This book is published in eight languages (English, Dutch, Polish, Korean, Chinese, Turkish, Indonesian, and Rumanian).

Puts the psyche of advertising on the analyst’s couch to reveal the sometimes surprising mind of commercial persuasion.

Jim Spaeth, Former President, Advertising Research Foundation

This is a well-informed and engagingly written description of the processes involved in the communication of advertising. It does not share the problems of advertising text books, which are generally superficial as well as being invariably out-of-date. Nor is it one of those populist works that receive a wide sale by propagating over-simple theories.

John Philip Jones, author of When Ads Work and Professor of Marketing, Syracuse University

I learned a lot from the book, while thoroughly enjoying it. It has much to offer for both the novice and the experienced advertising person. Insights about the advertising process are backed up with many examples of real advertising, research monitoring hundreds of advertising campaigns around the world, and a wide variety of academic research. Amazingly, all this is combined in a delightful writing style that entertains while it teaches.

Alan Sawyer, Professor of Marketing, University of Florida

A thought-provoking and practical book on how ads work and how advertising campaigns can be most effectively managed that also contains many useful ideas for achieving more effective advertising campaigns.

Professor John Rossiter, University of Wollongong, co-author of Marketing Communications: Theory and applications

Breakthrough thinking. I have been consulting in the advertising business and have taught graduate level advertising courses for over 20 years. I have never found a book that brought so much insight to the advertising issues associated with effective selling.

Professor Larry Chiagouris, Pace University

Finally, a book that evades the ‘magic’ of advertising and pins down the psychological factors that make an ad successful or not. It will change the way you advertise and see ads.

Ignacio Oreamuno, President, ihaveanidea.org

A very stimulating, provocative, and interesting book. A gold mine of practical and memorable advertising findings.

Professor Shelby McIntyre, Santa Clara University

ADVERTISING

AND THE MIND OF

THE CONSUMER

What works, what doesn’t, and why

REVISED 3rd INTERNATIONAL EDITION

MAX SUTHERLAND

This edition published in 2008

First published in 1993

Copyright © Max Sutherland, 1993, 2000, 2008

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.

Allen & Unwin
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Australia

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National Library of Australia

Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:

Sutherland, Max.

Advertising and the mind of the consumer: what works,
what doesn’t and why/Max Sutherland, Alice K. Sylvester.

3rd ed.

9781741755992 (pbk.)

Advertising – Psychological aspects.

Consumer behaviour.

659.1019

Set in 10/14pt Utopia by Midland Typesetters, Australia

Printed and bound in Australia by Griffin Press

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

CONTENTS

Figures and tables

Acknowledgments

About the author

PART A

WHY ADVERTISING HAS REMAINED A MYSTERY FOR SO LONG

Introduction

1 Influencing people: myths and mechanisms

2 Image and reality: seeing things in different ways

3 Subliminal advertising: the biggest myth of all

4 Conformity: the popular thing to do

5 The advertising message: oblique and indirect

6 ‘Under the radar’: paid product placement

7 Silent symbols and badges of identity

8 Vicarious experience and virtual reality

9 Messages, reminders and rewards: how ads speak to us

10 What’s this I’m watching? The elements that make up an ad

11 ‘Behavioural targeting’: consumers in the crosshairs

12 The limits of advertising

PART B

WHAT WORKS, WHAT DOESN’T, AND WHY

Introduction

13 Continuous tracking: are you being followed?

14 New product launches: don’t pull the plug too early

15 Planning campaign strategy around consumers’ mental filing cabinets

16 What happens when you stop advertising?

17 The effectiveness of funny ads: what a laugh!

18 Learning to use shorter-length TV commercials

19 Seasonal advertising

20 Underweight advertising: execution anorexia

21 Why radio ads aren’t recalled

22 Maximizing ad effectiveness: develop a unique and consistent style

23 Sequels

24 Corporate tracking of image and issues

25 The web: advertising in a new age

26 ‘Mental reach’: they see your ad but does it get through?

