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Ice Cube Sex: The Truth about Subliminal Advertising Jack Haberstroh
Cross Cultural Publications, Notre Dame, IN, 1994, 157 pp., $17.90
According to Dr Wison Bryan Key, chief propagandist for the idea that advertisers are subliminally seducing the public, many hidden words and pictures can be found in advertising, notably in the ice cubes in liquor ads. Dr Key claims that ice cubes can have gender, and therefore can also have sex! Whither the titillating title of this tome.
Subliminal advertising allegedly registers below an individual's threshold of conscious perception, with the result supposedly being that human behavior is manipulated or controlled without people's awareness. Subliminal advertising communications can be produced three ways:
(1) By briefly flashing a visual stimulus too quickly for an individual to be consciously aware of it (e.g. James Vicary's well-known movie theater experiment with the messages "Drink Coke" and "Hungry? Eat popcorn").
(2) By using subaudible messages, i.e. auditory stimuli which are played at a low volume and under a "carrier" of music, ocean waves, etc. so that they cannot be heard.
(3) By use of embedded stimuli, words and pictures (especially of a sexual nature, such as the word "sex" and women's breasts within ice cubes used in liquor advertising artwork) hidden within larger illustrations.
Although Ice Cube Sex discusses all three forms of subliminal communication, the focus is on embeds since they are the object of Key's obsession.
This brief book claims to be the first comprehensive rebuttal to Dr Key's widely-- publicized thesis disseminated via his books and lectures that consumers are being barraged and influenced by subliminal advertising. Dr Haberstroh penned this book with two purposes in mind. First, to provide the public with the truth regarding subliminal advertising; that it does not exist and does not work and, second, to exhort advertising professionals to speak out against this charlatan.
Dr Haberstroh's concern stems from at least five reputable and independent research studies which confirm that about 62 percent of all Americans continue to believe that advertising practitioners are deliberately embedding invisible messages and images into nearly all of the ads and commercials they create. Yet, there is no substantial proof that subliminal advertising exists let alone affects consumers' thinking or behavior.
Haberstroh traces the history of...