Force #1: (FOX) Daytona 500 Race

FOX is first in Force. Even their name is ALLCAPS like they’re shouting. In their ad work, Daytona speed race shines as an example. They flash force at their viewers every second, often multiple times a second while a man yells in the background through the commercial. These impressions wash over us repeatedly, and we are shaped and shifted. Our mind begins to take a shape that craves and wants more.

Each variation of this ad works a specific magic: Force, Patriotism, and Trance. This one is focused on Force.

Immediately, in shots #4 and #5, expanding circles race towards where the man was while many race cars shoot across the screen like an arrow. The jet roar has transformed into a man’s roar. Suddenly, as the man keeps yelling, we get a close up of cars coming right at us, several spinning out of control or lifting right into the air into a severe crash.

For shot #6, flying sparks shoot out from under racing cars as they boldly maneuver for victory. We are now *3 seconds* in from the start of the ad! The Force, the action, comes at us wild and fast. It lights you up whether you know it or not, whether you like it or not.

Something else going on in these shots. It’s a subliminal principle I call “The Transitive Property.” They’ve hit us with it in 3 different ways within split seconds to really drill it in. Basically, you can link ideas and bring in the properties of one into another. “Life is like a box of chocolates . . .” With the power of subliminals, you can bring in more than mere concepts. You can sneak in emotions and instinctual reactions as well, all without the viewer realizing it. It’s really powerful stuff. I’ll show you what they did here.

In your unconscious, they’ve linked the jets (and your associations there) to the race cars:
• (1) They showed both in rapid succession plus high intensity;
• (2) similar qualities make for an easy transfer:
◦    (a) both jets and cars are fast, powerful, dangerous vehicles;
◦    (b) both racing by a stadium;
◦    (c) both flying into the air;
◦    (d) that car is starting to crash, like the video illusion of the jets crashing;
• (3) the concentric circles expanding in both shots.

The circles brings in even more than just our associations to jets in general. They also bring the specific emotional spark of the jet crash into the car race at that moment. Even if you don’t consciously register the emotion, it can be still physically be present and physiologically affect you

The logo is the final scene for this ad. They spent over 40% of total commercial time just showing the logo at the end. After all that hustle and bustle to jam everything in, hitting you with subliminals multiple times a second, they then just sort of go limp? Not even. You can bet they are up to something. Let’s take a closer look.

While the logo is just sitting there, confetti is flying all about around it, like right up in our face. As a professional hypnotist, I’ll tell you, it’s trance-inducing. Why did they stop their flash dance rush of images to lock you here on this screen? Because they need a few moments for the trance to hit. We zone out to the movement of confetti in the same way we zone out to the shimmer upon water, the dance of fire in a pit, or the complex movement of static on an old tv screen.

Now, being in trance, that logo enters your deep places much more readily. There’s more imprinting going on than just the logo. The FOX subliminal guys are very sophisticated. We have a whole section on Patriotism in these ads later on, and Fox is overwhelmingly the lead imprinter there. For now, just take a look at the image and tell me how many elements have red-white-blue and if “FOX” is somehow paired with those flag elements.

Force #2: (FOX) Top Level Chef

Top Level Chef? Top Level Sublminals more like it. They have a host of video tricks, and Gordan Ramsey himself is already an icon of power and force. Who hasn’t seen him dress down under-performers from the starry heights of Mount Michelin? His just rebukes are part of his charm. So of course FOX would love to showcase him and his power. They have a few variations of the ad. Here’s how they do this one, adding extra ooomph!

Before one second has even passed, a giant FOX logo hits us in the face in all caps. Gordan Ramsay is introduced, zooming at us at breakneck speed, and a three level structure gets engulfed in exploding fireworks and smoke bombs while flare spotlights flash in our face. We count ten firework spires spitting sparkling flame, seven smoking pillars, and for some reason, a man standing on a table in the kitchen. What an incredible single second! What force!