27 Measurement of advertising effects in memory

28 The buy-ology of mind

29 Conclusion

Appendix: How to prompt ad awareness

Notes

Index

FIGURES AND TABLES

Figures

  1.1 Low-involvement decision

  1.2 High-involvement decision

  1.3 Small cumulative increments

  1.4 Jim Beam ad reinforcing the stereotypical user image

  1.5 Paul Hogan triggered instant recall of the brand Winfield

  1.6 Visual salience—the ‘pop-out’ effect

  2.1 Is it a rabbit or a duck?

  2.2 A vase or two faces?

  2.3 An advertisement for Mikimoto pearls

  3.1 An ad for Camel cigarettes

  3.2 Only one word, ‘Speed’, appeared on this ad

  4.1 Card 1 and card 2

  4.2 Card 3

  4.3 A Nivea ad promoting the brand as no. 1

  4.4 Image of increasing popularity

  5.1 Valentine’s Day ad for Jewelry.com

  5.2 Image effects revealed

  7.1 Michael Schumacher for Omega

  8.1 The characters from the Taster’s Choice coffee commercial

  8.2 Jerry Seinfeld in mini-drama ads with the American Express card as the hero

  9.1 You don’t necessarily have to like this ad for it to be effective

  9.2 Fat free Pringles ad

10.1 An ad for Lever body wash

10.2 Victoria’s Secret lingerie advertising

10.3 The animated M&M characters don’t ‘age’ like regular characters

13.1 Shampoo advertisement awareness

13.2 Shampoo market share as affected by new advertisement

14.1 Advertising influence on intentions

14.2 Awareness of a new food product

15.1 Television share of mind and share of voice

16.1 Spontaneous awareness—brand A

16.2 Spontaneous awareness—brand B

16.3 Size of market segments

17.1 Some humor relies on wit

18.1 A fifteen-second advertisement failure

18.2 A fifteen-second advertisement campaign that worked!

18.3 Percentage of people associating the brand with the advertised image

18.4 Another fifteen-second advertisement failure

19.1 Seasonal advertising campaign—spontaneous ad awareness

20.1 The number of advertising executions

22.1 Consistency—MetLife advertising

22.2 Consistency—Absolut vodka

22.3 The Nike ‘swoosh’ symbol

22.4 The Energizer bunny

22.5 Transamerica ads show the landmark Transamerica building

23.1 Residual recall of old and new advertisements

24.1 What do you see?

24.2 A Hyundai ad showing the diversity of its products

24.3 When the context is changed

25.1 An eBay cybernetic ‘signpost’

25.2 Outdoor ads for Federal Express and Lotto

25.3 Banner ads often focus on behavioural response—click-through

26.1 A print ad for Colgate

26.2 Cumulative reach over four weeks

26.3 How ‘eyes on screen’ impacts on memory for TV ads

27.1 A memory network

27.2 We are more likely to be reminded of ‘hand’ by the word ‘fingers’ than ‘glove’

27.3 ‘Mom, can I have some more calcium?’

27.4 Brand associative mental network

28.1 The ad executions for VW and Dairy Soft spread grab attention

28.2 An ad experience memory network

28.3 Associative mental network connections

28.4 Dogs’ knowledge memory network

A.1 Case 1—category- vs brand-cued advertising recall

A.2 Case 2—category- vs brand-cued advertising recall

Tables

  1.1 Mental agendas for lots of things

  1.2 Common brand cues 20

BI.1 Calculation of TRP figure

18.1 Comparison of advertisement campaigns

18.2 Various ways shorter-length commercials have been used

22.1 Some examples of popular music used in commercials

24.1 Agenda of concerns

27.1 Primary measures of effectiveness

28.1 Measures of advertising effectiveness

28.2 Brand-focused measures

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

So many people have contributed to this book that it is impossible to cite everyone by name. In this third edition, I particularly want to thank readers of earlier editions as well as regular readers of my monthly column (posted at www.sutherlandsurvey.com) for their feedback comments and suggestions.

The opportunity to work with the many valued MarketMind clients, to track their and their competitors’ advertising over time, provided much raw material from which to discover how advertising really does work as opposed to how folklore or pure theory says it works. I thank them sincerely and the co-founder of MarketMind, Bruce Smith, for his constant support and encouragement in the writing of this book.

It is through the communicating and sharing of ideas and case-study observations over many years that a body of knowledge such as this emerges. Therefore many of the MarketMind staff contributed either directly or indirectly to this book. My thanks also to Alice Sylvester, my former co-author for her efforts on the second edition and for her contribution of some of the case examples retained in this third edition.

Special thanks for the contribution made to the revised editions goes to Stephen Holden of Bond University, who provided international ad examples, as well as Professor Andy Gross for his continued assistance throughout the process. Thanks also to John Wigzell (consultant) for his advice on European case examples and Malcolm Stewart (CUSTOMeDIA) and Pat Williams for their media advice.

