http://www.divinecaroline.com/entertainment/its-arrow-famous-logos-hidden-images
Marketing With Subliminal Messages:
What companies use subliminal messages? I should probably rephrase that question to what companies don't use subliminal messages? And to answer that, the number would be pretty few companies don't. For example the picture that I have right here, FedEx. A nice simple logo, two eye appealing colors, nothing really behind it... But wait a second, take a closer look, between the E and the X, what is that? Is that an arrow? Yes it is, and don't think that FedEx didn't come up with this ingenious idea. Take this little excerpt out of an interview from Matthew May with Lindon Leader, the creator of the logo.
"A handful of the other designs contained arrows, but none were hidden. I thought, 'Okay, there's nothing really compelling about an arrow, it's overused and rather mundane.But I thought we could build a story around it. The arrow could connote forward direction, speed, and precision"
(http://www.fastcodesign.com/1671067/the-story-behind-the-famous-fedex-logo-and-why-it-works).
Lindon then said the game was one when some of his own designer didn't even see the arrow between the E and the X. From this simple looking logo, it has won over 40 different design awards as well as it is brought up in every graphic design class around the world. The use of negative space can change your logo and make it one of the most recognizable designs in the world.
Why?
There have been many scientific studies that prove that while we are sitting down, with not much going on and just watching T.V our unconscious mind picks up on subliminal messages. According to Visual Mediation Online, many doctors have done different brain tests to prove this.
- Martijn Veltkamp (PhD-student), demonstrated that you can motivate people to do things that already had the intention to do them, using visual subliminal stimuli [2]
- According to Professor Benjamin B. Wolman, author of more than 40 books on psychology, conscious thought can be influenced by stimuli outside of conscious awareness. He adds, with reference to Silverman (1967), that Freud’s study of consciousness “assumes that a subliminal input raises the activation level of existing unconscious motives” [3]
- Dr. Norman Dixon, a psychologist at University College London, has done extensive research on subliminal learning. In his scholarly work Precociousness Processing he cites 748 references to studies on the effects of subliminal communication, with over 80% showing positive results [4]
- Dr. Eldon Taylor, director of Progressive Awareness Research and a Fellow in the American Psychotherapy Association, firmly believes that subliminal information when presented in an appropriate manner, is processed, retained, and acted upon.
- The research of Dr. H Bahador Bahrami, a neuroscience at the University College of London, using brain scanners showed that the brain absorbs subliminal messages when not too busy.
http://visualmeditation.co/subliminal-messages-how-they-work-and-how-they-affect-us/
Video:
Conclusion:
To conclude on subliminal messages and how they do affect us we have to look at our daily lives, what we watch, and how busy our head is. If we are being lazy and don't have a lot of stress, subliminal messages are more susceptible to being taken in by our unconscious mind. The people creating these ads know fully that they can capture our attention by creating an ad(s) that include something that we may not pick up on right away. Just like Landon Leader said about the FedEx logo, "Your daughter will always point out the logo, they might not know why at the moment, but it is because of the design"
(http://www.fastcodesign.com/welcome.html?destination=http://www.fastcodesign.com/1671067/the-story-behind-the-famous-fedex-logo-and-why-it-works).
Great marketers use great subliminal messages.