Oh, and in that first second, they imprint their logo 4x.

The show name itself denotes power. Well, it’s “Next Level” isn’t it? Requiring hierarchy or going beyond the ordinary. The show’s not titled “Mom’s Lovin’ Oven” and airs a mom ASMR cooking basic bread on a cozy Saturday. No. Gordon comes on and tells us, “You are all about to be pushed to your limits!” while a group of chefs run at the screen, then cook frantically. In the next moment, Ramsay is angrily slamming a metal pan on the counter in frustration. It’s force, all the way, and as many times a second as they can possibly create.

Ramsay himself is an icon or archetype of power, so of course Fox “acquired” him. They “made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.” He’s been on their channel for years, but they just recently bought him out and own a big chunk of his personal company. Also look at the titles of his FOX shows. Force: “The F Word,” “Kitchen Nightmares,” “Hotel Hell,” “Hell’s Kitchen,” “24 Hours to Hell and Back.” Well, you wouldn’t expect it be called “Friends” or “Cooking Pals,” would you?

FOX likes his power. FOX Entertainment CEO Charlie Collier recently said, ” [Gordon is] bringing an energy, entrepreneurial spirit and attitude that fits beautifully at FOX.”

Force #3: (FOX) FOX Nation

FOX Nation is a tv streaming service by FOX for like $6/month. This ad features several of their shows. We are going to focus on Force here, but also notice how Patriotism is entwined into the displays of Force for FOX. We can get into why it’s easy to pair Force with Patriotism. Right now, just notice the presence and pairing while we focus on Force.

Shot #1, we are flying with a bald eagle, the very symbol of America. He is powerful and majestic. He flaps his wings once, and we are transported to Shot #2. He’s perched upon gnarled roots of a tumbled tree. It’s a fierce image of sharp talons, sharp beak, and raw bestial power as he shouts through heavily falling snow, an act of defiance against the force of nature. We are now under two seconds with two very strong shots of Force and two likewise of Patriotism.

Shot #3 is a national park, Patriotism. Within frames, a geyser erupts, Force violently blowing to heights of the screen. Did you catch the subliminal in the geyser? Let me show you a frame. It’s an “F* You” finger, which is Force. Surprising? We are still under two seconds and our total is four Force and three Patriotism – in less than two seconds.

In Shot #4, we get Kevin Costner with the glimmering golden text of “Yellowstone One-Fifty.” Yellowstone is the name of a national park, Patriotism. This text carries over into the striking next shot of a darkened wolf with glowing golden eyes, hunting. Did you catch the glowing “O” of Yellowstone? It’s a subliminal. You are linked the wolf’s glowing eyes via the Transitive Property mentioned earlier. It is induced by both the “O” and eyeball being round, yellow, illuminated, and close together in time and screen location.

The Duck Family is shots #5-9. They have a digging treasure-hunting show now. I don’t know the Duck stuff too well, so I won’t really comment.

Shot #10, and we’re back in full Force. Maybe Duck was a reprieve so you can be hit harder by this shot. That’s a common technique for mind stuff, by the way. On the first frame for “Cops,” we have a darkened night pierced by police siren and the lights of a high speed police chase. Force. I count eight to like a dozen cop cars in pursuit. Plus, the video is sped up to make it even more forceful. How are they not triggering seizures in epileptics? I have no idea.

This police image is filled with Force paired with Patriotism. First, cops jobs are by nature Force. They armed and organized as state entity. Therefore, they also carry a similarity to military. These associations may be hardwired in us. I’m sure we’ve all seen a very patriotic car on the road and that car is likely to have a “Thin Blue Line” cop flag sticker. And just visually, look at the this image. It’s red-white-and-blue everywhere! You can find a full analysis along these lines in our Patriotism section.