My wife, Mel Sutherland, suffered through many iterations of the proofreading of each edition as well as a somewhat impoverished social and family life when the book was first written. My now adult son, Kent, and daughters Keli and Julia still envy their friends whose households chatted during ad breaks whereas in ours, they now tell me, they felt they had to keep quiet ‘because Dad was watching the ads’. And whereas these other households recorded TV programs and fast forwarded the ads, their dad had to record and fast-forward through the programs to watch the ads. Thanks to all of them for their understanding and the time to make the book happen.

Many valued academic colleagues and friends have influenced my thinking over the years. In particular I want to mention Professor John Rossiter (Wollongong University), Dr John Galloway (NetMap), Larry Percy (consultant), Professors Joe Danks and David Riccio (Kent State University), Dr Rob Donovan (University of Western Australia), Geoff Alford (Alford Research), Shelby McIntyre (Santa Clara University), and from the ‘earlier years’, Drs Bob March, Stan Glaser and Graham Pont. All of these and many others have influenced the direction and content of this book. Of course that does not imply that they will all agree with everything that is written here. The ultimate responsibility for the content, together with any omissions or errors, must remain mine.

To Karen Gee, my thanks for a great job in editing this third edition.

Lastly, I am indebted to the three people who constantly urged the writing of the original book until it finally happened: Malcolm Cameron, Mike Hanlon and Tom Valenta.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr Max Sutherland is an author, columnist and marketing psychologist who works as an independent consultant in Australia and the USA. An expert in the psychology of communication, his monthly column is posted on the web at www.sutherlandsurvey.com. He is Adjunct Professor of Marketing at Bond University and Honorary Principal Research Fellow at Wollongong University.

The highly successful company he founded in 1989, MarketMind,¹ specialized in tracking the effects of advertising communication for many of the leading global advertisers including Gillette, Merck, Kodak, McDonald’s, Miller, Qantas, Nestlé and Pfizer. MarketMind was ultimately acquired by a US conglomerate.

His early career included retail sales as well as positions in market research with the Coca-Cola Export Corporation and the Overseas Telecommunications Commission.

With degrees in marketing and psychology, Dr Sutherland has held senior academic positions at a number of universities in the USA and Australia. He has held full-time lectureships in market research and consumer behavior at the University of New South Wales and the David Syme Business School (now Monash University) as well as Visiting Professor at Kent State University and Santa Clara University in the USA. He has published numerous papers in American, European and Australasian journals and currently serves on the editorial board of the International Journal of Brand Management and the International Journal of Advertising.

He is a former editor of the Australian Marketing Researcher, a Fellow and former Chairman of the Australian Market & Social Research Society and a Fellow of the Australian Marketing Institute.

He can be contacted at msutherland@adandmind.com.

PART A

WHY ADVERTISING HAS REMAINED
A MYSTERY FOR SO LONG

INTRODUCTION

The subject of advertising seems to be riddled with mystique and apparent contradictions. This book resolves some of those contradictions. It had its beginnings in regular columns for various trade publications and journals; Part B brings together some of those articles and subsequent articles and more material can be found at www.adandmind.com.

This book is not just aimed at advertisers and their ad agencies but also at the people to whom they advertise. As David Ogilvy, a leading advertising expert, said (in the chauvinistic 1960s): ‘The consumer is not a moron. She is your wife!’¹ Our wives, our husbands, our partners, our children are all consumers. The consumer is not an idiot. The consumer is you and me.

Many years ago the advertiser’s dilemma was expressed in this way: ‘I know that half my advertising is wasted—but I don’t know which half!’² But developments in market research are beginning to change all that by better enabling advertisers to identify what works and what doesn’t.³ This book draws on the experience of tracking week by week the effects of hundreds of advertising campaigns over a period of more than fifteen years.

Almost everybody is interested in advertising. The average consumer is exposed to hundreds of ads every day. By the time we die we will have spent an estimated one and a half years watching TV commercials.⁴ Yet advertising continues to be something of a mystery.

The response ‘Gee, I didn’t know that’ to an advertisement tends to be the exception. A round trip special price to New York for $400 is news. Ads that announce the release of new products like iPhone, the Segway, self cleaning windows or voice-operated computers are news. And if we are someone who is compulsive about germs maybe Mr Clean with a new disinfectant that kills germs 50 per cent better than the old Mr Clean might also be news. With news advertising we can easily recognize the potential of the advertising to affect us.

