5 ms·

Example of Subliminal Advertising

68 points by aresant 17y ago

Jim72 17y ago
At first I thought this was just SPAM. But, I watched the entire video and found it quite intriguing. After it ended, I watched the first few minutes again... and sure enough, I saw the same stuff once I knew what to look for.
aresant 17y ago
Summary: a) Guy hires designers to design a logo. b) Guy feeds designers subliminal messaging on their cab ride to office. c) Designers build nearly an exact copy of the logos / messaging that the guy implanted. More about this guy here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derren_Brown http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derren_Brown Definitely worth a look.
- bgraves 17y ago
  Thanks for this. I'm a big Derren Brown fan and can't view YouTube due to proxy restrictions. I know exactly which clip this is thanks to your summary.
- BobbyH 17y ago
  I read the Wikipedia article and there's an awesome section called "Waking Dead". I did some googling and found another holy-crap Youtube video, embedded here: http://www.moviesfoundonline.com/derren_brown_waking_dead.php http://www.moviesfoundonline.com/derren_brown_waking_dead.ph... Here is a description from Wikipedia: In June 2005, a clip from the second series was widely circulated on the internet. In this clip, Brown claims to have created a video game he calls "Waking Dead" which "is able to put roughly 1/3 of the people who play it into a catatonic trance". In this episode, he places the video game in a pub to lure a supposedly unsuspecting patron into playing the game. He then "kidnaps" the catatonic "victim" and places him in a real-life recreation of the video game, having him fire an air gun at actors, pretending to be zombies and outfitted with explosive squibs.
  - csmeder 17y ago
    Is this real? That would be called kid napping in the US, right? This must be staged?
  - metachris 17y ago
    That video is really crazy -- and quite fun to watch! I'm just not really sure if something like that is ok to do to a random person -- might cause a serious trauma...
    - blhack 17y ago
      is it really even possible to do something like that?
      - eagleal 17y ago
        If the person suffers from some form of epilepsy, could drop in a state of unconsciousness. From there should be easy to just recreate a similar environment to the previous one (if you find yourself, in a credible place full of zombies, with a gun, you will shoot, instinct). Video games, offer a good immersion in the story, if played long enough (think of the current military training). Though, the people in the video linked are just actors (and bad ones). Considered the complexity of organization, I was disappointed in the end: just touch the actor head with his hands, and the actor 'magically' (instantly) calm down, and return to the previous state.
  - huhtenberg 17y ago
    This has just too much overlap with the storyline of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labyrinth_of_Reflections http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labyrinth_of_Reflections
nazgulnarsil 17y ago
marketers are NOT masters of persuasion. there's a selection effect at work that over time the companies best at this sort of thing have triumphed. sure, there's intelligent direction, but lots of effective marketing tools were discovered by accident.
icey 17y ago
It's worth noting that Derren Brown is an entertainer / illusionist. For everything that you see in the video, there are likely a large number of things you're not seeing. Instead of working his tricks under the illusion of them being "magic" he pins the workings on pop psychology - he may tell you that he's using subliminal messages posted along the route, and not mention a bunch of coloring books left in the room with similar pictures (for example). It's a cool video, for sure; but the results are most likely not derived from "subliminal messages".
- chrisa 17y ago
  Even if this was the result of an illusionist, it highlights something I've often thought of, and has come up on HN a few times: that very similar products and movies will come out at just about the same time. The best examples I can give are from movies, and how close together certain movies are made and released, that have very similar plots: Deep Impact (May 1998) -> Armageddon (July 1998) The Illusionist (September 2006) -> The Prestige (October 2006) Paul Blart: Mall Cop (January 2009) -> Observe and Report (April 2009) These movies came out too close together for one to copy the other, so either the directors and studios were in it together on these movies (entirely likely I suppose: I don't know much about the movie industry; if anyone does know why this occurs, I'd be very interested), or one studio got wind of what the other was doing and made a "copy" before the original even came out, or else something much more subtle is going on. In the startup / tech world, I think this happens too, because we all tend to follow the same blogs, news sources, etc – so any subtle (probably unintentional) message that makes one of us think of a new product makes 1000 of us think of a nearly identical product, at the exact same time. To me, that highlights execution is so important, and ideas are a "dime a dozen".
  - pavel_lishin 17y ago
    Three examples over more than a decade can be easily chalked up to coincidence.
    - chrisa 17y ago
      I just picked three; here's some more: (It still could be coincidence I suppose, but it feels like more than that) http://www.11points.com/Movies/11_Damn_Near_Identical_Movies_That_Were_Released_at_the_Same_Time http://www.11points.com/Movies/11_Damn_Near_Identical_Movies... http://www.filmjunk.com/2007/03/07/when-movies-come-in-pairs-examples-of-hollywood-deja-vu/ http://www.filmjunk.com/2007/03/07/when-movies-come-in-pairs...
