BMW Burns Logo onto Cinema-Goers’ Eyes
wired.com
wired.com
Which could be interesting for, say, horror movies. Put together a frame with a high-contrast image, white on a black background. Maybe a mouthful of fangs, or Freddie Kruger's knives. Time it right, just before a moment where the skittish audience members will close or cover their eyes, and they'll instead see something nasty inside their eyelids.
"1.8.4 use or involve any technique which attempts to convey information to the viewer by transmitting messages below or near the threshold of normal awareness."
An interesting subliminal advertising case cropped up a few years back: http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/s2082405.htm
I could be wrong though. It's probably a bit of a grey area.
(edit) For those not getting the joke - it meant to illustrate that the subsequent disclosure of something done without prior consent does not make it any more acceptable. Be it an image planted in one's head or something physical.
That would be so awesome.
Leela: Didn't you have ads in the 21st century?
Fry: Well sure, but not in our dreams. Only on TV and radio, and in magazines, and movies, and at ball games... and on buses and milk cartons and t-shirts, and bananas and written on the sky. But not in dreams, no siree.
Oh and reduce the cost of popcorn - seriously it is a joke.
$10 ticket + $10 concessions = $10 net revenue (%25 of the ticket and %75 on concessions)
$20 ticket + no concessions = $5 net revenue.
It is the same reason CEO's take $1 salaries and stock grants/options. Salaries are taxed at %36-9 but long-term capital gains tax is only %15.
Holywood needs some better (or worse) accoutnants
For the past 80 years concession prices have been used to keep ticket prices artificially low, to increase the number of film goers, which helps the theaters stay busy, creates the "experience" (I've yet to be in a crowded theater and someone actually hold up a conversation, or answer a cell phone), and most of all allows greater profits to go to the film companies and allows bigger better quality films to be produced.
It's not a joke, it's a sound business strategy. Just like how Coca-Cola and Pepsi have two-dozen drink products each even though 78% of Coca-Cola's gallon sales come from actual "Coca-Cola".
This is similar to how I walk into the grocery store and see beef packaged at $1/lb even though I have a relative in the meat packing industry, that actually packages the meat for my local store and he says they (the meat packers) can't sell it for less than $1.50/lb without making a loss.
"Just like how Coca-Cola and Pepsi have two-dozen drink products each even though 78% of Coca-Cola's gallon sales come from actual "Coca-Cola"."
I'm just curious because I'd be shocked if 78% of Coca-Cola's sales by volume were from actual Coca-Cola. They don't have dozens of drinks, they have hundreds.
Wikipedia also quotes the 78% number, citing Coca-Cola Co's 2005 SEC filing [1]. However, a cursory read of their SEC filing reveals this: "In 2005, concentrates and syrups for beverages bearing the trademark "Coca-Cola" or including the trademark "Coke" ("Coca-Cola Trademark Beverages") accounted for approximately 55 percent of the Company's total gallon sales." [2] It's possible the 78% number the Wikipedia article is drawing from is based on a newer SEC report which isn't cited correctly.
Edit: I Looked up their 10-k from Feb 2010 and found this: "Trademark Coca-Cola Beverages accounted for approximately 51 percent, 51 percent and 53 percent of our worldwide unit case volume for 2009, 2008 and 2007, respectively." [3] So it looks like Wikipedia may have incorrect information!
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Coca-Cola_Company#Revenue
[2] http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/21344/000104746906002...
[3] http://ir.thecoca-colacompany.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=94566&...
You'll notice they typically go on sale below that right around the holidays. It's so they can advertise to get you in and buy other stuff.
Stores like Winco and Costco usually sell coke close to cost. They don't actually get it cheaper than any other grocery store. In fact, most grocery stores will outsell costco when it comes to 12/24 packs. The cost/profit ratio is usually more constant at these places.
I've noticed that Safeway is particularly bad at inconsistent prices (hugely varying cost/profit ratios). They're sales are decent, but everything else is super inflated to make up for it.
You'll almost never see them go on sale below cost.
Once, I had two folks sitting behind me, with one giving a running summary of the movie dialog to her neighbor since the friend was hard hearing. I wished I had a flashlight that I could shine in their faces.
