TV Commercial Narrator: “You don’t have to _do it_ alone”
Do what?
Apparently the word “SEX” embedded in the beach sand and in the lady’s hair explains what the narrator is really talking about.
If prayer and Jesus aren’t enough, try Madison Avenue advertising techniques to pack ‘em in. Apparently the United Methodist Church agrees.
Subliminal advertising
Subliminal advertising has been commonly used by advertisers dating back to at least the 1950s. Wilson Bryan Key wrote an excellent book in the 70s on this subject with many supporting photos called “Subliminal Seduction.”
The idea is that our subconscious mind perceives and stores some things that we otherwise aren’t consciously paying attention to. Advertisers take advantage of this by trying to stealthly associate their products with the thing people are most subconsciously preoccupied with, which is of course sex.
Although other messages and pictures are used, the letters “S-E-X” often appears in such ads. The letters are usually vague, distorted, sometimes out of proportion to each other, and often cleverly embedded near the edges of the advertisement away from the center of attention.
The advertiser will usually air brush or Photoshop the letters “S-E-X” into common objects such as the hair of people or ice cubes in liquor ads. In this case the advertiser chose to subtly write the letters in the sand on the beach next to the smiling woman. In actuality, the UMC sex embeds on the beach and in the woman’s hair are not really subliminal embeds, but semi-subliminal since they can be easily and instantly seen once they are pointed out to the viewer.
Video
I’ve made a crude video copy of the commercial using a web camera to film my TV screen. In spite of the poor quality, I think you can still see the beach “SEX” embed and hear the announcer say “you don’t have to *do it* alone” [1].
Link to United Methodist Church Organization’s embedded ‘SEX’ commercial
The following are links to a few other examples of advertising with “SEX” embedded:
Link to the scene in the Lion King where “SEX” is displayed
[1] – It’s a wave movie file (*.wmv), about 1.7 megabytes. If you have windows media player installed you should be able to view the video. In Windows Media player, after you first hit the pause (||) you can both pause the video and continue it by hitting the space bar. If anyone can find a better copy of this, please send it to me.