Subliminal Advertisement

Sprite’s Sub[lymon]al ad campaign is a satirical take on subliminal advertizing. With humorous as well as visually stimulating imagery, the ad attempts to use subliminal messaging to make the viewer want to buy sprite. Subliminal messaging is an actual practice in which a message in embedded within another medium and is unrecognizable to the conscious mind. More importantly however, the message is received by the subconscious and unconscious mind and is supposed to affect a person’s thoughts, beliefs, and behaviors. In the instance of the Sprite ad, the message being portrayed is Sprite is an irresistable explosion of delicious lemon and lime flavoring.

At the beginning of the commercial, a female voice informs you that for best results, one should not blink. This emphasizes the essence of what subliminal messaging is. By letting information go from the screen directly into your brain, you can be entirely receptive to the message they want to get across to you whether you are aware of it or not. The message that the Sprite commercial is transmitting is that of the flavor called “Lymon.” Lymon is the combination a lime and lemon. Unlike real subliminal advertising, the Sprite commercial informs the viewer of what is taking place by titling the commercial “Sublymonal Advertising.” The letters in L, Y, M, O, and N in the word "sublymonal" flash green and yellow at the title screen. The color Green throughout the commercial represents the lime flavoring and the color yellow represents the lemon flavor. On the black screen, Sprite cans and logos jump around the screen in a sort of ghostly array. They happen too fast to read or process, but your brain takes in the information anyway.

The first scene in the commercial is in a wooded area at night time. Flashing onto the screen is a painted green sumo wrestler running through the woods screen left. A male voiceover says “Lime.” Another sumo wrestler painted yellow runs screen right and the same voice over says, “Lemon.” The camera switches back and forth between the two sumo wrestlers and the voice over repeats itself with the match of action. Upon a moment of thought, one could associate the feeling of running almost naked through the woods at night with the feeling you might get from drinking sprite. A cross cut occurs and the viewer is sees a green Volkswagen bug speeding screen left followed by a yellow bug speeding screen right. This shot is supposed to remind you of driving really fast on an opoen highway and associating that feeling with drinking Sprite. The cars are racing toward each other on a barren highway on a coastline. In the background is the ocean. The ocean is supposed to give the viewer a sense of freshness associated with Sprite's refreshing taste. The scene cross-cuts back to the sumo wrestlers running through the forest and once again the voiceover reminds the viewer of the lemon-lime flavoring. Suddenly a new character is added to the commercial when a teenager dressed in a “Dumb and Dumber-esque” baby blue prom tuxedo appears randomly on a tree stump in the middle of the forest. The kid in the forest represents the consumer audience in the ad and his humorous demeanor gives us a chance to laugh at ourselves. Quick flashes of manikins wearing safety goggles foreshadow the ensuing crash. It cuts back to the cars, then the wrestlers. In slow motion the wrestler’s big bellies converge on the poor guy’s head. The cars converge in on each other creating the essence of Lymon. A big yellow explosion occurs and the words lymon flash on the screen. We the viewer is submerged under a sea of green fizzy water that is lime. All of these things happening are supposed to stimulate the viewer’s senses and remind them of the way that sprite stimulates the sense of taste within your mouth. After impact, the expression on the tuxedo boy’s face oddly enough is refreshed and relieved as if he just quenched his thirst with a cold bottle of Sprite. In the end of the commercial, the screen reads: “Message Complete.” This is followed by a quick flash of some C.I.A. looking guys who snap their fingers in your face further satirizing the conspiracy theory behind subliminal advertizing.

Although this ad is meant to be satire, it does a good job of using actual subliminal advertising to portray its message. By watching the series of impacts between cars and sumo wrestlers with the colors yellow and green being highlighted throughout, the message is received that Sprite provides an explosively refreshing mix a lemon and lime flavoring. And the visual stimulation that is used throughout the commercial while the viewer may not understand it, is pleasing their sense of sight. In theory, the viewer’s subconscious mind will translate this into an association with sprite and the pleasing of the

Jack Kirby
TA Laura Bennet