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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