The Effectiveness of AIDA even if it’s a Subliminal Type of Message

Subliminal messages are words, images, or sounds that might appear in television or radio commercials, TV shows or movies, print ads or recorded music. Usually when subliminal messages are seen or heard, they’re not recognized for what they are. In fact they may be ignored by the conscious brain and be beyond the level of conscious perception. 

In the case of subliminal images, for CADIO most witnesses of crimes can’t really remember the suspects if the turnover of events happened very fast.  For audio, singers learn the lyrics of a song by repetition of its music.  Active listening makes a person memorize its audio content or the lyrics of a song.  What if the audience is not listening at all?  That’s fine.  Hearing is the next big thing and an opportunity to achieve recall.  If it doesn’t have a strategy to achieve recall, then this can only be a subliminal kind of message that has a less impact.  This also suggests that subliminal messages may not work since they may never be consciously perceived.  Hearing a message is perceived subconsciously or unconsciously.  So hearing a commercial could not gain a recall but if it is done strategically; then a high recall is expected.  Kids in the 70’s and 80’s can sing commercial jingles on TV because there were no remote controls back then.      

Hearing something unconsciously could be a subliminal type of message.  It would gain higher value once you incorporate a strategy of four (4) audio message repetitions basing on its AST (average staying time) of audiences in a narrowcast coverage or commercial establishment.

AIDA is an acronym used in sales, marketing and advertising that describes a common list of events that may occur when a consumer engages with an advertisement.  The 4 spots represent AIDA. The 1st spot that the shopper hears is A – Attention, 2nd time he hears it is I – Interest, the 3rd time is D-Desire (marketing)/Decision (sales) and the 4th time is A – Action.  According to Herbert E. Krugman there are only three levels of exposure in psychology, not media terms: Curiosity, recognition and decision. Reference: Effective Frequency. But in advertising, it takes 4 repetitions to get a good recall.  Definitely, 4 is better and productive than 3.  4-spots must be the standard to reach a higher value on advertising investment. This strategy is better than radio, TV, billboard, placements of subliminal messages and it’s the best point-of-purchase advertising.  In fact, the last time I dealt with media buyers was in 2001 and they gave a lot of advice on how to do it but this strategy of standardizing a targeted 4 spots per hour per brand were not part of my presentation back then.  I just collected all their thoughts and did a further study.