Shot #12, we are with Roseanne Barr now. She goes really well with the defiance force of the geyser “F* you” finger, the eagle defiantly cawing through the snow, and the cop having just said, “He’s refusing to stop.” Her show is defiantly title, “Cancel This!” and that appears in large letters on the screen. You really are presented with these things again and again so it sinks in.

Shot #14 has us back with Keven Costner. It’s edited to make it look he’s commenting on Roseanne. “Ok, here we go.” It’s said in a way that we should expect a rumble, that we should expect less of a hug and more of a tug or jerk. It’s more Force.

Finally, the logo. They can’t even show their logo without charging it with an immense amount of Force. In the Daytona Race ad they had confetti zoomed up flying frenetically and almost bouncing off your face. In the Gordon Ramsey ad, they use a giant bold FOX logo to stamp out the show info, and then they shove that FOX hard, zooming it right into your face. In this ad, they have piercing light shoot across the screen like a bullet. When it hits their logo, we are absolutely blinded by retina-burning light filling the entire screen. It’s like looking at the sun. Imagine those people whose tv is the size of most their wall. It’s intense. FOX – FORCE – FLAGS.

Force #4: (FOX) WWE Friday Night Smackdown

Another FOX ad? Almost every FOX ad! I think the only FOX ad not centered on Force was the comedy show, “Animal Control.” Well, now that I think about it, a giant boa begins to constrict a man to death, the show’s squad marches towards the screen in riot gear, and a pack of ostriches chase a guy much to his utter horror. It’s not a Fraiser plot where Niles gets uppety about his cappuccino lacking a whisper of cinnamon, to be sure.

I’m going to prep you. This is going to be a violent commercial, and it’s sudden, unexpected, and visceral. That is a technique. The technique doesn’t really work if we categorize the ad as fantasy. Like, if they were muppets, we wouldn’t blink. If the ad featured wrestlers in their spandex, we’d expect the suplex or elbow drop even if they were in an office. Here, however, we are really brought in to identifying with main character. The sudden violence is all the more surprising because she is petite. Try thinking like a subliminal guy who wants to light up your nervous system for specific effect. This approach can make more sense. Let’s get into the ad itself.

A woman sits utterly perturbed by the work worm next to her incessantly clicking his pen. I think we all have been there, and so we unconsciously categorize it as in the real world. It takes only a few seconds for her to suddenly smash a chair into him at full strength, crumpling the man. He’s then dragged by his collar as he flails helplessly. Now the whole office is in riot, including a flying elbow drop from off a balcony onto a helpless man draped upon a table. An off-screen crowd is screaming at full roar amongst visual and audio chaos, and excited announcers screaming in disbelief, “You’ve got to be kidding me!” This is all an incredible display of overt force, perhaps more than is shown at a football game.

Turns out this was just a fantasy dream sequence, and they snap us back to the “real world” of the office commercial. She asks politely to borrow the pen and then just snaps it in half. Force. Milder force befitting her life, but then they blend the office girl into wrestler Charlotte Flair and tell us that “We’re All Superstars.” Fox then shows their logo, along with the show logo.

This was a quick one. Pretty straight forward with straight up force. It’s interesting that they blend us into the office character and then have her go wild with violent mayhem. At the end, they congratulate and encourage us down that path as Superstars. It’s as if they’re saying, “Every day, in small ways, you too can use Force as a solution to your problems.”

A problem arises when you witness Force enough. It can graft its way into you and feel good like the right solution. Maybe sometimes it is, but sometimes it isn’t. The constant washing of Force over one makes that line harder to see.

Force #5: Bordas & Bordas, Attorneys

This commercial doesn’t have sneaky subliminals like some other ads. Its metaphor and suggestion is pretty open and on the level. It teaches us something important, so we’ll talk it about it here.

Analogies like metaphors allow us to import qualities or meaning from idea to another. “Life is like a box of chocolates . . .” It’s handy to have a way to map one idea onto another. Academically, we speak of the Source Domain that contains the quality to be mapped onto the Target Domain. Here, the quality in box of chocolates (“you never know what you’re gonna get”) is mapped onto the Target “life.” This kind of structure keeps your thoughts tidy when analyzing what effect the advertiser is going for.

