The Advertised Mind: Ground-Breaking Insights Into How Our Brains Respond to Advertising

257 Pages·2005·26.99 MB·English

by  Erik Du Plessis

Advertised Mind TP 20/6/05 4:10 pm Page 1
THE
ADVERTISED
mind
GROUND-BREAKING INSIGHTS INTO
HOW OUR BRAINS RESPOND
TO ADVERTISING
ERIK DU PLESSIS
London andSterling, VA
Publisher’s note
Every possible effort has been made to ensure that the information contained in this book is accurate
at the time of going to press, and the publishers and author cannot accept responsibility for any errors
or omissions, however caused. No responsibility for loss or damage occasioned to any person acting,
or refraining from action, as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by the editor,
the publishers or the author.
First published in Great Britain and the United States in 2005 by Millward Brown and Kogan Page
Limited.
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as
permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be repro-
duced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the
publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms and licences
issued by the CLA. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside these terms should be sent to the
publishers at the undermentioned addresses:
120 Pentonville Road 22883 Quicksilver Drive
London N1 9JN Sterling VA20166-2012
United Kingdom USA
www.kogan-page.co.uk
© Erik du Plessis and Millward Brown, 2005
The right of Erik du Plessis to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in
accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
ISBN 0 7494 4366 9
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
ACIPrecord for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Du Plessis, Erik.
The advertised mind : groundbreaking insights into how our brains respond to
advertising / Erik du Plessis.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-7494-4366-9 (alk. paper)
1. Advertising—Psychological aspects. 2. Advertising—Research. 3.
Human information processing—Research. I. Title.
HF5822.D8 2005
659.1(cid:1)01(cid:1)9—dc22
2005001178
Typeset by Saxon Graphics Ltd, Derby
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Scotprint
Contents
List of figures vii
List of tables x
Foreword by Nigel Hollis xi
Preface xviii
Introduction 1
1 How advertisements work 6
How advertising works 6; Advertising and non-FMCG
purchases 8; The role of advertising 8; Planning an advertising
campaign that will work 9; Media planning 9; Frequency 10;
And then came Jones 14; SPOT’s research 16;
Colin McDonald 18; Erwin Ephron and ‘continuity
planning’18; Why is there any debate? 19
2 Approaches to the human mind 21
Neurology 21; Psychology 22; Artificial intelligence
scientists 23; ‘Mechanisms of mind’scientists 24
3 Psychologists’models of learning and memory 25
Introduction 25; Ebbinghaus (1896) 26; Short- and long-term
memories 27; The supervisory attentioning system 28;
Interpretation 30
4 The structure of the brain 33
The central nervous system 33; The creature that eats its
brain 36
iv Contents
5 Neurons: the building blocks of the brain 37
Neurons 37; Synapses 39; Neurons in action 40; Hinton
diagrams of neurons 40; Making the neuronal system do
things 42; Example of a system with different synaptic
sensitivities 45; Rummelhart and bigger neuronal systems 46;
Gestalts 48; Summary: important features of neuronal
systems 53; Distributed memory 53; Neural networks 55
6 Learning and emotion 57
‘Making’a brain 59; Darwin III 60; Pleasure and pain 61;
The amygdala is the key to the fear response 62; When
memories are laid down they are emotionally ‘tagged’64;
This is not just true for big emotions 64; From fear to
pleasure 65; Learning and feeling 65; Alcohol and the
pleasure centres 66; Darwin III is driven by expected
emotions 67; Seeing activity in the brain 67; Functional
areas in the brain 69; Apicture of sight 70; Apicture of
listening 71; Apicture of a naïve activity 72; Apicture of a
practised task 72; Conclusion 73
7 Arousal and consciousness 74
Determinants of a consciousness: the power of an epicentre 75;
Another determinant of consciousness: the available neural
network 75; Why the brain needs to control its levels of
arousal 76; Chemicals that control arousal 77; Arousal and
consciousness and attention 78
8 Emotion and reason 79
Defining ‘emotions’81; Definition 83; René Descartes
(1596–1650) 86; Brain hemispheric theories 87; Damasio –
the emotional is rational 88; ‘How do I know what I think
before I know what I feel?’89; Damasio’s somatic marker
hypothesis 90; Sigmund Freud (1859–1939) 92
9 Incidental learning – and forgetting 95
Memorizing useless information 96; What Professor Bahrick
taught me 98; The learning curve when there are some related
memories 102; Learning and the rate of forgetting 103;
The optimal rate of rehearsal for learning 104
10 From brains to advertisements 105
Contents v
11 Why should advertising be researched? 108
What I learnt from a Zulu miner with little formal education
about communication theories 108; Amore empirical
(rational) argument in favour of copy testing 110
12 It is getting more difficult to be memorable 113
Introduction 113; Empirical evidence 113; The Adtrack
database 114; How advertising clutter affects TV’s power 117;
Declining advertising memorability is not necessarily
declining advertising effectiveness 122
13 Advertising, learning and memory 123
The Adtrack database 124; Television advertisement
length 124; Television frequency effect 125; Print 127;
Time and attention 129; Multi-media effects 130;
Conscious and unconscious learning 131; The workings of
memory 132; Direct response advertising 133; You interpret
advertising using your own memories 133; Internet
advertising 134
14 The attention continuum 136
Can an advertisement work if it gets no attention? 138;
Heath’s error 141; What the rest of the book is about 141
15 What ad-liking means 144
Research by Esther Thorsen and John Philip Jones 145;
SPOTand Adtrack 146; The COMMAPmodel 149;
