<![CDATA[io9: subliminal advertising]]> http://tags.lifehacker.com/assets/base/img/thumbs140x140/io9.com.png <![CDATA[io9: subliminal advertising]]> http://io9.com/tag/subliminaladvertising http://io9.com/tag/subliminaladvertising <![CDATA[Fear of a Chocolate Planet]]> In the lonely days after he'd packed in his bionics from Six Million Dollar Man, Lee Majors starred in a freaky flick called Agency. Released in 1980, after a decade of hallucinatory presidential shenanigans in the United States, the movie is about an evil advertising agency controlled by the U.S. government. Their nefarious plan? To plant subliminal political messages into television commercials for "chocolate planet," a new chocolate drink. Lee Majors is the creative director who starts to figure out that something is very wrong with the chocolate planet account, and in this scene he discovers the subliminal message that is going to be implanted in the ad.

Though ostensibly about this preposterous double-subliminal thing, where ads with subliminal messages to BUY BUY BUY are also filled with yet another layer of subliminal messages to VOTE VOTE VOTE, Agency is mainly a perfect time capsule of late-1970s culture. Everybody wears these insane floor-length fur coats and smokes. In this little bonus scene that I have for you below, from the establishing scenes at the beginning of the movie, we are treated to the "wackiness" that is the ad biz. Look, there's Lee with his fly down talking to a gay! And a kid smoking in the elevator! And a reference to pot! Crazy times, people, crazy times. If you need a dose of strange this weekend, I highly recommend Agency. It's just packed with goodness, including Robert Michum as the evil ad exec and a whole scene with Lee fighting some Hell's Angels. [Agency via IMDB]

]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5018183&view=rss&microfeed=true <![CDATA[Marvel Surrenders to Cheesy "Lost" Crossover Marketing]]> Wondering just how many references there are to ABC's Lost in recent Marvel comic books, as per ABC's mysterious advertising deal with the publisher? Fansite Find 815 has posted a gallery of all of the known ones to date, and the answer turns out to be "More than you expected." When does viral marketing become overly intrusive? Possibly at the point where the X-Men's alien spacecraft is now named after Desmond's shipwrecked boat. Marvel Comics and Lost Crossover Archive [Find 815.blogspot.com]

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