Subliminals often work like metaphors. They carry meaning from one idea to another. However, they do it in a sly way where you don’t get to decide if the analogy fits or not. It doesn’t take the pathway of conscious or volitional thought. It passes by you undetected and lights your nervous system up in a particular way that becomes habit. “What fires together wires together” as neuroscientists often say.

In subliminal commercials, the Target is obviously going to be the product. Sources can get interesting though. You can use several different Sources that all mean the same one thing. This is like using several different spotlights to illuminate a single spot on stage. In Connection subliminals, they might show you a puppy dog > then a cute teddy bear > then an attractive person on a comfy couch > then the product is handed to them (let’s say a drink) > then we realize its a lover who shared their drink and they sit and sip together. That’s like 4+ hits of Connection, but each looks different. They all converge in a campaign to light you up in a singular way that becomes a hardwired habit with repeated exposure. In addition, we get some extra kick of effectiveness due to the novelty of the varied stimuli.

Enough of the lesson, let’s go to the ad.

These lawyers want to be considered hard hitters, warriors, champions. So they spend their first $2 and half million of air time just setting up the Source Domain which is power via football. They show intense shots of football and just football, for 10 seconds. No law, no lawyers. We don’t know what commercial this is yet.

So now they have to bridge that divide, to seize the power of football and place that crown on themselves. How do they it?

They cut to a lawyer and say, “Fighting for Justice . . .” By this time in our discussion, you should have seen that metaphor for physical Force coming a mile away. The narrator continues, “. . . shares these things in common.” It’s a really direct, upfront, respectable way to go about influencing you. “Us lawyers are like them footballers. I’ll list the ways.” And then they do, accompanied by powerful imagery. The mindset of many lawyers is that they build structured arguments for a rational neutral judge to decide upon. So, here, we get a rational argument and without any hidden subliminals. We don’t have the sneak influence other commercials might contain.

Force is an easy association for law because people’s life and property can literally be ripped away from them. It’s not the only association. The two other lawyer commercials rejected Force. One has lawyer twins with a slogan, “We’ve got your back, not your wallet.” The other law ad just shows their lawyers doing all types of community service and donating $100k in oversized charity checks.

The rest of the commercial has law interspersed with football images and wording.

An interesting tidbit. The director must have told the lawyers, “Do something powerful with your hands.” But lawyers don’t do that, not usually with their body. They are very much poor-postured chair creatures, not teeming with physical power in stature or gesture. They can be quite vicious with a keyboard though. I want you look at these lawyers’ hands. In each image, they are trying to do a hand thing, but have no clue how to do it. They were probably thrown in there without much prep, so it comes off as a bit awkward if you actually pay attention. The weird hand stuff is in every single shot of the lawyers. I’m talking about this because if they got it right, it would have been a potent hidden boost and alley-oop to the slam dunk Force they were aiming at.

Hands and Power for lawyers might have a deep connection in our minds. It’s where their power exudes from mostly. The tv show, “Boston Legal” also did great close ups of their lawyers’ hands to good effect throughout many seasons. It would be like a very tight shot of James Spader’s hands as he stood up to address the judge, but the show would be silent as he buttoned his jacket, just showing the hands at work while the court and everything waits for him. There is efficient display of power in that.

Force #6: NFL Women’s Flag Football

I love this commercial. This is the type of power I enjoy – power over oneself. This girl is incredible! She can be anywhere she wants to be and no one can stop her. I was also a Chung Li fan back in the day. The lumbering Zangief was strong but always found himself out-manuevered and slow.

Force doesn’t have to be forceful. It doesn’t have to overpower. It doesn’t have to be force upon another or force over another. Force doesn’t have to be excessive, erupting, violent, or subjugating. She displays a very beautiful type of force. It is force in oneself that’s mastered oneself. She is in full control of her person and the space the around her. She goes where she wants and is unstoppable while giving others their full freedom.

