Here’s your disturbing thought for the day. There’s a new form of advertising being tested in Germany that won’t let you escape a product’s branding, even if you shut your eyes.
Stay with me and I’ll explain.
The experiment, conducted in a German movie theater, was recently laid out in a YouTube video. It seems there’s a specially designed flash technology that can burn any logo onto a viewer’s retinas without their knowledge, similar to the effect you get when you look into the sun.
The ad in Germany stars superbike world vice-champion Rubén Xaus. (I guess you have to be German or really into motorbikes to recognize that as a household name.) Xaus drives his BMW bike around a racetrack at 200 kilometers an hour. Then the racer reports, “I am living my dream. ‘What dream?’ you ask? Just close your eyes and look deep inside yourself.”
When the moviegoers did, the letters “BMW” were floating behind their closed eyelids … forever! OK, I’m only kidding about the forever part. I’m sure the effect fades with time. It’s being called “harmless” by the advertisers, after all. But there’s something about the idea of burning something into my retinas that just feels wrong.
Now, I know all you common sense folks will immediately roll your eyes and think, “Aw, this is all silly. The novelty of the whole effect would get really old after the first few times you saw it.” And you’re right. This trick can’t possibly have long legs. I mean, just a few back-to-back ads and you’d have alphabet soup behind your lids. But that’s really not the point. I’m more concerned about the ramifications of the second, third or forth versions of this techy experiment.
I remember reading about another advertising experiment not long ago based on a device developed by the U.S. Navy. It used microwave pulses to beam “sound” directly into someone’s head, so advertisers could sell you on their ice cream or drain cleaner as you walked innocently down the sidewalk. This is real stuff guys. Who knows where it may go next.
And you laughed at your crazy Uncle Herbert and his tinfoil hat.
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