But most advertising is not ‘news’ advertising. Much of the advertising we encounter doesn’t impart news and it is difficult for us to see how it works on us. As consumers we generally believe it does not really affect us personally. Despite this, advertisers keep on advertising. So something must be working—but on whom, and exactly how?

This book demystifies the effects of advertising and describes some of the psychological mechanisms underlying them. It is written primarily for those who foot the bill for advertising and those who produce advertising. In other words, for those many organizations involved with advertising—the marketing directors, marketing managers, product managers, advertising managers, account execs, media people and creatives. However, in the various editions it has also been read by many interested consumers who wonder how advertising works and why advertisers keep on advertising. Understanding the mechanisms and their limitations tends to lessen the anxieties we may have about wholesale, unconscious manipulation by advertising.

It may come as a surprise to many consumers that those who foot the bill for advertising are often frustrated by knowing little more than the consumers themselves about how, why or when their advertising works. Advertising agencies, the makers of advertising, also know less about these things than we might think. They are seen as wizards at selling, but an agency’s most important pitch is to organizations that want to advertise— companies that will engage the agency’s services to design their advertising on an ongoing basis. To keep clients coming back, advertising agencies need to sell the effectiveness of their advertising to those clients and to the world. Inevitably, some agencies become much more accomplished at selling their clients and the world on the great job the advertising is doing than they do at creating advertising that is truly effective.

Like the skills of tribal healers, ad agencies’ powers and methods are seen to be all the greater because of the mystery that surrounds advertising. Books like Vance Packard’s The Hidden Persuaders⁵ enhance this image of the power of advertising agencies because they portray them as having witch-doctor-like powers. So in a way the mystique and aura of advertising works in favor of its makers—the advertising agencies—by boosting their image, status and perceived power.

Way back in 1978 Alec Benn, an advertising agency principal in the United States, claimed in his book The 27 Most Common Mistakes in Advertising: ‘There is a great conspiracy participated in by advertising agencies, radio and television stations and networks, advertising consultants, newspapers, magazines and others to mislead corporate management about the effectiveness of advertising.’⁶ Benn was pointing out that advertising failed more often than it succeeded, usually because its effects ‘are not measured objectively’.

Since then, advertising has begun to be measured more objectively and more often (indeed continuously) and this has highlighted the hard fact that many ads still fail. Part of the reason is that advertising agencies get too little in the way of ‘news’ to work with—there aren’t the breakthrough things to say about existing brands to cause immediate impacts. But the other part of it is a historical overreliance on intuition and introspection.⁷ When these qualities are used instead of objective measurement as the basis for deciding what works and what doesn’t, there are more ads that fail than ads that are outstandingly successful. Sustained effects occur less than half the time.⁸ Until recently these failures stood a good chance of going unrecognized because the majority of campaigns were not tracked in a formal way.⁹

In the general population there are those who believe that advertising is all powerful and that the mechanism of advertising must be unconscious and subliminal, because its effects do not seem open to introspection. Such views are associated with the ‘dark and manipulative’ view of advertising. This book reveals a much more benign interpretation of advertising’s so-called ‘unconscious’ effects. In elaborating on some of the subtler mechanisms of advertising, it dispels many myths and exaggerated claims. At the same time it reveals just how subtle advertising’s influence can be and how much of an impact it can have on the success or failure of one brand over another.

This book will help advertising agencies to diagnose the why of what works, and what doesn’t. It shows advertisers how to get better results from their advertising budget and their agency. And it reveals to consumers how advertising works to influence which brands we choose—especially if the choice doesn’t matter to us personally—and why it is that we find it difficult to introspect on advertising’s effect.

1 INFLUENCING PEOPLE: MYTHS AND MECHANISMS

All these questions reflect the general belief that advertising works by persuading us, yet we don’t feel personally that we are at all persuaded by it.

Why is it so difficult for us to introspect on advertising and how it influences us? Because we look for major effects, that’s why! Too often, we look for the ability of a single ad to persuade us rather than for more subtle, minor effects. Big and immediate effects of advertising do occur when the advertiser has something new to say. Then it is easy for us to introspect on its effect.

But most effects of advertising fall well short of persuasion. These minor effects are not obvious but they are more characteristic of the way advertising works. To understand advertising we have to understand and measure these effects. When our kids are growing up we don’t notice their physical growth each day but from time to time we become aware that they have grown. Determining how much a child has grown in the last 24 hours is like evaluating the effect of being exposed to a single commercial. In both cases, the changes are too small for us to notice. But even small effects of advertising can influence which brand we choose, especially when all other factors are equal and when alternative brands are much the same.