Plenty of experiments have been done on strobe flashing images and sets of images on a subject's eyes. The end result is, generally, that the psyche becomes upset and the person irritated - it's kind of like having a religious zealot push their ideas onto you; if you're set in other beliefs, the experience is only irritating (if not enraging). This is where NLP, hypnosis (the real thing, not the wave a flame in your face and make you stop smoking thing), and manipulation of a person's feelings by eliciting their key feeling words comes into play.
Best example and it's a dead obvious one, would be having a scene with Kim Kardashian in a slightly revealing getup talking to the audience of a movie theater and walking about while sipping on a big coke bottle. People that may not like coke may find Kim sexually arousing which generates social proof for the product in her hand and may loosen (but not fully convert) that consumer's dislike of the product. Case in point: I generally don't like Coca-Cola and it always make me feel crappy after drinking it (bloated, too much sugar, etc...) but I love to drink it at the theater. It just "tastes" good when I drink it at the theater because over time, through a combination of real life psychological links and the clever advertising Coke does in the theaters for its product I've grown to actually enjoy it when I'm at the theater. Now, that doesn't mean I actually purchase one when at the theater (I don't drink soda) but I am aware of the bridge created in my psyche.
[EDIT] I realize the OP's comment was actually on technological innovation and had nothing to do with what I ended up talking about. Hope my comment is at least still interesting :)
Result I see so far from this commercial 1.) Wire has an article talking about BMW (and we're reading it) 2.) This is on HN already and will probably be on reddit/FB and other social site by tomorrow 3.) People will be talking about how innovative BMW's marketing is and associate that with their product 4.) Got me to sit here and watch the commercial with my full attention (last time I did that was checking out superbowl commercial the day after on youtube, and those cost them millions for the airtime) and want to experience the "real thing" afterward
Achieving any single one of these will make it a good marketing campaign, getting all 4 make this a GREAT marketing campaign.
which obviously doesn't mean that there's no such thing as subliminal stimuli, just this example technique is not true. here's a better one http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyQjr1YL0zg and most of his tricks include sending signals to one's lower thresold level, no flashing anything between frames.
There are instances in the real world where this has been attempted (The Republican tv ad campaign a few years ago that flashed the word "RATS" when talking about the Democrats for instance), but there is little to no actual credible evidence to show this works. It's all little more than marketers wetdreams.
OK, maybe not such a great idea. Could be good for circus clowns, though.
I'm not saying that this theater flashing stunt was dangerous, I doubt it was anywhere near dangerous, I'm saying the idea that all visible light is safe can get you blind.
(Obviously a light bulb flash does not irradiate you with nearly as much UV as the sun)
BTW, the Pro-7b is a rather small battery-powered flash unit. The bigger mains-powered ones pack twice the energy (and have much shorter cycle times).
The energy output from light follows the inverse-square law, so double the distance is 4 times less bright, and quadruple the distance is 16 times less bright.
So although the energy output is higher, it's probably not as bad as you think it is.
The nature of these units prevents them from outputting a bright light for more than a few milliseconds. Any catastrophic failure would have most likely resulted in the flash bulbs exploding with sparks and flying glass shielded by the projection screen. Had that happened it would have only enhanced the effect.
I suspect in the darkened cinema, though, you could probably get an idea of the image, and might close your eyes to see it better. Not because the dude on the ad told you to, though.
In advertising it's different. Many advertisers think that the viewers understand English (most educated Germans do) quite OK - so it sometimes happens (more in cinema than in TV) that advertising films are shown in English for the brand to appear more cosmopolitan.
Especially the slogans are often left untranslated. Since some Germans (especially from lower educated classes) aren't as fluent in English as the advertiser assumed, this leads to rather funny missunderstandings, for example:
"Sat 1 - powered by Emotion" was understood as "Sat 1 - Kraft durch Freude" (translated back to English: "Sat 1 - Strength Through Joy")
or
"Esso - we are drivers, too" -> "Esso - wir sind zwei Fahrer" (here, "too" and "two" was confused) -> "Esso - we are two drivers"
or
"Douglas - come in and find out" -> "Douglas - komm rein, du wirst auch wieder herausfinden" -> "Douglas - come in, you will be able to find the way out of the shop then"
Even placing the sensor several feet in front of your face wouldn't help, the fasted that you'd be able to send your signal from the sensor to the glasses is exactly as long as it'd take the flash to reach you, but you'll still have the lag of the electronics.
What a bunch of hypocrites.