Subliminal Advertising 3

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and admitted his results were false. This example brought the public’s attention to the power that advertisers held over them.
To produce an effective advertisement, a company must invest a substantial amount of money to create a demand for their product. An ad agency can spend up to $50,000 to create a single, one page magazine layout or flyer containing subliminal messages, carefully reviewing it to attain perfection in every detail. Subliminal messages are an efficient way of creating that demand by swaying consumers to buy something they really do not need.
However, while subliminal messages are useful marketing tools, they have other uses as well. One such example is as a method of loss prevention. The elevator music you hear in Sears is not just there because the manager likes it. In nineteen seventy nine, about fifty department stores in the United states played music with subliminal anti-theft messages. The messages on the tapes were “I am honest. If ...

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sales, rather than criticizing the images themselves.
Subliminal messages are almost impossible to prove. Although there have been many experiments that support one side or the other, there is no consensus, so the debate continues. “It is difficult to tell whether images are interpreted through conscious understanding or images were absorbed without awareness. Since it can always be argued that some of the images that were meant to remain in the unconscious seeped into the conscious, no study can truly show that subliminal messages are effective”(Smith 870). Most of the public is convinced that they serve their purpose. “Consumers are aware of subliminal ...

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