Bibliography
Du Plessis, E. – Recognition Versus Recall, Journal of Advertising
Research, May/June, 1994
Harvard-Spink & Heath, R. – And Now for Something Completely
Different, Market Research Society Conference Paper, 2000
Heath, R. – How the Best Ads Work, Admap, 2002
White, R. – The Blind Alleys of Recall, Admap, Jan 1998
References:
Processing and encoding – the mind engages with the world on
a number of levels of intensity – how this works affects how
advertising can be inserted into the recipient:
· Pre-attentive
processing – driving a car but thinking about other things –
unconscious scanning taking place
· Low involvement
processing – driving the car at the same time as talking to
someone else
· High involvement
processing – suddenly there is a threat to the car/the driver
Ideally the above, applied to advertising might see any/all of these
used. (see Howard & Heath, p.339, 2000
How we think – quoting Einstein “the words or the language
as they are written or spoken, do not seem to play any role in my
mechanisms of thought. The psychical entities which seem to
serve as elements in thought are certain signs and more or less clear
images which can be ‘voluntarily’ reproduced and combined.
(ibid. p.340)
Structure of memory – ref. To Joseph Le Doux: The Emotional
Brain, Memories are “not carbon copies of the experiences that
created them. They are reconstructions at the time of recall, and
the state of the brain at the time of recall can influence the way
in which the withdrawn memory is remembered.” The reconstruction
of certain set of memories is crucial for advertising to work. (ibid.
p.339)
Engrams – sets of connections made by the brain in storing a
memory (see Schacter, 2002) which can be strengthened by regular reinforcement
or by have many connections – eg. Claudia Schiffer and the Citroen
Xsara adverts – beautiful model – no clothes – nigh
tech – humour etc. the more connections to knowledge in our
brains the better. (ibid. p.342)
Brands – purchase decisions are often not made on a rational
basis but on the basis of powerful brand associations ie. decisions
are “based not upon reson and logic, but upon intuition guided
by ‘markers’ derived from past experience”(ibid.
p.347) Often the most effective of these are implanted on a
low involvement basis ie. the recipient doesn’t know they are
receiving and encoding advertising (see also Brown, 2000)
“Implicit Memory” the automatic storage of what is seen
and heard – very powerful as a way of allowing advertising to
enter the world without the recipient necessarily being aware –
it can then be triggered or cued later and connected with a purchase
decision (Heath, R. p.41, 2002)
The merits of multiple exposure to advertising images, on first viewing
an image will be stored in the right (rational) brain but on subsequent
viewing it is likely to be connected on a more emotional level with
knowledge in the left (emotional) side of the brain. (see Du Plessis,
p.77, 1994)
“memory resides in that part of the cortex that originally processed
(a spatula was the example quoted) how the spatula felt and how the
hands moved it” ibid. referring to a Newsweek article from April,
1992.
Order and sequence - “representations” of events are stored
in connections between nerves and are “laid down with a schemata
that makes certain ways of accessing memories easier than others”
– refers to an experiment by Baddeley where he asked people
to say “words beginning with.. and a letter would be given or
“words ending with…”and a letter would be given.
The first task was much easier due to the fact that the first letter
is laid down first because typically it will be need first and the
rest of the word follows. (ibid. p.81)
Visual prompting – the tremendous power of the memory to store
visual material (as opposed to its ability to make mistakes eg. witness
testimony, ) ensures that the use of a visual prompt will unlock a
huge amount of stored knowledge. (ibid. p. 83.)
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