Cover-ups

I f you take either of the front page covers of these two magazines at face value they appear pretty innocuous. Wilson Key, Wilson B Key, Wilson Bryan Key, however, contended that embedded on the face of Colonel Gadaffi were the letters of the word sex. And indeed one can perceive what seem to be scars on his forehead and check that bear a great degree of similarity to the letters S and X. The S has been highlighted on the rollover cutout illustrated below right. Similar allegations were made about various Playboy covers and newspaper illustrations in the popular press.

In general, as most of the pages on this site indicate, the goal of the present author has been to identify consistent usage of manipulative and 'subliminal' advertising. Little effort has therefore been devoted to seeking embedded lettering on magazine covers. But one recent example would seem to indicate that a tendency to touch-up magazine cover artwork might still exist.

The surprising thing about the current example from B magazine is that the letters are embedded on an image of Robbie Williams, current heart-throb of virtually every woman with a pulsating heart: if the caption on the magazine is anything to judge his sex appeal by ( namely ' 9 out of 10 women would cheat on their boyfriends for Robbie Williams' ) then there would seem little need to have his picture doctored as a means of influencing viewers.

The embedded letters on the B magazine cover were initially presumed to have been added to the picture to provide additional appeal to the magazine, not Robbie Williams himself. But some other pictures of Robbie raise doubts about this initial judgement. They appeared in another magazine. The second set of photographs were taken by a different photographer and appeared in the December/January edition of Nylon. As the illustrations alongside and below indicate, the photographs were not intended to be considered as natural photographs: one for example depicted Robbie as a tailors dummy, complete with hinged joints, etc. Such alterations make it seem likely that other alterations to produce effects similar to that of the B magazine cover could have been made to the original photographs.

The photograph on the left offers, as with that on the B cover, the possibility of perceiving lettering embedded in the chest hairs of Mr. Williams. The 'backdground' to the tattoing on his arm in the photograph below also offers a similar set of cues but would need to be seen in the original before such cues were perceptible. In each of these cases one can consider that projection might be at play - and the judgements were simply based on imaginary fabrications - but the author considers this relatively unlikely. The source of the embedded elements would seem to be Robbie Williams image makers, apparently operating on the belief that such embedded artwork influences viewers.

Whether or not such embedded artwork is effective can perhaps be judged by the sales figures for the 'new look' B and Nylon magazines. Confounded as the sales figures would be by the appeal of Mr Williams to his fans (and the claim that B magazine has a 'new look') they might nevertheless still give an indication of whether 'subliminal' embedding increases the sales of magazines.

Watch this space to find out if additional examples of embedded artwork have appeared on the cover of B in recent months - or if additional pictures of Mr. Williams are acquired bearing embedded lettering.

The edition of B referred to above also contained a rear page ad for Archers Peach Schnapps that appeared to have been doctored (illustrated right). Although nowhere near as clear as on Robbie Williams chest, there is an indication that the 'shadow' appearing in the top centre of the models shirt is also composed of overlapping letters.

The dark 'E' in the centre is clearly visible. And guess which other letters might be present? Additionally, one might note a figure more familiar to viewers of spirit ads (see Jim Beam, Jack Daniels and others on this site). A rather faint but garish shark, with jaws agape, can be percieved thrusting out from between two glasses. There is yet another 'face' in the glass on the left. Both are facing towards the bottle of Archers.

Another Archers ad appeared a month later. It had also been doctored.

Superficially, the overall message may seem to be related to having fun, given that it appeared during the festive season, the elderly gent in the photograph is wearing a boa, and the Archers caption is once again 'Come Out To Play'.

However, never jump to hasty conclusions where ads are concerned, especially ads for spirits and other drinks. In this case, find a copy of the ad and look more carefully at the contents of the four glasses. Each contains a representation of a dog's face instead of the expected ice cubes (though other interpretations are possible). In the larger extract from the ad, shown on the right, the clearest face is to be found in the glass to the top right.

Note that not all of the 'dogs' appear to be friendly. Whoever constructed this ad would again appear to be playing, in part, to the same type of aggressive drinker that other drinks ads also covertly seek to influence. Either that or the Archers ads are attempting to trigger anxiety in the hope that Archers will be consumed as a means of countering that anxiety.

Come out to play, indeed!

More Ads from the Archives. Click here for AAA & Seagram's. Click here for Wilson Key.