Persuasive Speech On Subliminal Advertising And Cults

Note to OPP user: this was written as an outline to a persuasive speech, but it includes pretty much every word of the speech and it could probably be edited into essay form. This speech references advertisements that I couldn't include in my submission to this website. The Ralph Lauren example can most likely be found in a women's magazine. It is a 3-page ad, the first page features a young couple, the woman having long brown hair, they are standing with their pelvises pressed together and they are looking lustily into each others' eyes. The second page of the ad features the Ralph Lauren perfume, and the third page shows the girl with flushed cheeks staring into the camera, seen only from her bare shoulders up. This model is also seen on Ralph Lauren television commercials. If you wish to reference the Winston cigarette ad, you could just say "there was a Winston cigarette ad from 1976..."

SPEAKER:

PURPOSE: To persuade my audience to refuse to be persuaded by subliminal advertising

I. ATTENTION

Who here has seen the movie "Fight Club"? If you have, you have been exposed to a thing called subliminal messaging.

Let me show you a short clip from the movie. [show clip]

Okay, raise your hand if you saw the image flash on the screen.

For those of you who didn't see it, here it is in slow-motion. [show the image]

I noticed three other instances just like that one. That's not even all; there's lots more to watch out for in that movie.

Those kinds of techniques are used all of the time, especially in advertising.

II. NEED

Most of us remember an incident involving George "Dubyah" Bush. During the campaigns, the Republican party ran a commercial in which they said that Al Gore's prescription plan "lets bureaucrats decide." Right then, the word "RATS" flashed on the screen. Bush defended the ad by saying he really didn't think it was intended to be "subliminibal." Did the ad work? You tell me. He got elected, didn't he?

You might have heard that at movie theaters, they used to flash images ["popcorn"] onto the screen in order to encourage people to get up and buy something at the concessions stand. It worked.

At K-mart, when they flashed the message "PLEASE DON'T STEAL" onto their monitors in the stores, theft was reduced by about 30%.

Now, look at this Winston cigarette ad from 1976.

First of all, notice how everything points to the product. His arms, the open shirt, the necklace, even the fact that he has a beard; it all seems to point to the pack of cigarettes.

This is not accidental. We know that the ad companies spend obscene amounts of time and money creating each shot. Nothing is allowed in that wasn't premeditated.

By the way, the necklace is a Hebrew symbol of fertility. Nah, that's not suggestive!

Now look at this jar. Notice how it's the only thing in the background that's not heavily blurred.

If you look closely you can see the letters UICIDE.

The only word in the English language that has that combination of letters is "SUICIDE."

Now, why would they put that in their ad? The tobacco industry has been telling us for years that smoking is not suicide!

The reason they did this is because it appeals to the smoker's sense of danger and self-destruction.

Even if you're not the smoker that this ad is trying to appeal to, we all have these primal instincts. It's the reason why we all turn our heads at the sight of an automobile accident. It's the reason why anybody would buy movies such as the "Faces of Death" series.

Advertisers love to take advantage of these instincts.

For a more contemporary example, I need one male and one female volunteer.

Look at this Ralph Lauren ad.

Look closely at the positions of their bodies. I want you to mimic this pose exactly.

As you can see, this is an incredibly awkward pose.

The next page shows a picture of the product.

Next, we see a picture of the girl.

Again, the picture is on the right. This is the picture that completes the image. It's the "money shot."

In a multiple page ad, the "money shot" always stays on the side that your attention was initially drawn to. Think about it; when you flip through ads, you tend to focus on one side of the magazine. For most of us, it's usually the right side. But not always. When they make an ad, if they put the beginning on the left, and the end on the right, all of the readers miss their message.

Look at the girl. Her cheeks are flushed, and she has a satisfied expression on her face.

Also notice how they conveniently chose a tube top, so that in page 3 you can't see a stitch on her.

Remember, none of this is accidental. This ad evokes a primitive emotion. And they force us to

assume that something happened between page 1 and page 3. And what's on page 2? The product that made it all happen.

To understand how subliminal messaging works, we have to understand the process in our brains which allows us to see. To understand how subliminal messaging works, we have to understand the process in our brains which allows us to see.

First of all, your eye sees absolutely everything that passes in front of it.

Every image is sent to, and received by, the cerebral cortex. This is an enormous amount of information. It's enough to make somebody go insane. But luckily, the cerebellum gleans through this information and narrows it down to a manageable level. So we only consciously pay attention to those images that are important in the current context.

Now, the human eye cannot see anything that is faster than