Category: Wasting your time

Cynthia Crossen writes in today’s Journal about subliminal advertising:

At a New York press conference 50 years ago, a market researcher, James Vicary, announced he had invented a way to make people buy things whether they wanted them or not. It was called subliminal advertising.

He had tested the process at a New Jersey movie theater, he said, where he had flashed the words “Eat Popcorn” or “Coca-Cola” on the screen every five seconds as the films played. The words came and went so fast — in three-thousandths of a second — that the audience didn’t know they’d seen them. Yet sales of popcorn and Coke increased significantly.

While this caused some hysteria and promises by networks to not engage in subliminal advertising, eventually testing undermined Vicary’s claims of efficacy:

…People began trying to replicate Mr. Vicary’s experiment.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corp. flashed the message “Telephone now” 352 times on a 30-minute program. Of the more than 500 viewers who responded to a follow-up survey, 51% said they felt compelled to “do something” after watching the show. Many said they felt like having something to eat or drink. Only one said she felt like making a phone call.

In another test in San Francisco, 150 viewers, most of them television and radio broadcasters, watched a 25-minute film with an advertising message flashed every five seconds. The viewers then got a ballot with nine product names from which to identify the advertiser. Only 14 people chose the right name, a soft drink. More than twice as many chose a brand of chewing gum.

The Federal Communications Commission ordered Mr. Vicary to demonstrate his device in Washington before a panel of government officials. The message “Eat Popcorn” was transmitted during an episode of “The Grey Ghost.” Sen. Charles E. Potter (R., Mich.) was heard saying to a colleague, “I think I want a hot dog.”

The advertising industry’s trade publication, Printer’s Ink, observed, “Having gone to see something that is not supposed to be seen, and having not seen it, as forecast, the FCC and Congress seemed satisfied.”

Subliminal ads, supporters assured people, were strictly “reminder” ads. “They might move you to do something you like doing, but they’ll never make a Democrat out of a solid Republican, and they’ll never make a Scotch drinker out of a teetotaler,” one advocate told Gay Talese of the New York Times.

In 1962, Mr. Vicary, in an interview, admitted that he had fabricated the results of the popcorn test to drum up business for his market-research firm. Subliminal ads were tossed into the invention junkyard.

“All I accomplished,” he said, “was to put a new word into common usage.”

Denialism blog has failed you. We totally missed Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week. Would anyone like to share how they recognized this event?

In today’s Wall Street Journal, Jennifer Levitz and Kelly Greene report on lead generation firms (also known as list brokers), companies that sell databases of consumer information to businesses for marketing purposes:

Older Americans around the country are getting duped by a seemingly innocuous tactic that can expose them to hard-sell pitches from the insurance industry.

The technique is centered on a marketing tool called the lead card, and it became popular after the federal government created its Do Not Call Registry in 2003 to shield consumers from unwanted solicitors. Sent through the mail, the lead card invites the recipient to mail off an enclosed reply for free information about, say, estate planning.

But the cards fail to warn that by sending off replies, recipients are giving up their right to avoid telephone solicitations from the sender — even if their phone numbers are on the Do Not Call list.

And guess who calls? Scammers:

State regulators say insurers are using the cards to peddle investments unsuitable for seniors, including so-called living trusts that may provide no benefit and annuities that come with steep surrender charges and lengthy payout deferrals.

A case in point is Jeanne Blom, an 81-year-old widow in Minneapolis. A retired office-building cleaner, Mrs. Blom years ago transferred the deed of her house, worth $135,000, to her son, placed his name on her checking account and made him the owner of her 1990 Buick LeSabre. The rest of her assets were valued at far less than $20,000, which under Minnesota law would allow her son to collect them without probate, according to Charles Roach, her attorney. In any case, the probate fee in her county is only $250.

Yes, the narrowing of the phone as a vector for marketing has increased mail marketing. A few years ago, the volume of junk mail sent through USPS exceeded that of ordinary, first class mail. This year, at least a dozen states introduced do-not-mail legislation. The aggravation caused by more and more junk, combined with the frauds against a growing elderly population, will result in serious consideration of do-not-mail. All it’s going to take is a few more incidents like these:

‘Fear Factor’

ChoicePoint internal emails used as evidence in the case showed it was mailing more than a million lead cards a year and charged insurers as much as $35,000 per order for the mass mailings, including one in 2003 alerting older adults to a “new” AARP study on probate taxes. The study was then actually 14 years old, was done before a change in federal probate laws and, according to AARP, no longer represented its views. In internal emails, ChoicePoint employees attributed the cards’ success in generating responses to their “fear factor” and described response rates that “tumbled” when AARP’s name was temporarily removed from mailings.

