Letter to the Editor

Would you like it if you were being influenced without knowing? This is exactly what happened during the 2007 ARIA awards. Strange flashes were seen while award nominees were being announced and later, when the videos were slowed down, Chuppa Chup, Olay and Telstra slogans were seen appearing on the screen for a minute amount of time, less than half a second.
There has been a dispute about whether these are, or are not a form of subliminal advertising, but I KNOW that they are a form of subliminal advertising, and there is no denying it.
Before I go into more detail on why this IS subliminal advertising, I will give you a brief lesson on what subliminal advertising is. Subliminal advertising is a form of subliminal stimuli, which are any sensory stimuli that can affect the mind without conscious awareness. This pretty much means any stimuli that can affect the subconscious part of your brain.
I am personally outraged by the fact that channel 10 first of all did this, and secondly denied it when confronted on the matter. They called it “a new type of advertising” that they named, “rapid cut images”. They argued the rapid cut images were intended to be creatively consistent with the fast-paced look and feel of the music presentations.
Subliminal messaging techniques such as these are illegal – whether used within advertisements themselves or used to advertise a product within an actual program.
Now onto the matter of why this is a form of subliminal advertising. Psychologists can use exposures of about 10 to 55 milliseconds without viewers becoming consciously aware of the stimuli and these “rapid cut images” fall into this range.
We can’t sit around and let big companies get away with this, it is outrageous and an invasion of our privacy. I hope I have persuaded you to do something about this matter and not let it go bye.
Thank you for reading and I hope you agree with me. [continues]

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