Examining the Subliminalness of Branding

One of our favorite Simpsons episodes, the one where Bart joins a boy band, features one of the series’ best scenes wherein LT. Smash, exposed as a Navy propagandist, explains that the Armed Forces recruit on three levels, “subliminal, liminal, and super-liminal” (the joke being that “super-liminal” involves just yelling demands at people: “Hey, you, join the Navy!”). Well we were surprised to learn that “super-liminal” is real phrase, used by researches reported on in this AdAge story, “This