Rick's World

Link: http://www.sublymonal.com

Wow, I never thought I would be writing about advertising in my blog, but this is really cool.

In an earlier blog, I described a TV advertising campaign called One Second Theater. This was an interesting new type of television advertising directed at owners of DVRs, i.e. the Tivo and the DirecTV Plus DVR (both of which I own). The whole purpose of the advertisement is to make you want to view their commercials. How do they do this? By hiding messages in individual frames of the commercial. You can only see these messages if you go frame by frame through their commercial. These are things that only a DVR can do. General Electric did it in their One Second Theater commercials. In those you find odd little pictures and stuff in the commercial. Now Sprite has taken this idea one step farther in what I think is a VERY clever advertising campaign called Sublymonal Advertising.

Sublymonal Advertising is an obvious play on the term 'subliminal advertising'. This is a type of advertising that uses subliminal messages, usually flashed on the screen for only fraction of a second. You aren't conciously aware of these message, but they get into your subconcious and attempt to control you into buying their products. I believe this kind of stuff was outlawed many years ago. Sublymonal Advertising (note the word Lymon in there) is a reference no doubt to the 'Lymon' taste of Sprite. Plus since all the messages are hidden in there, it is a sort of obvious subliminal advertising... They are intentionally making no secret of it.

I was watching TV the other day and I came across one of those Sublymonal commercials. I had always thought they were very bizarre commercials. I'd always wondered what the hell this commercial was supposed to be saying. Now I get it. It wasn't until I noticed that at the very beginning of the commercial there is a message at the bottom of the screen that says 'DVR Ready'. That was a hint to DVR owners like me that there is something hidden in there. I like this! So just now I happened across a recorded copy of one of these commercials so I framed through it and found the message. I could only find two messages, and only 1 that I could read. It was well done though. In this advertising, you go to their sublymonal.com web site and type in the codes that are hidden on the commercial. From there you get little free stuff, like cell phone ringtones, music videos and stuff like that. Also, if you go to their web site and watch closely, they flash more 'subliminal' codes on the screen that you can type in to get more free stuff.

I love this kind of stuff. I like seeing companies embrace new technologies and find clever ways to use it, rather than to fight it and try to legislate it out of existence. ABC, I'm talking to you! If you made your commercials interesting and clever, people will watch them.