ChoicePoint’s spokesman says the “business practice” described in the settlement began before ChoicePoint bought its lead-generator unit in 2003, and that ChoicePoint stopped using AARP references after last year’s settlement.

AARP has a similar complaint pending against America’s Recommended Mailers and American Family Prepaid in U.S. District Court in Durham, N.C. AARP alleges that America’s Recommended Mailers uses cards that appear to come from AARP to generate leads sold to American Family and others. America’s Recommended Mailers has denied the claim. American Family said in a court filing that it bought lead cards on “good faith” belief that the cards didn’t violate laws.

North Carolina court filings against American Family say “deceptive” mailers enabled the company’s agents to visit 2,000 North Carolina residents over age 65 in their homes in 2004 and 2005. The state says they bought $4.2 million in living trusts and millions of dollars in equity-indexed annuities that were unnecessary and unsuitable.

In honor of Phenomenon and the fun of talking about magic tricks check out Ramana, aka Wouter Bijdendijk who has been doing the levitation trick shown below, only he’s doing it in front of the Whitehouse.

Here he is doing a similar piece standing on the side of a building – more performance art really.

I think the only one who can’t figure this one out is the current White House resident. It’s clearly a terrorist attempt to bring the executive to a standstill as he tries to puzzle it out.

Spoiler below.
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In today’s Journal, Jane J. Kim writes very clearly about the different tools that are now available to consumers to protect themselves against identity theft. The article explains the advantages and disadvantages to each approach. Great reporting!

Sorry for the absence. Between travel, catching up from travel, and preparing manuscripts, I’ve been slow to blog. I’m back now, but still busy.

Meanwhile, I’ve been enjoying cectic’s comics immensely. I can no longer figure out who in my RSS feed linked these strips, but they are awesome!

Case in point, anyone want to venture a guess who this refers to?

Ha!

While Mark is in Begas, attempting to use his big brain to make money, you people are at my mercy!!1! Let us begin!

Check out today’s Times for a book review of A. J. Jacob’s The Year of Living Biblically, One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible, the story of a secular Jew who attempts to incorporate rules from the good book into modern life:

…”If I wanted to understand my forefathers, this year would let me live like they did, but with less leprosy,” he writes, sounding like Woody Allen on a bad day. So he made a list of scriptural strictures, the more peculiar the better, and set out to fulfill them as a 21st century New Yorker. This mission is exotic to him, he acknowledges, pointing out, “I’ve rarely said the word Lord, unless it’s followed by of the Rings.”

With that mea culpa for any seriously religious readers, Mr. Jacobs goes about creating a methodology. He acknowledges having obsessive-compulsive disorder and loves the idea of following rules. Seventy-two pages later he has typed out every instruction he can find in the Old and New Testaments and set up a month-by-month plan to try them out…

[…]

Other trips, notably to the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Ky., and to Jerry Falwell’s church in Lynchburg, Va., carry Mr. Jacobs beyond his own secular Jewish outlook and engage him in difficult theological questions, however briefly. “In fact, you have to be quite sharp to be a leading creationist,” he writes, after grilling one such scientist about Noah’s Ark.

Ha! A lukewarm review, but probably worth a read!

Today I’ll be leaving for Las Vegas until Sunday so I’ll leave it to my brother to post the next couple of days.

Until then, have fun, and don’t let the cranks run wild in the comments.

Archbishop apologizes for giving Communion to Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence

And what a great article too! PZ would love this group.

On Oct. 7, Archbishop George Niederauer delivered the Eucharist to members of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence – an activist group whose motto is “go forth and sin some more” – prompting cries of outrage from conservatives across the country and Catholics in San Francisco.
…
The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, founded in San Francisco in 1979, are known for their white face paint, outrageous costumes, theatrics and support of the gay community. They adopt names such as Sister Chastity Boner and Sister Constance Craving of the Holey Desire and have mottos such as, “It is not wise to say no to free drinks, cheap jewelry, discount cosmetics or pretty boys.”

It’s also great to see all the shock and horror for what is, in the end, the accidental deliverance of a holy cracker.

Conservative Fox news commentator Bill O’Reilly, who has disparaged “San Francisco values,” called the latest flap another example of how the city is run by “far-left secular progressives who despise the military, traditional values and religion.”

On his Friday news show, O’Reilly called San Francisco “a disgrace on every level.”

You’d think Bill would be down with San Fran, but then, it’s quite likely he’s desperately repressing his urge to be violated with a falafel, whatever. Let’s hope the sisters open up a chapter in every state!