Reality Cracking: Commercial TV
(cracking easy advertisement protection schemes)

by MrWho

(27 January 1997, slightly edited by fravia+)

(With a small addition by Bob, 29 January 1997)


Reality cracking

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Courtesy of fravia's page of reverse engineering

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Well, this is the letter I received by MrWho yesterday

  I forwarded the following essay on commercial TV to +ORC before 
submitting it to you, because I wanted to know if he found it of 
any value; well, first of all I was surprised of his answering me
at all (you know, not being me a +cracker nor a member of the +HCU), 
and then by his positive comments and his encouragment to go on on 
this subject.

  Well, here it goes my piece, I hope you'll like it too.

	a smile, 
        MrWho

Reality Cracking: Commercial TV
by MrWho

  There are some patterns in commercial TV, and in the TV 
Commercials, that are well determined and common, two characteristics 
that make it worth trying to crack; this is not a complete list, I'm 
sure there is plenty more, but I guess it's a good start, others may 
want to add their own findings to this.

  Sound level change

  I'm sure that some of you have noticed a strange happening: when 
the movie you're watching is suspended in order to broadcast the 
commercials, the loudness comes up, sometimes quite a lot. 
Despite the fact that in Europe this behaviour is forbidden by law 
(Yes, impressively enough there is still someone fighting a lost battle 
to make our life better) still many commercial channels do it, in a 
more subtle way: they lower the loudness, but the effect is exactly 
the same, if you were distracted, or your attention was lowered, it 
will be redirected again towards your TV.

  Removal of "negative" images and colors

  Commercials are made to make you like something, whatever that 
something may be, and there are some studies that correlate a product 
with a color that's known to be particularly liked for that category 
of products. 
There is an extensive literature on the subject, but just to mention 
some connections: 

  Washing powders: white, blue, bright red are the colors that
  give positive images related to washing powders. To avoid: brown,
  black and generally colors that remind of dirt (or worse);

  Food: there are many categories in food colors, consider brown,
  oranges and yellows as the perfect ones for breakfast related
  items; gold, silver, dark browns and black for coffee, teas
  and tea-like products; green, yellow, red for canned products, 
  definitely no gray there;

  Cars: grays and metallic grays (mostly used because they are
  widely accepted with positive images), bright red and black.
  A "no-no" color for cars, in commercials, is white.

  Consider, in the chapter "colors to avoid", the example of sanitary 
napkins: when they show their absorbent powers the liquid they'll 
use will be as far as possible from red and yellow, in some cases 
they'll use a blue liquid, the most daring companies will use 
neon-oranges and neon-purples.

  Recalling

  At a certain point commercial producers noticed that, due to the 
overload people were receiving from the TV, people just stopped 
listening and entered a "braindead" self-defence mode, not the 
perfect state to have people slurping your ads if you want them 
to remember your brand propaganda when they later stroll and tramp 
inside the shops to perform their consumistic duties... 
Commercial producers had, I have to admit, a bright idea: instead 
of a 'regular' 30 seconds straight film, they would divide this time 
into -say- a 25 seconds main part, placing later, after a while, a 
5 seconds segment recalling the previous, longer one. 
In this way the viewer is forced out of his hypnotic cathartic 
commercial-skipping state in order to reconnect the two pieces, 
and he is forced to remember the advertisement. 
This is not a new idea, not at all, since for instance writers 
use it a lot, inserting references to previous pieces of the book to 
have the reader perform some mind gymnastics; yet in books that serves 
definitely a better purpose than having you buy something you don't 
need;

  All the rest

  I don't have time at the moment to write in detail about other 
techniques that are a bit more obvious, like the "want to be - media 
to be", where a positive image of some kind of person everyone would 
like to be is associated to the product as a media to get there 
(if you drink this you get lots of girls, rich people, cowboys and 
pilots smoke these cigarettes).