This commercial is really fun. It starts like it is actually happening live at the game, but was filmed weeks beforehand. FOX even gave them their graphics package and even let them film with their cameras and microphone. The presenter wore the same clothes and hairstyle at the game to help with the illusion. The audience has no clue.

On the subliminal level of things, effects arise if the audience thinks the ad is real life. Several ads did it this year. Buckley, the director of this commercial said, “Put you into the space – that was the marching order.” (Variety.com). We allow access to parts of our belief-emotion-behavioral system we wouldn’t otherwise let the commercial touch. Remember the WWE ad we just looked at where the office girl crumpled the pen-clicking guy with a chair? You wouldn’t get that visceral reaction if it was a puppet commercial doing the same thing. We immediately sort it into a different box. It’s like how we suspend disbelief at movie theaters. We have hidden automatic rules about what types of things get access to what parts of us. From our perspective, we don’t even notice. There are ways to kind of hack into this. People can hack into you without you knowing it.

Starting the ad, the presenter asks, “Is there anyone who can pull your flags?” As soon as our flag football star, Ms Flores, starts talking, the presenter makes a lunge for it, and is met with empty air. She lunges again, and . . . It’s on! Flores runs and everyone is chasing her, everywhere, through parking lots, and malls, and rooftops. A lot of these are male football stars in poor disguises, so fun surprises abound for sports fans. Even her mom tries to pull a clever one on Flores, but she is just too in control of the situation to be caught.

As the commercial closes, Flores is seen running the streets, now joined by other flag football girls, and is being chased by a horde of people who will never ever catch her. She would survive the zombie apocalypse, both flags intact. Words on the screen are also tied to a gentler force, “To the woman pushing football forward we can’t wait to see where you take this game.”

Force #7: Coors Light, “High Stakes Beer Ad”

This commercial is Force in several ways. First it’s a kung fu battle over whose commercial it even is: Coors or Miller Lite. Second, the massive amount of logos branded upon you is so excessive it’s like a tsunami of subliminals. Third, it uses a unique feature related to Force for how they got people really engaged and invested beforehand, gambling.

I don’t have to say much about the beer battle. It’s fun and whimsical like a Jackie Chan comedy. Two dudes duke it out for which beer will win. They use beer coasters as ninja stars, wire-assisted flying jumps, and ice cubes as floor slick. It’s a good time, and we instantly know to put it in the category of fantasy violence due to the highly stylized first moves that instantly say, “badly dubbed old kung fu flick.”

Sheer amount of logos thrust upon you during this has to be Force. This ad excels at the excessive branding pressed into your brain. We’re talking 40 to several 100s within 15 seconds, depending on how you want to count. I’ll break it down.

In the first 2 seconds of the commercial, we have 9 imprints of Miller and Coor’s logos hitting us: 8 visual and 1 oral. This includes a multitude of neon signs at the bar, a bottle in hand, tap handles, etc. There’s much more than that if you want to count the beers on the wall, which would put it up around 40!). So, in the first 2 seconds, the director has already revealed himself. He is going to slam us with his logo and tag lines repeatedly like a hammer over the head. That is exactly what we get throughout.

Now here is a genius move of the director. As the two fight for beer dominance, the camera cuts and swings back and forth between the two so we get re-imprinted with the brands over and over. Those 40 logo’d beers on the all are now multiplied several times over within seconds. It’s a massive number of imprints. Add to that the larger neon lit logos which also keep getting multiplied. Just brilliant. Add in what’s on the other walls and the patron’s tables, multiplied by the camera which keeps sweeping across mid-fight. There is just so many logos everywhere. Such debauchery and arrogance. I kind of imagine them like those Babel guys. “How high can we make it?” “To the Gods!”

