You, too, can use subliminal messages to your advantage
A few weeks ago, I was in a San Francisco restaurant, and I ordered a Pinot off the wine list. I don’t particularly like Pinots, so why the heck did I order one?
Back in the late 1990s, researchers took to a British supermarket and tinkered with the store’s background music. For a two-week period, they played French music and German music on alternating days, and recorded wine sales by country. They found that when French music was played, French wines outsold German wines, and when German music was played, German wines sold better.
What’s more, shoppers indicated via questionnaire no awareness they’d been influenced by music. I wonder if that San Francisco restaurant was playing French music — France is the birthplace of Pinot. Either way, the wine was pretty darned good.
Background music used this way is an example of supraliminal messaging – shoppers hear the music but are not conscious of it influencing their thoughts. Subliminal messaging is similar except the stimulus in question is undetectable, like an image flashed too quickly for the eyes to see, or a sound too low for human ears to hear.
In 2009, researchers experimented with subliminal messaging by showing test subjects either an Apple logo or an IBM logo for 30 milliseconds — too short of a time to consciously process — while asking them to come up with creative ways to use a brick. People who had been shown an Apple logo consistently thought of more creative solutions than those shown the IBM logo.
Supraliminal and subliminal messaging work the same way on the brain: They influence the subconscious.
While consciously we can only process a handful of things at a time, our brains automatically and subconsciously process thousands of stimuli every waking second. All stimuli activate associations in the brain. You may associate the smell of coffee with waking up, Starbucks or your grandmother’s home. You may associate an Apple logo with creativity, smartphones or Steve Jobs. Mere exposure to an image, even subliminally, can activate these associations, with real effects on your thoughts and behavior.
We generally can’t control what music is played in our supermarkets, but that doesn’t mean we can’t use subliminal messaging to our advantage. One way to do this is to carefully examine our environments.
At work, if your main value is machine-like speed and efficiency, everything in your office should reflect that, even down to the brands you choose. Similarly, the décor in your bedroom should encourage rest or romance, study time should have no more than slow-tempo music, and if you want to encourage lingering over a family meal, try no background distractions at all.
At our Dun & Bradstreet offices in Los Angeles, we designed everything to subconsciously align with our values and goals. We have centuries-old barn wood representing our almost 200-year heritage; surfboards built by the mayor to represent our focus on local businesses and community; minimal walls to emphasize collaboration; a failure wall to highlight the benefits of taking calculated risk.
A colleague (let’s call him Aaron) recently made fun of me for being the only CEO he knew who stresses over office plants and wall colors, but our offices have been the subject of numerous awards, and our employees cite it as a key reason for working at the company.
Mission statements and signposts are only necessary if you fail to embed your values into the fiber and fabric of an institution. Your environment should match your intentions, as it often tells the true story without uttering a single syllable.
The people you surround yourself with are equally important, even if you don’t realize it. Enthusiastic, energetic co-workers influence your subconscious to be like them. Overeaters influence you to overeat. Lazy parents — or even a lazy dog — can influence kids to laze at home, which is good if the goal is to wind down but bad if you’re trying to be more physically active.
Spend a few minutes assessing the subliminal messages in your environment, and you can effortlessly prime your brain for whatever you’re trying to achieve — or at least make sure it’s not primed against you. And next time you find yourself making an unusual choice, like ordering your least favorite wine, check the background music.
Jeff Stibel is vice chairman of Dun & Bradstreet and also happens to be a brain scientist.