ad on, there was the same ad, turned upside down to reveal:

A woman masturbating? "Laid by the Best?" Now I understand! When I saw the original of the ad, I never would have thought to re-arrange it, to find sexual messages issued by a flooring company, but my eye failed to capture the secrets. Who would read a phonebook upside down anyway? Companies can increase their sales by adding subliminal messages, and in this case, sexual messages that could make the viewer feel unknowingly aroused. This makes the ad more appealing and then? Score one more for the company! This erotic feeling goes straight to the unconscious, never to be discovered. Now that I know, I probably won't be calling D.J. Flooring to do my floorboards. Well, not DO them, but repair them. Oh, was that subliminal of me?


Planet Perplex. Stefan Van den Bergh. September 23 2008. "Interesting Illusions". October 3rd 2008. <http://www.planetperplex.com/en/item263>

Wilderdom. James Neill. April 2 2007. "Freud's Iceberg Model for Unconscious, Pre-conscious, & Conscious". October 3rd 2008. <http://wilderdom.com/personality/L8-3TopographyMindIceberg.html>

CI Advertising. Ji Young Hong. "Claims about the power of subliminal advertising". October 3 2008. <http://www.ciadvertising.org/student_account/spring_01/adv391k/hjy/adv382j/1st/application.html>