Many people have seen this classic Gilbey's gin ad. The word SEX is clearly visible in the glass. It goes way beyond that though, and I still remember how it blew my mind when I first saw it. There are several things going on I don't remember, but I know that the glass swizzle stick represents penetration. What's really crazy is the bottle cap lying next to the bottle. There's nothing about that, but if you look in the reflection on the table, something else pops up. I'll give you a sec if you'd like to try and find it for yourself. ...
Give up? Look closely. It's a pair of legs and an erect penis. Of course it isn't photo-realistic, but to your subconscious it more than gets the point across. The glass reflects what looks like a vagina. Again it's not meant to be perfect. Then you'd see it and the game would be over. They can't make it obvious, although most things are once pointed out. I doubt anyone could miss the SEX lettering. I don't remember if Gilbey's or anyone else ever came clean about it, but I seriously doubt they tried to deny it. Maybe they did. I do remember one thing that happened. Once the story got out, the Advertising Council or whomever it was came out and said "Aw, shucks. We're sorry. We promise not to do it any more." What was crazy is that most people actually believed hem. All they did was just get better at it.
It works so well for the very reason that we don't consciously notice these images and symbols. The subconscious mind actually plays a much greater role in how we think and act than the conscious. And symbols (and here, images) are much more powerful than any written language. We don't need to see the words STOP or ALTO to know that a red octagonal sign means "stop" or that any triangular yellow sign means danger. You can take a symbol and maybe blur or distort it a bit and place it somewhere in an ad, and 999 out of 1,000 people would never notice it, but all 1,000 will perceive it, and it can definitely act upon the subconscious.
Some symbols are in the open. Bacardi uses the bat as a trademark. In fact it's trademarked as the "bat device." A device is something that is used for something. It's interesting what the bat device does in this case, and it's responsible not only for selling more Bacardi, but more of all alcohol in general. The bat is traditionally a symbol of death. Relating to the consumption of alcohol, it sends two different messages to two groups of people. The idea is that one group; let's call them the optimists, will see the Barcadi bat and think that by drinking Bacardi they can cheat death. The "pessimists" as it were will see it and that there's nothing they can do about it and they're going to die anyway, so they might as well drink alcohol. It's brilliant. It covers both sides of the equation. No wonder they call it a device.
Most of it though is cleverly hidden. It's not just ads. It's in commercials, movies, TV shows, and yes, even well-known cartoons, which I find beyond deplorable. I won't elaborate, because all it would do is serve to shoot the messenger, and I didn't do that shit. I will say that people really might want to look into what their kids are watching a little more closely. I don't even have any kids and it infuriates me. You think this evil technique works well on adults? It works much better on children.
First off the the etchings in the bottom of the glass represent a volcano. I'll leave that to you to figure out what that might signify to a male. In the upper-left ice cube you should clearly see a gray cat. There's even "whiskers." His mouth is slightly offset to the right, but again they can't make it too perfect or you'll notice it right off, and it will have zero subliminal effect. In the cube below that there's a spherical shape and a black spot that resembles sort of an Alien skull.
In the upper-right cube there's a white cat and several other faces and whatnot, but I won't point it all out. It would take all day. The easiest thing to see in that cube is the shark. See if you can spot it. ... Okay, there's a white stripe with a black triangle. Just to the left and below that is the curved mouth of the shark; complete with teeth. It's facing downward and to the left. I just blew up this image to have a quick look for myself, and I noticed the weird, reptilian "demon face." I had to grin because it's been a long time since I've see this guy. It's just to the left of the "shark." The head is sharply tilted to the left. A thin white brow goes directly into the long sharp nose. Just beneath that is a dark slit of a mouth. You should clearly be able to see (click on the image to enlarge) two deep-set eyes looking straight back at you. It's eerie.
In the center cube you can see some sort of long insect. It has a head with antennae, a long thin body and legs. I forgot what the deal is with insects, but it's significant. There's tons of other stuff. In the bottom cube there's sort of a shark/prehistoric cartoon fish thing. He has a deep body that thins sharply at the "snout" and the "tail." You can see a fin on top, gills and another toothy mouth, and if you look very closely you can see that he's grinning and looking straight back at you. Maybe I should mention here that if it sounds like somebody slipped something into my coffee this morning, these were the original interpretations by the author of the book. I can give myself bonus points because I noticed the "SEX" in the Gilbey's ad long before I knew about any of this stuff, but some of the really small stuff had to be pointed out to me later. The author did suggest ways of relaxing and being patient when looking at the images, and letting things pop out on their own, and it worked very well. I clearly saw some of the crazy things in the Calvert's ad before they were pointed out.
The best part of this ad, and what tells me that this is definitely deliberate, is the lizard crawling along the rim of the glass. He's hard to see but he's perfectly formed. If you're interested, and it's cool, you may need a magnifying glass, but he's right there. There's no way that could be random. That was put there on purpose. That has to do with all of the "reptile brain" stuff and I won't get into all that. He has a perfectly-formed head, feet with claws and a tail. He's perfectly drawn, but almost none of the millions who saw this ad worldwide ever noticed. It just about cracked me up when I first saw it it was so crazy. Who would put a lizard in a liquor ad? People who understand symbols apparently.
All this is nothing revolutionary. It's simple. It's been going on since we first drew a zigzag in the dirt with a stick, and it certainly hasn't stopped. Nowadays they can do it with computers and make it really subtle, but back when these ads came out it took real artistic skills; not to mention a very highly-developed sense of pareidolia. They had to first take the raw image; look for things that might resemble faces or animals, and then airbrush them to accentuate the features, or outright paint stuff in. "SEX" is still ubiquitous today. It's everydamnwhere. I've gotten to where I can look at almost any major ad and see it. It just pops right out without having to look. I wish I had a dime for every time I've seen "SEX" somewhere. Same with videos. Artists sometimes add things to their paintings to try to induce people to buy them. It's in everything ad-related pretty much. It's nothing new under the Sun.
So are we doomed to be mindless zombies with only one thing on our minds..."Buy...Buy...Buy..." or "Product...Product...Product..." or whatever? No. You can be aware of it and if you want you can even train yourself to be more aware of it and to actually see it, and then it has no effect outside of a pure emotional thing, and that's the conscious mind. Knowledge is power. The Bible says "My people shall perish for lack of knowledge," and with the amount of pure dumbfucks walking around these days I believe it. In this case, knowledge is a very good thing. As I mentioned, the book said to relax when you looked at the images, and to let things find you rather than necessarily trying to look for things. I've found that it helps to not focus so much on the flat plane of the image but rather let your focus blur a bit. There are lots of techniques, but being aware of it is a big thing. They want to sell you shit and they're playing dirty. That's not very nice.
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