Does subliminal advertising work? The 1957 popcorn story

The famous 1957 popcorn experiment did not show what it was said to show. Its creator, market researcher James Vicary, later admitted the results were falsified, and some critics doubt the experiment was properly run at all. Laboratory research since then has found that subliminal cues can nudge behavior slightly, but only under narrow conditions. Evidence that it works at scale in real life is missing. [1] [2]

Vicary said that in a Fort Lee, New Jersey cinema in the summer of 1957, he used a tachistoscope to flash the messages "Drink Coca-Cola" and "Hungry? Eat Popcorn" during the film Picnic. Each flash lasted 1/3,000th of a second and appeared every five seconds, too fast to notice consciously. He reported an 18.1 percent rise in Coca-Cola sales and a 57.8 percent rise in popcorn sales. The BBC gives the Coke figure as 57.7 percent and the popcorn figure as 18.1 percent, so accounts of the numbers differ. [1] [3]

The BBC reports that he announced this at a press conference on 12 September 1957. The public reaction was fear and outrage on both sides of the Atlantic, and one American magazine said, "Welcome to 1984." [3]

The cinema manager told Motion Picture Daily that the experiment had had no impact. The president of the Psychological Corporation, Henry Link, challenged Vicary to repeat it, and the repeat produced no significant increase in sales. Vicary then admitted he had falsified the data. The BBC dates his confession to 1962 and says he conceded he had not done enough research before going public. [3] [1] [2]

Psychologists have long agreed that words flashed too quickly to register consciously can have limited effects in the lab. In a 2006 study, Johan Karremans, Jasper Claus and Wolfgang Stroebe found that subliminally priming the Lipton Ice brand made people more likely to choose it, but only when they were thirsty. The BBC adds that the effect seemed to need a familiar, somewhat liked product, so a brand as well known as Coca-Cola would gain little. A 2002 study reported that people shown hidden Coca-Cola and "thirsty" frames in an episode of The Simpsons rated themselves about 27 percent thirstier. [3] [2] [4]

A 1996 meta-analysis by Trappey found very little effect of subliminal advertising on consumer choice, with a correlation of 0.0585. [5]

For a BBC Radio 4 documentary, a public test with 98 volunteers flashed the word "Lipton" for 10 milliseconds every five seconds during a clip. Of the test group, 46 percent chose Lipton, against 37 percent of the control group. This was not statistically significant, and a refined analysis went the other way, also without significance. The BBC listed possible reasons, including participants who were not thirsty, a short clip and a small sample, and said the test did not disprove that the method could work in public. It said that pulling it off would be very difficult, partly because timing the flashes is tricky: too fast and they are not perceived at all, too slow and people notice them. [3]