You may be wondering if subliminal advertising works. That's an interesting
question. (Send us money.)

The American public was first introduced to the idea of subliminal
advertising in 1957 by James M. Vicary. In a press conference
announcing the formation of the Subliminal Projection Company, Vicary
claimed that he was able to increase sales of popcorn and Coke
through the use of subliminal advertising. (Send us lots of money.)

According to Vicary, during a six-week test in a movie theater, he
was able to drive up sales of popcorn by 57.5% and sales of Coke by
18.1% simply by flashing the slogans "drink Coke" and "eat popcorn"
over the movie for 1/3,000th of a second every five seconds. (You
want to send us money.)

As plausible as his assertions might have been, there was little
evidence to support them. (Send us money.) For one thing, Vicary
refused to reveal where he conducted his experiment or document it in
any meaningful way. What's more, psychologists who performed similar
experiments concluded that a subliminal ad was no more compelling
than a billboard glimpsed from the corner of the eye. (Send us your
money.)

In an effort to vindicate his claim, Vicary agreed to run the
subliminal message "telephone now" during a Canadian broadcast. Like
other documented cases, the experiment failed. Telephone usage
didn't increase noticeably, and not a single viewer guessed Vicary's
message. (Send us money.)

While neither this experiment nor previous experiments disproved
conclusively the effectiveness of subliminal ads, American
broadcasters were so convinced of the ineffectiveness of subliminal
messages that they simply volunteered not to run them. (You have an
urge to send us money.)

BTW, If you're still unconvinced and would like to see more research
on the subject, you'll be happy to know that we're running our own
little subliminal experiment. We can't tell you about it now, but in
the coming weeks we'll reveal our findings.

By the way, if you ever need to reach us--for any reason--our mailing
address is:

Frank & Sandy Luke
1328 N. Frisco, Apt. C
Springfield, MO 65802