An open letter begged authorities to investigate this looming threat that doesn’t—and probably won’t ever—exist.
Photo: Chris McGrath (Getty Images)
Last week, a coalition of sleep researchers from across the globe put out an open letter warning of a down right Black Mirror-esque scenario: corporations dive-bombing our dreams with targeted ads.
The letter notes that this isn’t some wacky hypothetical, but a real form of advertising currently being “proudly pioneered” by corporations that are ignoring the very real consequences that could come from this kind of subliminal marketing.
“Our dreams cannot become just another playground for corporate advertisers,” the letter reads, urging the Federal Trade Commission to revisit its policies banning subliminal advertising to include ads that creep up in your sleep, too. “The potential for misuse of these technologies is as ominous as it is obvious.”
Or at least it would be, if these technologies were actually real.
Coors recruited a set of volunteers willing to have the Coors team monitor them before and after they fell asleep. The plan was that these players would watch Coors’ curated videos as they drifted off and for a full eight hours afterwards—during which time the release promises Coors would “shape and compel” these sleepers’ subconscious minds. The idea was that when the volunteer woke up, then maybe—hopefully—they’d have a hankering for some sort of Coors beverage.
There actually is a shred of science to back up Coors’ methods here. Researchers are looking into “Targeted Dream Incubation” (TDI)—the technical name for guiding a person’s dreams to a topic of choice—as a potential treatment for PTSD and depression, for example. Last year, a team that studies TDI out of MIT put out the first-ever wearable meant to help curious (and sleepy) people “hack” their dreams using TDI.
And to Coors’ credit, the company did enlist Dr. Deirdre Barrett, a Harvard professor, internationally renowned dream expert, and frequent writer on the topic. About a month after the original scientist coalition released its open letter raising alarm bells over the impending ad-targeted doom that Coors was foisting on us all, Barrett put out a post of her own. In it, she broke down some of the choices Coors made when splicing the final ad together—and when wording the press release—to make the trials sound…well, like a harbinger of ad-targeted doom. But behind the scenes, nearly every participant watching these videos was an actor that was paid to take part in the study, and no data’s been released from the trials thus far, according to a Science Mag interview with Barrett.
In other words…
