Invisible Advertisements

talasiga · Post by **talasiga** » Sat Jul 07, 2007 9:25 am

I was reading one of those recycling journals yesterday and came across this comment that adding INVISIBLE ADVERTISEMENTS to the compost hastens its decomposition speed. What is an INVISIBLE ADVERTISEMENT and where can I buy SOME?

Innocent Bystander · Post by **Innocent Bystander** » Sat Jul 07, 2007 10:07 am

The advertisements I hear on commercial radio are invisible, if that's any help.

crookedtune · Post by **crookedtune** » Sat Jul 07, 2007 10:34 am

Rod Sprague · Post by **Rod Sprague** » Sat Jul 07, 2007 3:41 pm

Junk mail that is not opened?
I have heard of one fellow who sighed up onto every junk mail mailing list he could and used the result to heat his home. I used to joke I had a disc burner. I heated my home with AOL discs.

Cynth · Post by **Cynth** » Sat Jul 07, 2007 4:05 pm

The only thing I have heard called "invisible advertising" is advertising that attempts to use subliminal persuasion. I have mostly heard of them in connection with movies but apparently some people feel they have been used in print media:

Anthony R. Pratkanis wrote:In the early 1970s, during the third wave of popular interest in subliminal persuasion, the best-selling author Wilson Bryan Key (1973; 1976; 1980; 1989) advanced the cargo-cult science of subliminal seduction in two ways. (See also Creed 1987.) First, Key argued that subliminal techniques were not just limited to television and movies. Cleverly hidden messages aimed at inducing sexual arousal are claimed to be embedded in the photographs of print advertisements. Key found the word sex printed on everything from Ritz crackers to the ice cubes in a Gilbey Gin ad. Second, Key was successful in linking the concept of subliminal persuasion to the issues of his day. The 1970s were a period of distrust by Americans of their government, businesses, and institutions. Key claimed that big advertisers and big government are in a conspiracy to control our minds using subliminal implants.

I think those ads would be hard to find, mainly because I don't think they are really there. What would the Ritz Cracker company have to gain by printing the word "sex" on their crackers? Does thinking about sex make people eat more crackers? Maybe the person saying that these ads helped the compost pile felt that the insects would be subliminally persuaded to have sex more often and then there would be more of them to decompose the waste.

crookedtune · Post by **crookedtune** » Sat Jul 07, 2007 4:12 pm

Cynth wrote:What would the Ritz Cracker company have to gain by printing the word "sex" on their crackers? Does thinking about sex make people eat more crackers?

Dunno, but Ritz outsells Uneeda biscuits.