My Experience with Subliminal Advertising

My phone rang a few weeks ago, and Jeff was on the other end asking when I might be able to drop by his office to discuss a job he needed produced. Jeff and I are old friends, and we've worked together on many campaigns over the years and done some fun and challenging work.

I arrived at his office early the next morning to discuss the project which featured a bride waiting at the alter of the church, no groom in sight. We sketched out a couple of ideas and looked through 'the book' for talent, and found a couple people to call. This was going to be another fun shoot.

After spending a week scouting locations, shoot day came, and everything came off perfect. The dress was perfect, the church we picked was perfect, the weather was perfect though that didn't matter to us. And the models we picked were spectacular, giving us exactly what we needed for expressions. The shoot was great, and Jeff and I couldn't wait to get the film back from the lab.

Later that evening, we met at my studio to review the images. As I unfurled roll after roll onto the light table, Jeff got this really concerned look on his face. The Polaroids I test shot hadn't revealed the problem, but there it was in the film. In the folds of the brides dress was an obvious, well, I simply let your imagination take it from here. It was in all the frames, like we had purposefully folded the dress to create a subliminal message in the shot. It was white on white, but there it was, no mistaking it.

At first, Jeff and I joked back and forth about other subliminal messages we could have our airbrush artist paint in. It got pretty hysterical. Jeff would say one thing, then I would suggest something else. We laughed till we cried. We had to stop just to catch our breath.

One thing was clear to both of us though. Something was going to have to be done. We picked out three images, and Jeff left. The next morning, he and I took them into the Marketing Directors office, and presented them without saying a word. He picked them up one by one, and looked at them. Then he opened his desk drawer and pulled out a magnifying glass to look a bit closer. "There's the shape of a *** *** *** in her dress! Did you guys do this?" We shook our heads. He continued, "Well, we're going to have to do something about it." We nodded, Jeff more sheepishly that I.

After the meeting, I drove the film over to Bob's office, my airbrusher, to have him clean the photograph up and remove the offending, uh, image. Even Bob saw it. Easy enough to clean up, he could have it done in a couple of days. We agreed on budget, and that was that.

I've been shooting as an advertising photographer for 28 years, working on both regional and national accounts for all kinds of products. That image of the bride in her dress was cleaned up so that no trace of the "*** *** ***" could be seen in the ad. We actually took it out, rather than leave it in. It's conceivable that another team might just decide to leave it in, or even embellish a little, but I've never heard of other photographers talking about it either, except as a topic to laugh at.

In all those years, I have never worked with an art director, creative director, or client who asked me to put something into the ad that might be subliminal or suggestive. It's never happened.

Most of us photographers and art directors don't stay up to the wee hours of the morning looking for ways to add a little bit of a subliminal message to a photograph that might make you buy more unconsciously, or do something that is not clearly obvious. Frankly, I don't know any who do. We have too much work to do just getting the ad concepted and produced.

That is not to say you might not find various shapes and 'images' woven into an ad that look like something, but we didn't intentionally put it there. What you see is most likely the product of an overactive imagination than our deft hand at crafting it in.

But let's do face one thing squarely. We do produce advertising to make you want to buy different products. Companies pay us to create ads that will make you think their product is better than the other sitting next to it on the shelf. You may develope a liking for one product, but it was advertising that got you to try it in the first place.

I will say this, while this story is mostly true (some names have been changed to protect the guilty), just telling it is probably a subliminal message. Just you reading it will likely make you think that we actually do work late at night putting nasty little images into the ads. But we don't. I mean put other things in ads. At least I never have.