  Sincere channels perverted

It is interesting to notice that, again the guys making commercials 
are not completely stupid, when someone relized people were not 
that dumb a whole set of new commercials started popping out where 
the principle was subverted, sending a message like: "Trust us, we 
are not lying to you as other do, we don't want you to buy our 
product because you'll be a better man, but because our products is 
really good". Don't underestimate this tecnique, since it's quite 
powerful: they open a "sincere" channel of communication, stating that 
their product won't do any good in a social scale to you, and then 
use this channel to send the -obviously bogus- message that their
product is good. This is a real masterpiece of social engineering 
and social beguiling and deceiving.

  Repetition patterns to hypnotize

  Repetition patterns are also common in commercials, mostly used 
on the "shopping channels", where they can have long patterns 
running: this is an "hypnosis" kind of sending over and over again 
the same message, that is repeated so many times that it becomes 
"true", just like the old magician pattern: "you feel tired, you 
feel like you have to close you eyes" used in all hypnotic sessions. 
The similarity goes much further: if you ever cracked an 
hypno session (and there is a lot cracking material there,n oh boy!) 
you'll notice that in the sentences pronounced and repeated to have 
a person fall in an hypnotic state there is always a mix of truths and 
suggestions: eventually, if the person has been staring at something 
for some time, his eyes will really feel tired, then he will conclude 
that if the hypnotiser is "right" about his eyes being tired he MUST 
be right about him wanting to close them, and he gets baloney.
If it is true that you tried many products and they really didn't work, 
then this product, that states that the other products do not work,
MUST be good. Get the point?

  Another one, before closing this small essay: when someone is right 
about something and he's trying to convince you about it, and you 
don't believe him, won't he usually start getting excited about it, 
and eventually shout at you? Do you see it coming? Wanna bet? :)

Unrespected EU-laws, our kids and a mission for crackers

  I want to say something positive about the European Union: I feel 
sometimes like it's something really good when it comes to protect 
some categories of people, unfortunately they are costantly hampered 
by commercial lobbyes and commercial interests, delaying all the 
consumer laws in name of the 'free marketing' (read enslaving) society. 
Anyway one of the EU-laws I like more is the one that forbids breaking 
up cartoons and programs for kids in order to insert commercials inside 
them. Think about that... good cracking material: advertisement TARGETED 
for small 5-10 year old kids... in order to have them crying loud for 
some awfully stupid and useless plastic toy... that they will use three
minutes flat before asking for another... or in order to have them 
whine for some unhealthy chemical-pumped chocolate bars: little minds 
turned into consumistic slaves, their wishes (and tears) used for the 
well-being of this commercial society.
Unluckily the EU law still awaits to be seriously taken in consideration, 
since satellite channels like "Cartoon Network", and many others, are 
completely ignoring it, and noone seems to have the guts to nuke them
for this, may be we should start ourselves to develop our own, more sound, 
counter measures, hitting them where it hurts: those satellite channels 
rely on PAID DECRYPTION SOFTWARE to make their money don't they? 
And, if I'm not wrong, crackers are not so bad at software decryption, are 
they :-)

  A smile,
  MrWho

Hi Fravia!

I just read MrWho's text on TV advertisements, and
I must comment on it.  

While I do not create such ads, I work in a TV 
station, and I am in charge of putting them on 
the air - transfering from the original format 
to the one we use for broadcasting (D2, a digital
hybrid format).  

Many people complain about the average sound level
being much higher for the commercials than it is
for the program itself.  Even my wife tells me it's 
my fault.. :-) It is true in a sense, but in 
reality, it's the program that's broadcasted too 
low.

When we transfer a commercial received from the
distributor, we ensure that the peak level never 
goes over +8dBm (a standard test tone signal 
comes in at 0dBm).  Of course, if the contents of
the commercial is compressed, the volume will 
appear to be much higher, but then there is no 
dynamic at all.
       
About the "split" commercials - they are becoming 
more and more common indeed, in the last two
years, we've been airing more 15-seconds 
commercials than ever, and pairs of 8 and 7-second
commercials are coming in...  This is horrible, 
but I guess it's the price we have to pay for
free tv watching... :-(

Bob

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