If the fear of subliminal advertising is largely unfounded, this begs the question: Can we ever be influenced outside awareness? The answer, actually, is yes.
Despite this though, the myth that subliminal advertising has a powerful influence endures: Recent survey data showed over ¾ of respondents knew of subliminal advertising and almost half felt susceptible to it. That’s right, they just made it all up for no other reason than to promote Vicary’s own marketing company! Additionally, legitimate research (i.e., research that did not make use of fabricated data) conducted after the publication of Vicary and Thayer’s study found very little evidence that subliminal advertising exerted any influence on people. The fear of subliminal advertising was largely unfounded though, as Packard heavily exaggerated advertisers’ power over consumers, and Vicary and Thayer fabricated their data. People also feared skepticism and suspicion would be useless against this form of influence because after all, we can’t be suspicious of something we’re not even aware we’ve seen. After learning about Vicary and Thayer’s study and reading Packard’s book, people feared advertisers could use subliminal advertising to force them to buy products and politicians could even use subliminal advertising to force them to vote a certain way. Indeed, Packard’s claims of advertisers’ ability to influence consumers were analogous to a puppet master pulling a puppet’s strings. The following year, a man named Vance Packard published a book called The Hidden Persuaders, in which he discussed how advertisers could control consumers by appealing to their unconscious desires. Those are obviously huge sales increases considering all Vicary and Thayer claimed to have done was present a few words on a screen. Distaste for subliminal advertising began in 1957, after James Vicary and Frances Thayer published a study in which they claimed that subliminally presenting the words “Eat popcorn” and “Drink Coca-Cola” in a film increased popcorn sales by 58% and Coca-Cola sales by 18%.
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