Understanding the dimensions in the COMMAPmodel 151;
The interaction between the COMMAPdimensions 154;
Rachel Kennedy replicates COMMAPin Australia 156;
Earlier evidence about the importance of ad-liking 156;
Applying the COMMAPmodel 157; COMMAPversus
Link 161; Ad-liking and print advertising 162
16 Recognition, recall and persuasion 164
Measuring how advertisements are remembered 164;
Left- and right-brain memories 166; Recognition and recall
versus persuasion 168
vi Contents
17 Advertisement memories and brand linkage 170
Introduction 170; Memories and forgetfulness 171;
Some empirical evidence 173; Neurology 175; Anecdotal
evidence 176; The Millward Brown ‘creative magnifier’178
18 Exposing the consumerto the advertising: media strategy 180
Introduction 180; What Professor Bahrick taught me 180;
Impact and decay rates 184; Retention rates improve over
time 186; The impact–retention chart 187; Conclusion 192
19 ProfessorEhrenberg and double jeopardy; orthe effect
of the brand on the advertising 193
The double jeopardy theory 194; Habitual purchasing 195;
Brand equity 196; Brand liking 197; Brand usage affects
advertising noting 198
20 The mental world of brands and the objective of
advertising 201
The ‘brand memory–advertising memory’paradigm 203;
Advertising memories 204; What tumbles out first? 205;
Advertising and brand equity 206
21 ‘I told you so’ 208
22 The emotional and the rational 211
Learnings from the emotional filter model 216;
Conclusion 218
Appendix: Choosing a copy testing methodology 220
Bibliography 221
Index 227
Figures
1.1 The response curve to advertising 13
1.2 The impact of Jones’s research on the advertising
response curve 17
2.1 Sciences involved in the new understanding of the mind 22
3.1 Ebbinghaus’s memory experiment 26
3.2 Apsychologists’model of the brain 28
4.1 The main areas of the brain 34
5.1 The structure of neurons 38
5.2 Four neurons as simple squares 41
5.3 Dendrites and synapses 41
5.4 Asimplified neuronal network 42
5.5 What happens when node Afires 43
5.6 Cycle 2 of the sample system 43
5.7 Cycle 3 of the sample system 44
5.8 Aneuronal network with different sensitivities 45
5.9 Hinton diagram of Rummelhart’s experiment 46
5.10 Firing patterns for Rummelhart’s experiment 47
5.11 Firing patterns for the re-run of Rummelhart’s experiment 49
5.12 Gestalt: a few lines become a smiling face 50
5.13 The Gestalt effect 51
5.14 The Gestalt effect and words 52
6.1 Pattern of EEG activity in the occipital region 69
6.2 Stimulation of the occipital region when the subject is
passively viewing words 70
6.3 Pattern of brain activity shown by PETwhen the subject is
listening to words 71
6.4 Pattern of brain activity shown by PETwhen the subject is
generating a verb to go with a noun 72
viii Figures
6.5 PETscan of brain activity after practice on the word list 73
8.1 Aspectrum of affective phenomena in terms of the time
course of each 83
8.2 How the emotional and the rational relate to each other:
Descartes’and Damasio’s views 92
9.1 The learning curve 100
9.2 The convex learning curve 101
9.3 The learning curve changing with practise 101
9.4 The learning curve with related memories 102
9.5 Learning and forgetting 103
11.1 Advertising effectiveness 112
12.1 In-market advertising recall in South Africa (for all
television advertising) 115
12.2 Number of commercials shown per week in different
countries 118
12.3 Increase in advertising awareness per hundred GRPs in
different countries 119
12.4 Advertising awareness in Spain 120
12.5 Advertising impact 122
13.1 Relationship between advertisement length and percentage
of respondents remembering it 124
13.2 Television ad-awareness (three weeks after first transmission)
by length of commercial and number of GRPs during the
first two weeks of advertising 126
15.1 How ad-liking might work 146
15.2 The effect of ad-liking on in-market ad-awareness 147
15.3 The double effect of ad-liking 148
15.4 The COMMAPmodel of communication 150
15.5 VRPratings and trial rates for commercials 158
17.1 Different access strategies to advertising memories 172
17.2 Recognition: respondents who can name a brand once the
advertisement has been described 174
17.3 What makes memorable advertising 179
18.1 Results from Taylor Nelson’s research into short-term sales
effects from advertising 182
18.2 Arange of different response curves that might apply to
subsequent bursts of advertising 183
18.3 Learning and forgetting 185
18.4 An improved model of forgetting and learning 186
18.5 Adtrack’s results on impact and retention of advertisements 187
19.1 The effect of brand usage on recognition and recall of
advertisements 199
Figures ix
19.2 The effect of brand usage on advertising liking 200
22.1 Asimple communication–feedback model 212
22.2 The emotional filter model 213
22.3 The emotional filter model taking account of media 213
22.4 The emotional filter model including both communications
media and the brand as a memory 214
22.5 Purchase cycles and the emotional filter model 215
22.6 The impact of advertising research on the model 216
22.7 The research feedback in the model 217
Tables
1.1 The STAS effect: increase in share of spend for different
advertised brands 15
8.1 Categorizing feelings 82
9.1 Alist of nonsense words to memorize 97
9.2 The memory test, part 2 97
9.3 The memory test, part 3 98
12.1 Percentage of viewers remembering the last commercial
they have seen on television in the United States 114
12.2 Percentage of viewers remembering the last commercial
they have seen on television in West Germany 114
13.1 Percentage of respondents with spontaneous and aided recall
of advertisements, by length of advertisement 125
13.2 How size and use of colour affect percentage of
advertisement recall in business magazines 127
13.3 Eye-scanner figures for time spent reviewing advertisements,
by advertisement size 128
13.4 Average audience and reading time for print advertisements 128
13.5 Recognition of and recall of text-oriented advertisements 128