Attention and Comprehension
What is perception?
It is the process where an individual
receives stimuli through the various
senses and interprets them
The Perception Process
Attention
Stimulus
Interpretation
Active Search
Simplify
Passive search
Distort
Passive Attention
Organize
Stimulus Conditions
Intensity
Size
Message
Novelty
Position
Context
Audience Conditions
Attitudes
Values
Interests
Confidence
Social Context
Cognitive Style
Cognition
Getting Attention
• The first step in getting your ad noticed by
the target segment
• Advertising clutter
• Noise clutter
• Memory is less when viewed/heard with
competitive brand advertising.
Zipping and Zapping
• Zipping is going ‘fast forward’
• Zapping is changing channels or channel
surfing
How to minimise Zipping and
Zapping?
Zipping
• To get the commercial at the beginning of
the pod
• Visual elements that would be visible in
the main body of the program or even
when doing FF.
Zapping
• Improving ‘likability’ of the ad
• Making it interesting and involving
Primacy and Recency effects
Primacy
• Being the first ad, it registers in the mind.
Recency
• The last one is fresh in memory
Therefore such ad positions are priced at a
premium.
What ads attracts attention?
• Product information that would help
purchase decision
• Those that expose themselves to
information that support these opinions
and avoid discrepant information
• Those that desire to get exposed to
information that stimulates
• Stimuli which is interesting
Information of Practical value
The behavioural tendency to process
information depends on
• Need for information
• Expectancy (Probability) that processing a
particular ad will lead to relevant
information exposure
• Measure of the value of that particular as a
source of relevant information
Long copy Vs short copy
• Readership drops sharply after 50 words but
between 50 and 500 words there is hardly any
difference.
• ‘The more you tell the more you sell’
• ‘If you don’t have anything to say, then sing it.’
• Depends on whether it is under active search or
for future reference
• Infomercials
• Advertorials
Information that supports
• Dissonance theory – Cognitive dissonance is
discomforting and people will try to reduce it.
One mechanism is through selective exposure
• People tend to have a psychological preference
for supportive information and avoid discrepant
information. This is called selective exposure
• Ad awareness seems to be higher for those who
already have higher brand attitudes – Rajeev Batra
and Wilried Vanhonacker
• Involuntary exposure to non-supportive
information shall increase selective exposure to
information that supports
Information that interests
• People tend to notice information that is
interesting to them – Russel Haley
• This where customer self-selection works
when such ads are put in mass media.
Information that stimulates
• Variety theory by Salvadore Maddi. This
states that novelty, unexpectedness,
change and complexity are pursued
because they are inherently satisfying.
• Adaptation level theory by H. Helson.
People learn to associate stimuli with a
reference point or adaptation level.
Marked deviation from it shall attract
attention.
Weber’s Law
The degree to which a stimulus would be regarded
as different will depend not on the absolute stimulus
change but on the% change from some point of reference.
I
I
K
Attention vs Recall
Recall of an ad is a necessary but not
sufficient condition for persuasion.
• Ad repetition, higher frequency and higher
SOV
• Using distinctive creative material in the ad
• Merchandising using clues to recall ad at
the store
Attention vs Comprehension
• While getting attention is important it should not
detract the viewer from the message
• The execution, models, props, etc. must not take
precedence over the brand.
• Persuasion takes place when good
comprehension takes place. Processing would
take central or peripheral routes of processing
depending on the comprehension.
Interpretation vs Comprehension
• Objective comprehension
What is the take-out of the brand? – copy test
scales
• Subjective comprehension
Explicit – the ad story
Implicit – using the ad information along with
knowledge and experience already stored in
memory
The deeper the level of subjective
comprehension, the more effective the ad will be
credibility, likeability, persuasive and recall – David
Mick
Perceptual organization
• People tend to see objects as a whole
than see individually its parts. – S. E. Asch
• First impressions are important.
• Closure
• Assimilation – Contrast
• Miscomprehension
Brand Attitudes
• Cognitive (awareness, comprehension,
knowledge)
• Affective (evaluation, liking, preference)
• Conative (purchase, trial)
Attitudes decay over time. Therefore +ve
attitudes need to be nurtured and sustained.
Attitudes can be examined at three levels
• Physical
• Pseudo-physical
• Benefits –physical and psychological
% of total market
Attitude Segments
4
3
Competitive efforts1
-ve
Marketing efforts
5
2
6
Attitude
7
+ve
Ad attitudes
•
Attitude towards an ad (liking) provided
an impact on brand attitudes over and
above the ability of the ad to communicate
attribute information – Andrew Mitchell, Jerry Olsen
and Terence Shrimp
• Ad disliking has a greater effect than ad
liking. The effect of ad liking are more
important for mood ads than for hard-sell
ads – McCollum and Spielman
What makes an ad more likeable?
•
•
•
•
Credibility
Positive, likeable feelings
Uses humour
Uses relevant executional
devices
• Uses relevant, likeable
celebrities
• Uses endorsers relevant
to target market
• For a brand already liked
• Contains useful
information
• Interesting and
reasonably complex
• Contains information that
is itself liked (SP)
• Placed in a media
environment that is itself
liked