The power of the unconscious

Posted by

adi on Oct 28, 2008 in The world of the web |

I’m reading a book at the moment on consciousness called The User Illusion. The book talks about how our unconscious brain does an awful lot more of our computing work than we are aware of, akin to the visible section of an iceberg. Back in the 50′s subliminal advertising was all the rage until people took umbridge at appearing to be manipulated by unscrupulous advertisers.

Now we have Tesco spoofing this approach with its advert featuring Paul Daniels.

An interesting meme from the book is that because unconscious thought is, well, unconscious we cannot therefore be conscious of it. All of which got me thinking how much this approach is used in marketing today and whether it is indeed ethical or not.