ErrantX 17y ago
I gather this is the (reasonably old) clip with the logo designers? Great clip - and I recommend you watch more of Derren Brown. He is by far one of my favorite entertainers because he makes very clear that everything he does is a matter of manipulative psychology and "sleight of hand". Which makes it all the better because you spend the whole episode trying to figure out how he managed it - and wondering if the solutions (which he often provides) are actually real. The other great thing about Brown is that he loves debunking pseudo-science and other rubbish. The section in one of his books about Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) is a fantastically well thought out debunking - he actually tried NLP at one stage in his early career and you can see his fascination with the idea before his final realization it was just pop psychology (his section on religion is equally compelling). But best of all he pulls some awesome stunts/tricks. Highlights from the past include: playing Russian roulette, live.... (with blanks, but still lethal...) and (my personal favourites) "programming" a group of people to pull off a fake heist and paying for stuff (in the US as it happens) with paper instead of real money.
wakeupthedawn 17y ago
Watch carefully at around 1:15. When the camera comes is shot behind the designers, the envelop is not on the table. It is still in Derren's hand, as it should be. When the camera view switches to the one from behind Derren, the envelope (or whatever that is) is already seen to be on the table. Then it switches back to the view behind the designers, and he has it in his hand again and finally places it on the table. There's lots of other shading editing throughout.
corruption 17y ago
Anyone who thinks this isn't real, go and read some mentalism books. Derren's ebooks and audio books are especially interesting for beginners. I was staggered at the practicality of many of their ideas. E.g. I now recognise when someone unwittingly is using hypnotic suggestion in a conversation and it doesn't have the effect it may have. I'm able to pretend to be psychic at parties, and can pull of some pretty good cold reading tricks as well now. It's worth learning how to do memory palaces just for fun (one of Derren's audiobooks has this, which is a good beginner introduction). If you don't think he's capable of tricks like this without cutscenes, there are some videos floating around of him performing tricks better than this on other top class magicians which couldn't have been faked. I suspect he claims he's doing illusions because it makes it seem less powerful than it really is, and makes us seem more in control than we really are.
- rbreve 17y ago
  I lost respect for Derren Brown when he did the show where he guessed the lottery numbers. The video was clearly edited.
  - JshWright 17y ago
    Yeah... _clearly_ is was faked. It was so obvious, I'm sure you spotted it before you read the detailed analysis of how it was done, right?
    - mapleoin 17y ago
      You're just trolling now. Could you be a bit more informative and point the rest of us, who don't know what this is about, to a link with that detailed analysis?
      - JshWright 17y ago
        http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1213841/Derren-Browns-lottery-trick-Amateur-film-maker-recreates-stunt-perfectly---magic-hocus-pocus.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1213841/Derren-Brown...
mrcharles 17y ago
The 'trick' to this guy's videos is that he's making the viewer believe it's true.
petercooper 17y ago
This video contains content from Channel 4, who has blocked it in your country on copyright grounds. What.. my country, the UK? The country where I have to pay an extortionate TV tax/license every year, part of which goes to fund Channel 4? How comes I can view this through a US-based VPN yet not directly in the UK when the content is from a British TV station I'm paying for?
- ropiku 17y ago
  I was surprised too. You can view the video on Channel 4 website: http://www.channel4.com/programmes/derren-brown-mind-control/video/series-4/episode-1/animal-heaven http://www.channel4.com/programmes/derren-brown-mind-control... (hopefully that's the one linked).
- Quarrelsome 17y ago
  Oi, the "extortionate TV license" is well worth it. The BBC content itself is freaking awesome.
proee 17y ago
This makes one wonder how much influence major websites are having on designers in general. If a designer is using facebook 10 times a day, will they submliminally add facebook style typography or layout on their next client site?
- varaon 17y ago
  In the online real-time strategy game Starcraft, there is a term called the "metagame" that refers to (among other details) the current trends in how the game is played. There can often be large shifts in the strategies that a majority of players are using. They often start with the professional gamer who first developed it and dominated with it, thus popularizing it. People end up getting exposure from watching the pros play, and also from having the strategy used against them. The more someone loses to a given strategy, the higher they will regard it. I'm curious if this happens with design trends, as you were saying. For more info on the metagame, see http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft/Metagame http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft/Metagame

