My association with Quark is about three years now, the most eye-catching aspect is the wide array of events at showcase. Generally when you look upon participating in a techno-management festival like Quark, you are expected to be either technically very sound so you compete with one of the best minds in the country. However unlike most of its counterparts, Quark features events where innovation in technology isn’t the only judging criteria rather your quick thinking, creativity, decision making skills may eventually land yourself to be the ultimate winners. Events such as QuEsT, Wall Street Revolution, MAD, Num3rs are some where on-the spot thinking is the narrow margin between success and failure.

Here I will be discussing about modern day advertising. Basically the event MAD in QUARK compromises of rounds where a participant is judged on the basis of skills involved in an ad-campaign. So why is advertisement the judging criteria? In today’s world advertising has become a household entity, whether it’s the print ads or television promos, companies are coming up with new strategies daily to attract customers towards their products. Most of the times customers are able to identify the key behind the campaigns and clearly all companies have a USP. However at the same time aspects of advertising such as SUBLIMINAL are difficult to get noticed by the naked eye. Let’s see why the glaring mismatch in viewing?

What exactly is Subliminal Advertising? I first heard the term when my favorite F1 team Scuderia Ferrari and their title sponsor the Marlboro were accused by some British doctors for illegally advertising tobacco through their F1 cars. Despite my best efforts I has unable to catch the link, eventually my dad brought to my eyes the bar code on the cars which resembled the bottom half of a packet of Marlboro cigarettes. I was I was stunned when I saw it and looked upon references behind the concept. The basic funda behind a Subliminal video is that the words appear for a single frame, allegedly long enough for the subconscious to pick up, but too short for the viewer to be aware of it. The phrase subliminal advertising was coined in 1957 by the US market researcher James Vicary, who said he could get moviegoers to “drink Coca-Cola” and “eat popcorn” by flashing those messages onscreen for such a short time that viewers were unaware.

Bar Code behind a Ferrari Car                                                     A Marlboro Cover

In order to understand the concept behind subliminal advertising Professor Lavie and colleagues showed fifty participants a series of words on a computer screen. Each word appeared on-screen for only a fraction of second – at times only a fiftieth of a second, much too fast for the participants to consciously read the word.The words were either positive (e.g. cheerful, flower and peace), negative (e.g. agony, despair and murder) or neutral (e.g. box, ear or kettle).

After each word, participants were asked to choose whether the word was neutral or “emotional” (i.e. positive or negative), and how confident they were of their decision. The researchers found that the participants answered most accurately when responding to negative words – even when they believed they were merely guessing the answer.

Professor Lavie believes that the ability to subconsciously pick up fleeting signals could have developed as a way of picking up fleeting warnings. We can’t wait for our consciousness to kick in if we see someone running towards us with a knife or if we drive under rainy or foggy weather conditions and see a sign warning ‘danger’.

So it’s quite clear that since our minds subconsciously pick up negative words, and so the advertisers target this tendency of the customers. The following series of ad pictures will show how a particular word which is taboo among the youths is highlighted to attract the subconscious mind since most of these products target the youths.

The Subliminal effect !!!

AMIT RAJ