Breaking Through The Clutter: Benefits of advertisement originality and familiarity for brand attention and memory Research by:Rik Pieters; Luk Warlop; Michel Wedel. Published at Management Science, June 2002 vol.48 p765(17) presented by: Michelle Griffin Eyal Golan

Breaking through the clutter: Benefits of advertisement originality and familiarity for brand attention and memory Overview - Introduction - Originality and Familiarity Effects - Modeling Ad Originality & Familiarity Effects on Attention & Memory - The Study - Results - Conclusions

Introduction  Breaking through the clutter  Maximize attention and memory for brands  Which factors affect consumers’ attention? How attention drives memory?  Strategy 1: outnumber / outsize  Strategy 2: outsmart (original)  Risk of being original/creative  When unfamiliar (attention to ad – not to band), and when become familiar (attract less attention)  Originality’s effect on brand memory wasn’t tested. What’s new in this research?  Testing the influence of ad originality and familiarity on on attention and memory for the advertised brands (rather than forced exposure)  May ads / many consumers (rather than a single ad / tactic)  Attention measured by detailed data collected using infrared eye-tracking methodology (rather than time spent of ads) Breaking through the clutter: Benefits of advertisement originality and familiarity for brand attention and memory

Originality and familiarity effects - What’s Originality? - New Ways to Present Selling Propositions - “Defamiliarization” to stimulate viewers to think about familiar issue for new perspectives. - Techniques include humor, metaphors, wordplay etc. Breaking through the clutter: Benefits of advertisement originality and familiarity for brand attention and memory

Originality and familiarity effects Ad originality effects on attention and memory - Content of Print Ad: Brand, Text, Pictorial - Original ad: -Print and text have low probability of prior e-occurrence with the product -Avoid obvious associations -Challenges the viewer to think what Breaking through the clutter: Benefits of advertisement originality and familiarity for brand attention and memory

Originality and familiarity effects Ad originality effects on attention and memory (con’d) Therefore: Hypothesis 1 Ad originality promotes attention to the advertised brand Attention Elaboration Strengthening of brand association in memory - If supported, then ad originality promotes brand memory INDIRECTLY (I.e. through attention) Breaking through the clutter: Benefits of advertisement originality and familiarity for brand attention and memory

Originality and familiarity effects Ad originality effects on attention and memory (con’d) Originality More associations Distinction Better Memory Therefore: Hypothesis 2 Ad originality promotes brand memory, independent of attention Breaking through the clutter: Benefits of advertisement originality and familiarity for brand attention and memory

Originality and familiarity effects Originality Effects of Familiar Advertisements - Familiar Ad: -Were seen or heard before -By actual experience or by context effect (sense of familiarity) -Obviously, require less attention (after 3 exposures, attention drops by +50%) Therefore: Hypothesis 3 Ad originality moderates the decrement in attention due to ad familiarity Ad originality moderates the decrement in attention due to ad familiarity Breaking through the clutter: Benefits of advertisement originality and familiarity for brand attention and memory

Originality and familiarity effects Originality Effects of Familiar Advertisements (con’d) Elements of familiar stimulus are stored and accessed as a single unit Improve memory performance Better memory to familiar brands Original stimuli promotes more associations with other information Better memory performance since there multiple pathways to the stored stimuli Original stimuli promotes more associations with other information Better memory performance since there multiple pathways to the stored stimuliTherefore: Hypothesis 4 Ad originality moderates the increment in brand memory due to ad familiarity, independent of attention Ad originality moderates the increment in brand memory due to ad familiarity, independent of attention Breaking through the clutter: Benefits of advertisement originality and familiarity for brand attention and memory

Originality and familiarity effects Originality Effects of Familiar Advertisements (con’d) When Hypothesis 3 and Hypothesis 4 are combined: -Original Ads: - Moderates negative effect on attention - Positive effect on memory Breaking through the clutter: Benefits of advertisement originality and familiarity for brand attention and memory

Modeling Advertisement Originality & Familiarity Effects on Attention & Memory consumers, exposed to 58 print ads in 2 magazines - Eyes movements and fixations to assess the information extracted from print ads - Eye fixation durations are recorded to each of the 3 elements (text, pictorial, brand) - Assessing ability to recall the advertised brands accurately Breaking through the clutter: Benefits of advertisement originality and familiarity for brand attention and memory

Modeling Advertisement Originality & Familiarity Effects on Attention & Memory - Assess how ad originality & familiarity influence the attention - Visual attention during eye fixation - Extracted information is fixed for each fixation period - But varies from ad to ad and from consumer to consumer Breaking through the clutter: Benefits of advertisement originality and familiarity for brand attention and memory

Modeling Advertisement Originality & Familiarity Effects on Attention & Memory - Mathematically, “the information [phi] extracted by consumer i at the k th fixation from the j elements of the l th ad, is represented using a "dual heterogeneity" formulation”: [[phi] ijkl ] = [[mu] j ] + [[zeta] jl ] + [v ji ]. (1) Where, - …….. Breaking through the clutter: Benefits of advertisement originality and familiarity for brand attention and memory

Modeling Advertisement Originality & Familiarity Effects on Attention & Memory Breaking through the clutter: Benefits of advertisement originality and familiarity for brand attention and memory

The Study  Advertising Stimuli & Participants  58 full-page advertisements  Two publication (Elsevier & Allerhande)  119 people (64 male, 55 female)  Average age = 38 years  35% had college degree  Paid $20 each

Breaking through the clutter: Benefits of advertisement originality and familiarity for brand attention and memory The Study  The Eye-Tracking Procedure  Paged through 4 random magazines  Magazines were fixed to the table  Each went at their own pace  Average time = 30 minutes

Breaking through the clutter: Benefits of advertisement originality and familiarity for brand attention and memory The Study  Brand Memory Task  Brand Recall  Ad Originality & Familiarity  Ads judged on 7-point scale

Breaking through the clutter: Benefits of advertisement originality and familiarity for brand attention and memory The Results  Descriptive Results  Fixated 7.16 times  24.1% identified correctly  Ad Originality & Familiarity Effects on Attention  Support Hypothesis 1  Increased originality = Increased attention  Support Hypothesis 3  Interaction is positive

Breaking through the clutter: Benefits of advertisement originality and familiarity for brand attention and memory The Results  Ad Originality & Familiarity Effects on Memory  Contributions to brand memory  Counter Hypothesis 2  Originality vs. Familiarity  Support Hypothesis 4  Highest accuracy from original, familiar ads  Ad Originality Follow-up  Text and pictorial originality judged separately  Both contribute equally

Breaking through the clutter: Benefits of advertisement originality and familiarity for brand attention and memory Conclusion  Ad originality promoted improvements in memory  Limitations and Future Research  Brand awareness as primary communication objective

Questions?