68 points by aresant 17y ago

Jim72 17y ago

At first I thought this was just SPAM. But, I watched the entire video and found it quite intriguing. After it ended, I watched the first few minutes again... and sure enough, I saw the same stuff once I knew what to look for.

aresant 17y ago

Summary: a) Guy hires designers to design a logo. b) Guy feeds designers subliminal messaging on their cab ride to office. c) Designers build nearly an exact copy of the logos / messaging that the guy implanted. More about this guy here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derren_Brown http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derren_Brown Definitely worth a look.

bgraves 17y ago
Thanks for this. I'm a big Derren Brown fan and can't view YouTube due to proxy restrictions. I know exactly which clip this is thanks to your summary.
BobbyH 17y ago
I read the Wikipedia article and there's an awesome section called "Waking Dead". I did some googling and found another holy-crap Youtube video, embedded here: http://www.moviesfoundonline.com/derren_brown_waking_dead.php http://www.moviesfoundonline.com/derren_brown_waking_dead.ph... Here is a description from Wikipedia: In June 2005, a clip from the second series was widely circulated on the internet. In this clip, Brown claims to have created a video game he calls "Waking Dead" which "is able to put roughly 1/3 of the people who play it into a catatonic trance". In this episode, he places the video game in a pub to lure a supposedly unsuspecting patron into playing the game. He then "kidnaps" the catatonic "victim" and places him in a real-life recreation of the video game, having him fire an air gun at actors, pretending to be zombies and outfitted with explosive squibs.
- csmeder 17y ago
  Is this real? That would be called kid napping in the US, right? This must be staged?
- metachris 17y ago
  That video is really crazy -- and quite fun to watch! I'm just not really sure if something like that is ok to do to a random person -- might cause a serious trauma...
  - blhack 17y ago
    is it really even possible to do something like that?
    - eagleal 17y ago
      If the person suffers from some form of epilepsy, could drop in a state of unconsciousness. From there should be easy to just recreate a similar environment to the previous one (if you find yourself, in a credible place full of zombies, with a gun, you will shoot, instinct). Video games, offer a good immersion in the story, if played long enough (think of the current military training). Though, the people in the video linked are just actors (and bad ones). Considered the complexity of organization, I was disappointed in the end: just touch the actor head with his hands, and the actor 'magically' (instantly) calm down, and return to the previous state.
- huhtenberg 17y ago
  This has just too much overlap with the storyline of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labyrinth_of_Reflections http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labyrinth_of_Reflections

nazgulnarsil 17y ago

marketers are NOT masters of persuasion. there's a selection effect at work that over time the companies best at this sort of thing have triumphed. sure, there's intelligent direction, but lots of effective marketing tools were discovered by accident.

icey 17y ago

It's worth noting that Derren Brown is an entertainer / illusionist. For everything that you see in the video, there are likely a large number of things you're not seeing. Instead of working his tricks under the illusion of them being "magic" he pins the workings on pop psychology - he may tell you that he's using subliminal messages posted along the route, and not mention a bunch of coloring books left in the room with similar pictures (for example). It's a cool video, for sure; but the results are most likely not derived from "subliminal messages".

chrisa 17y ago
Even if this was the result of an illusionist, it highlights something I've often thought of, and has come up on HN a few times: that very similar products and movies will come out at just about the same time. The best examples I can give are from movies, and how close together certain movies are made and released, that have very similar plots: Deep Impact (May 1998) -> Armageddon (July 1998) The Illusionist (September 2006) -> The Prestige (October 2006) Paul Blart: Mall Cop (January 2009) -> Observe and Report (April 2009) These movies came out too close together for one to copy the other, so either the directors and studios were in it together on these movies (entirely likely I suppose: I don't know much about the movie industry; if anyone does know why this occurs, I'd be very interested), or one studio got wind of what the other was doing and made a "copy" before the original even came out, or else something much more subtle is going on. In the startup / tech world, I think this happens too, because we all tend to follow the same blogs, news sources, etc – so any subtle (probably unintentional) message that makes one of us think of a new product makes 1000 of us think of a nearly identical product, at the exact same time. To me, that highlights execution is so important, and ideas are a "dime a dozen".
- pavel_lishin 17y ago
  Three examples over more than a decade can be easily chalked up to coincidence.
  - chrisa 17y ago
    I just picked three; here's some more: (It still could be coincidence I suppose, but it feels like more than that) http://www.11points.com/Movies/11_Damn_Near_Identical_Movies_That_Were_Released_at_the_Same_Time http://www.11points.com/Movies/11_Damn_Near_Identical_Movies... http://www.filmjunk.com/2007/03/07/when-movies-come-in-pairs-examples-of-hollywood-deja-vu/ http://www.filmjunk.com/2007/03/07/when-movies-come-in-pairs...

