One of the most famous case studies on subliminal messages happened back in 1959 when James Vicary showed a movie audience flashing images saying "eat popcorn" and "buy coca-cola". Vicary claimed that the sales of both products increased significantly as a result!

This was such a shock to the general public, and public officials alike, that it lead to subliminal messages being banned from television and radio in Australia, the USA and the UK.

Startlingly though, Vicary later in life admitted that he had fabricated his findings and many now believe that the study did not even take place!

Before, and even after, Vicary admitted he had fabricated his findings other researchers tried to replicate his experiment but failed. So that is that! Subliminal messages don't work and have never worked in advertisements. Right?

Wrong!

Recently Johan Karremans of the University of Nijmegen, Netherlands, and his colleagues decided to once again test the effectiveness of subliminal messages. They devised an experiment that consisted of volunteers who were to be shown subliminal messages in an attempt to sway their choices of drink

Karremans and his team chose two brands that were equally as popular and that had the same reputation as being thirst-quenchers. The brand names "Lipton Ice" and "Spa Rood" were known to all the study participants.

As part of the study the 61 volunteers had to partake in some simple tasks. For instance on a screen they were shown the flashing image of a string of capitol "B"s for 300 milliseconds and had to count every time a small "b" appeared in the string. In between these flashing images they were shown a string of "X"s which actually had a 23 millisecond subliminal message embedded in it.

One group were shown the subliminal messages "Lipton Ice" while a control group were shown the words "Nipeic Tol". At the end of their image viewing the volunteers were asked to make a choice between Spa Rood and Lipton Ice. They were also asked how likely they would be to order the drink when out and if they were thirsty.

Of those volunteers who said they were thirsty and had received the subliminal messages they were more likely to choose Lipton Ice.

After this initail success with subliminal messages Karreman decided on a more specific and detailed study of the subject. This time they used 105 volunteers.

Karremans and his team made the volunteers thirsty before the tasks by giving them salted candy. From the Control Group (who saw no subliminal messages) only 20% chose Lipton Ice. But a huge 80% of the volunteers who were exposed to the subliminal messages chose Lipton Ice!

Karremans concluded that subliminal messages and subliminal advertising is effective but only when it is relevant. In the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology he is quoted as saying, "Priming only works when the prime is goal-relevant".

As was clearly demonstrated 80% of the volunteers who saw the Lipton Ice subliminal messages chose that product!

Karremans now has plans to conduct a subliminal messages study into the long-term effects of subliminal messages.