Forum Moderators: not2easy
It, of course, has a picture of a beautiful and beautifully made-up woman, laughing as her unseen partner makes a joke. The image makes it obvious that it is supposed to be a first date.
The copy is at the top.
"She's as excited as you are."
OK, so far, so good. Eye-catching I admit. Took me a while, but try deleting the first "a" and the second space.
"She's s*x..."
Good, subtle, gets around Yahoo censorship and I'd love to compare clickthroughs to see how well it works.
Tigrou
I don't think I would have seen that if you hadn't pointed it out. Could be a coincidence, or could be that someone was trying to market to someone just like you.
If it's the second case then I would have to admit it is a pretty good piece of work.
Tigrou, too much time staring at the screen today? ;)
Nahhh, I admit I'm an ad connoisseur (read: junkie), but with checking my Y! mail accounts, I must see those adds over a 100 times a month. Can't tell you what most of them said, but this one did catch my eye.
Not looking to change my relationship at all, so I wondered what it was about the ad and it finally the subtle text hit me. Maybe it was helped by the contrast of (subliminally) seeing that text on in a family-friendly space like Y!.
Or maybe I am just an ad geek that reads too much into 'em ;-)
c
f
In this case, though, it would not surprise me in the least if this was done with a subliminal bonus in mind. Nice catch, Tigrou.
a few years ago there was a guy named ross jeffries that had seminars about how to get women to do his bidding using a modified form of NLP (neuro-linguistic programming).
one of his favorite techniques was saying something along the lines of:
"you'd think that was above me, but it's actually below me"
say that out loud a few times, and you'll see what he's REALLY saying.
i'm sure there's something to this technique and it can be adapted to online marketing. i think i'll give it a shot :)
take it easy,
eatapeach
This isn' the only article or research available on the subject and you can find much more about it with a simple search. My advice is to contact successful, legitimate advertising firms and ask them about subliminal advertising.
This subject has been done to death at several large unis and the results are all similar, textual subliminals and flashed subliminals simply don't work.
However, associative subliminals are effective, i.e., a Corvette's front end resembling the curved shape of a woman's hips... Whether the Corvette example is truely subliminal or not is open to debate as the sexual association is a learned best propagation chance response.
There was a clear example of sexual association with Mott's Brand Applesauce. The image of the sliced apple clearly represented a woman's ****, and Motts subsequently moved the other apple slice on the label over to cover the offending "core". ;)
Some books on the subject:
Sex Appeal: the Art of Allure in Graphic and Advertising Design by Steven Heller
Soap, Sex, and Cigarettes: A Cultural History of American Advertising by Julian Sivulka
Sex in Advertising: Perspectives on the Erotic Appeal by Tom Reichert
I find that magazine covers make a great study in how to write strong, short phrases for online attention grabs -- just the ticket for Google AdWords, a 21st Century form of marketing haiku and an art form still in its infancy.
"ex" and "ck" words make great attention grabbers. Depending on the font, the word "flick" can appear not fit for polite company.
Another approach is to use a slightly uncommon but still familiar word, or a word that uses the less common letters: k-j-x-q-z. I've have consistently good results beginning an ad with words like "savvy", "jazzy", "stick" and so on.
Jordan