It must be said that each time they show the same thing, it’s less effective. Generally, novel stimulus penetrates much more effectively. The logo can be the same, but it can be shown in new contexts and on new things.

The director does exactly that! He introduces several new items in the fight scene, each with beer logos. The two clang their watches, and the watches explode while you take in both beer logos written on the face. One throws a bucket of ice upon which Coors Light is written largely. The ninja star coasters have a Miller Lite can drawn on them. Even with this novel approach, he multiplies them mercilessly. In the 1/3 second shot it takes the dude to swipe up the coasters, we are imprinted with Miller Lite 8 times, mostly on the coasters on the counter. The less than a second of the ice throw shot has 6 new logos for us. It’s like trying to drink from a fire hose the way these logos are flying at us.

This commercial was hyped in a novel way related to Force. Hyping is great technique if you can pull it off. For a commercial, that’s tough. No one cares enough. “It’s an ad, bro.” But what if *you*, viewer, could make money off it. I mean a lot of money – if you’re brave or at least impulsive. So this is the first commercial people could bet on. Coors teamed up with gambling company, DraftKings, and let people bet on pretty much every aspect of the commercial. How many people with facial hair? Etc. For the people with low impulse control, this can be very attractive and very engaging. That lights them up in a way where subliminals go in better. And what a happy synergy with alcoholics who have notably poor impulse control and love beer. It also extends their ad time in a way and gets them personally involved with the ad. It’s brilliant.

Gambling is a type of Force. Zero-sum games tend to be. Have you ever played a board game and absolutely dominated and crushed the other player so they couldn’t even look at you right for a few days? Have you ever lawfully taken fist fulls of their last Monopoly money while gleefully laughing til they toss and upset the board sending that poor little dog and hat hurling against the wall. And that’s with fake money. What happens when it is real stakes about something they actually care a great deal about?

Now the only thing I didn’t like about this commercial, aside from being blasted in the face with logos, is how they ended it.  It defeated what they worked so hard on.  It needs to be said that Coors owns both beers in the commercial. In fact, they own more than a dozen beers. The commercial ends with both beers losing. Both dudes have dropped out of the sky from a bad flying jump and now are kinda just flailing about on the floor. We can only see their hands reaching up to the bar in a floppy fight to place their beer in the winning circle. A third beer gets placed there instead, Blue Moon, which Coors also owns.

It puts a bad taste in one’s mouth to see their guys lose and emasculate themselves. Losing isn’t something to be ashamed of, but they’re selling Force! Them losing lessens the very identity they’ve built up around themselves. They lost to a brand whose own commercial is literally a canvas being painted for 30 seconds. They magically transformed a strand of wheat into a paintbrush upon a gentle guitar song. So all the brands lose here. Being the king of Force doesn’t work for their Blue Moon brand, and losing battles is bad for their Force-centered brands.

It’s not a great end, but the fun journey and barrage of logos saves this ad.

Force: Summary

Few products sell Force well. FOX is interesting because it has incredible success with its Force. Granted, the Fox audience stereotypically loves guns greatly, so maybe it’s an easy sell. But, there’s also this thing where commercials shape you, just by having seen it. Now think of what happens when a *network* with 24 hours of programming can accomplish in imprinting a brand on you. Are FOX viewers fiercely loyal? And do they tend to fiercely reject the other news sources? Lamestream media. It’s interesting from a subliminal perspective because that’s what you would expect from an excellent brand imprint. FOX clearly works hard at their subliminals, so the result shouldn’t be surprising. Who knows the actual reason. It’s probably multi-factored.

The other ads in this section show a different approach. Bordas lawyers did their subliminals in an up front way even if they were largely selling raw power. Flag Football was a breath of fresh air with power over oneself not conceived as dominating others. Coors has a long history of selling power. Back in the day, they pushed themselves as the “Silver Bullet.” This season they focused on fun, playful power in the foreground while using an impressive barrage of logo-branding to shoot into your mind.