Subliminal and

Surrogate Advertising
RITESH DHUNDHUANI (63)
PRAGYAA PRASAD (64)
PRANAV TRIPATHI (68)

Advertising ??
Advertising is any paid form of non personal presentation and
promotion of ideas, goods and services by an identified sponsor.

Print

Broadcast

Outdoor

Covert

Public Service Advertising

Celebrity

Surrogate

Subliminal

Surrogate Advertising

Duplicating brand image of one product extensively, in order to promote,

another product of the same company.

Use of well established brand, except the original product, to encompass that
product.

It is done by complementary products such as Soda, bottled drinking water,

fruit juice etc.

Other commonly advertised includes Music CDs ,apparel and accessories and
sports good of the same brand

In India it is legal to manufacture liquor and sell them freely.

But it is illegal to advertise them through the public media.

The sponsoring of sports/cultural/leisure events and activities.

Surrogate advertisements are misleading, false and dishonest in many cases.

Also used when companies want to cultivate an image of social

responsibility.
Eg: Advertisement of sweet treats during childrens cartoons,
Pharmaceutical products.

Surrogate Advertisers

The major players who use surrogate advertising as their strategically

promotion elements:

WILLS

MANIKCHAND

BACARDI

KINGFISHER

ARISTROCRAT

SMIRNOFF

SEAGRAMS

Kingfisher promote their liquors, beers and whiskies, which constitutes

the major part of revenues of the UB group.
1. It is neither promoted by the Central nor by the State government.
2. The advertising of these products are banned on the television.

Promotion by brand extension and events

Promotional Events

Why do we need to ban such

advertisements?

Advertising Standards Council of India has banned products advertising

for liquor, cigarette in the country since 1995.

Advertising creates social trends, dictating how people think and act.

Alcohol advertisement promotes underage drinking.

Subliminal Advertising

Reaction to a stimulus that occurs without awareness or

consciousness.
These are those exercises which are intense enough to
influence the mental processes or the behavior of the
individual.

Differential
Threshold
SUBLIMINAL STIMULUS

Absolute
Threshold

Subliminal

advertisement is a way of communicating subliminal stimuli.

It is all around us but one might never come to know.

They are the hidden messages.

Consumer can be easily encouraged to buy a product by influencing its

senses

You will not see it, neither hear yet your mind perceive it.

People possess subliminal knowledge, for example, when they show part of
something, some letters of a word, insinuations in certain shapes, special
sounds, etc. it is when imagination takes charge of overcoming the
conscience threshold and carries out transmission.

The sub mind goes on keeping facts through time, which is overlooked by
the conscience. Using visual as well as oral stimuli, we explore the ways
through which the sub mind is able to harbor those patterns, before
conscious thought. The unconscious goes ahead of the conscious.

Important part

The conscious mind doesnt have time to rationalize or analyze subliminal

messages.

So, people might more easily accept them.

REMEMBER ? sub- conscious never question back.

Competition

You might not find any other means in given political or social environment.

One of the trend of marketing, so why not use it?

Examples :
Disneys Pirates of the Caribbean bridge the gap between family-friendly and adult
action movie. They used a clever visual overlap between the skull and Mickeys
ears.

The cute A to Z arrow in Amazons logo looks quiet

close to a grinning face doesnt it?

Marlboro designed a bar code for the chassis that

looks vaguely like a pack of their smokes when it
begins to blur while travelling at around 200 mph.
All this just to get around a ban !

Perception n Consumer Behaviour

Year

Experiment

Result

1957

Eat Popcorn, Drink CocaCola, flashed on movie

screens

Popcorn sales increased 58% & Cola

sales increased by 18% - results later
reported to be false.

2008

Subjects were exposed to

images of either IBM or Apple
logo, then their creativity was
tested.
Lipton was flashed on
movie screens.

Subjects exposed to Apple Logo

scored higher on their tests.

2015

Test Group: 54% - water & 46% Lipton Control Group: 39%- water,
61%- Lipton Differences were not
statistically significant.

Despite many studies of subliminal persuasion, there is no evidence that

subliminal advertising persuades people to buy goods and services.

Most of the effects of subliminal stimuli were researched in highly

artificial situations.

Some interpret the Apple-IBM experiment as proof that a brand can make
you perform better.

There is an indication that subliminal advertising may reduce anti-social

behavior.

Many stores use ambient music that is proven to reduce antisocial behavior.

Thank You