ErrantX 17y ago

I gather this is the (reasonably old) clip with the logo designers? Great clip - and I recommend you watch more of Derren Brown. He is by far one of my favorite entertainers because he makes very clear that everything he does is a matter of manipulative psychology and "sleight of hand". Which makes it all the better because you spend the whole episode trying to figure out how he managed it - and wondering if the solutions (which he often provides) are actually real. The other great thing about Brown is that he loves debunking pseudo-science and other rubbish. The section in one of his books about Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) is a fantastically well thought out debunking - he actually tried NLP at one stage in his early career and you can see his fascination with the idea before his final realization it was just pop psychology (his section on religion is equally compelling). But best of all he pulls some awesome stunts/tricks. Highlights from the past include: playing Russian roulette, live.... (with blanks, but still lethal...) and (my personal favourites) "programming" a group of people to pull off a fake heist and paying for stuff (in the US as it happens) with paper instead of real money.

wakeupthedawn 17y ago

Watch carefully at around 1:15. When the camera comes is shot behind the designers, the envelop is not on the table. It is still in Derren's hand, as it should be. When the camera view switches to the one from behind Derren, the envelope (or whatever that is) is already seen to be on the table. Then it switches back to the view behind the designers, and he has it in his hand again and finally places it on the table. There's lots of other shading editing throughout.

corruption 17y ago

Anyone who thinks this isn't real, go and read some mentalism books. Derren's ebooks and audio books are especially interesting for beginners. I was staggered at the practicality of many of their ideas. E.g. I now recognise when someone unwittingly is using hypnotic suggestion in a conversation and it doesn't have the effect it may have. I'm able to pretend to be psychic at parties, and can pull of some pretty good cold reading tricks as well now. It's worth learning how to do memory palaces just for fun (one of Derren's audiobooks has this, which is a good beginner introduction). If you don't think he's capable of tricks like this without cutscenes, there are some videos floating around of him performing tricks better than this on other top class magicians which couldn't have been faked. I suspect he claims he's doing illusions because it makes it seem less powerful than it really is, and makes us seem more in control than we really are.

rbreve 17y ago
I lost respect for Derren Brown when he did the show where he guessed the lottery numbers. The video was clearly edited.
- JshWright 17y ago
  Yeah... _clearly_ is was faked. It was so obvious, I'm sure you spotted it before you read the detailed analysis of how it was done, right?
  - mapleoin 17y ago
    You're just trolling now. Could you be a bit more informative and point the rest of us, who don't know what this is about, to a link with that detailed analysis?
    - JshWright 17y ago
      http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1213841/Derren-Browns-lottery-trick-Amateur-film-maker-recreates-stunt-perfectly---magic-hocus-pocus.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1213841/Derren-Brown...

mrcharles 17y ago

The 'trick' to this guy's videos is that he's making the viewer believe it's true.

petercooper 17y ago

This video contains content from Channel 4, who has blocked it in your country on copyright grounds. What.. my country, the UK? The country where I have to pay an extortionate TV tax/license every year, part of which goes to fund Channel 4? How comes I can view this through a US-based VPN yet not directly in the UK when the content is from a British TV station I'm paying for?

ropiku 17y ago
I was surprised too. You can view the video on Channel 4 website: http://www.channel4.com/programmes/derren-brown-mind-control/video/series-4/episode-1/animal-heaven http://www.channel4.com/programmes/derren-brown-mind-control... (hopefully that's the one linked).
Quarrelsome 17y ago
Oi, the "extortionate TV license" is well worth it. The BBC content itself is freaking awesome.

proee 17y ago

This makes one wonder how much influence major websites are having on designers in general. If a designer is using facebook 10 times a day, will they submliminally add facebook style typography or layout on their next client site?

varaon 17y ago
In the online real-time strategy game Starcraft, there is a term called the "metagame" that refers to (among other details) the current trends in how the game is played. There can often be large shifts in the strategies that a majority of players are using. They often start with the professional gamer who first developed it and dominated with it, thus popularizing it. People end up getting exposure from watching the pros play, and also from having the strategy used against them. The more someone loses to a given strategy, the higher they will regard it. I'm curious if this happens with design trends, as you were saying. For more info on the metagame, see http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft/Metagame http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft/Metagame