Perhaps all of the stimuli around us in our normal lives disrupt the ability of our subconscious to notice them. A lot of the experiments with positive results were conducted in carefully controlled labs. So why doesn't subliminal advertising work so well? There's no consensus on the issue. The subliminal message only worked on independents (perhaps because they already liked Bill Clinton.) Those messages didn't seem to change the minds of Republicans. For example, one study on subliminal messages and political candidates flashed a picture of Bill Clinton subliminally after a picture of Gray Davis, the unpopular Democratic governor of California and asked study participants to rate their favorable impression of Davis. Maybe you'll reach for a Coke within 10 minutes of seeing a subliminal ad, but will you continue to do so the next day, week or month?įurther, some researchers caution that such messages only nudge us to do something we're predisposed to do already. That's because even when it's successful, it's not clear how long the results last. Yet despite these seemingly positive results, subliminal advertising is still seen as largely ineffective. On German-music days, the majority purchased German wine. On the days when French music was played, 77 percent of customers bought French wine. British researchers conducted a two-week experiment where French or German music was played in the wine section of a large supermarket. In 2005, researchers at the Netherlands' Utrecht University and Radboud University were able to get subjects to select Lipton iced tea as their drink of choice after those words flashed by,although this positive result only occurred in those who were already thirsty. Those in the control group? They said they were actually a little less thirsty. Afterward, audience members reported they were 27 percent thirstier after the show than before. In one study, conducted by Princeton University researchers in 2002, the word "thirsty" was added to 12 frames of an episode of "The Simpsons," and the image of a Coca-Cola can to another 12 frames. Psychologists, researchers and others largely agree that subliminal messages do work, but in a limited fashion.