Instead of creating just another TV advertisement promoting the benefits of their product, BMW decided to think outside the box and take another approach to how they get their brand name across to consumers. It is what they call “flash projection subliminal advertising” and quite frankly, it’s remarkable.

BMW developed the ad and tested it in Germany on an audience. The result, as you can see from personal accounts at the end of the video, was that people were truly impressed with this innovative idea.

However, this concept of subliminal messaging can be deemed extremely controversial in whether it is moral or not. It is delivering an image to the audience without them being fully consciously aware of it. This calls into question how ethics are and should be embedded in marketing, as my classmate Chace points out in “Ethics in Marketing” by stating “With rampant advertisers secretly blending sublime messages of sex and other decadence into their ads to increase sales, should the legal law be the only boundary for these advertisers?”

Yes, in BMW’s case here it is a very minor image and message, but it opens up potential for all kinds of subliminal messaging to be created. It is the start of a concept that could change the way company’s advertise from being so direct and what some consumers would consider “annoying” and straightforward, to indirect advertising and delivering a message to consumers without them even being fully aware of what just happened.

Don’t get me wrong, I think this is an unreal idea, and I was amazed when I watched the video for the first time. The concept takes advertising to a whole new level, creating the opportunity for TV marketing to become more appealing to consumers instead of creating an advertisement that will cause the consumer to think “it’s just another ad” and change the channel.

Society’s technological advances are amazing and constantly improving, but we can’t lose track of realizing what it is that we are really doing when we employ them in marketing.

Reference: http://digitaljournal.com/article/301598