Weighing the alternatives: evaluation

It is easiest to understand this with low-involvement buying situations. The situation is like a ‘beam balance’ in which each brand weighs the same. With one brand on each side, the scale is balanced. However, it takes only a feather added to one side of the balance to tip us in favor of the brand on that side. The brands consumers have to choose from are often very similar. Which one will the buying balance tip towards? When we look for advertising effects we are looking for feathers rather than heavy weights.¹

The buying of cars, appliances, vacations and other high-priced items are examples of high-involvement decision-making. This high level of involvement contrasts with the low level brought to bear on the purchase of products like shampoo or soft drink or margarine. For most of us, the buying of these smaller items is no big deal. We have better things to do with our time than agonize over which brand to choose every time we buy something.

Figure 1.1: Low-involvement decision: deciding between two virtually identical alternatives.

The fact is that in many low-involvement product categories, the alternative brands are extremely similar and in some cases almost identical. Most consumers don’t really care which one they buy and could substitute easily if their brand ceased to exist. It is in these low-involvement categories that the effects of advertising can be greatest and yet hardest to introspect upon.

Even with high-involvement products the beam balance analogy is relevant because very different alternatives can have equal weight. We often have to weigh up complex things like ‘average quality at a moderate price’ against ‘premium quality at a higher price’. Often we find ourselves in a state of indecision between the alternatives. When the choices weigh equally in our mind, whether they be low-involvement products or high-involvement products, it can take just a feather to swing that balance.²

Figure 1.2: High-involvement decision: very different alternatives can have equal weight.

With high-involvement decisions we are more concerned about the outcome of the weighing-up process, so we think more about how much weight to give to each feature (quality, size or power). How many extra dollars is it worth paying for a feature? Automotive writers for example can reach very different opinions. The more complex a product’s features the more complex this assessment because there are usually both positive and negative perspectives. For example, a compact car is positive in regard to both fuel economy and maneuverability but negative in regard to leg room and comfort.

So which way should we see it? What weight should we give to a particular feature in our minds? When advertising emphasizes points that favor a brand, it doesn’t have to persuade us—merely raise our awareness of the positive perspectives. Chances are we will notice confirmatory evidence more easily as a result. When we subsequently read a newspaper or consumer report or talk with friends, research shows that we are prone to interpret such information slightly more favorably.³ This effect is a long way from heavyweight persuasion. Rather it is a gentle, mental biasing of our subsequent perceptions, and we will see in Chapter 2 how perspective can influence our interpretation. It is not so much persuasion as a shifting of the mental spotlight . . . playing the focal beam of attention on one perspective rather than another.

Repetition

As with the amount by which our kids grow in a day, we are just not aware of the small differences advertising can make. Even though these imperceptibly small changes in time add up to significant effects, individual increments are too small for us to notice. They are just below what is known as the just noticeable difference (JND).

Figure 1.3: Small cumulative increments. We don’t notice a child’s growth in 24 hours.

Through the process of repetition these small increments can produce major perceived differences between brands, but we are rarely aware of the process taking place.

The cumulative effects of changes in brand image become starkly noticeable only in rare cases: for instance, when we return home after a long absence and find that an old brand is now seen by people in a different light—that in the intervening period the brand has acquired a different image.

Registering a claim in our minds (e.g. ‘Taste the difference’ or ‘Good to the last drop’) does not necessarily mean we believe it. However, it makes us aware that there are claimed differences between brands. This is a proposition (a ‘feather’, if you will) that, when everything else is equal, may tip the balance of brand selection, even if only to prompt us to find out if it is true.

Repetition increases our familiarity with a claim. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, a feeling of greater likelihood that the claim is true begins to accompany the growing familiarity. This effect of repetition is known as ‘the truth effect’.⁴

We tend to think that if something is not true it would somehow be challenged. If it is repeated constantly and not challenged, our minds seem to regard this as prima facie evidence that perhaps it is true. The effect of repetition is to produce small but cumulative increments in this ‘truth’ inference.⁵ It is hardly rational but we don’t really think about it. We don’t go out of our way to think about it because low involvement, by definition, means we don’t care much either way. Such claims are ‘feathers’.

In summary, the reasons we are unable to introspect on advertising’s effects—especially in low-involvement situations—are:

If you have ever wondered why advertisers seem to persist in repeating the same ad—if you have ever wondered why they think this could possibly influence sane people like us—then here is the answer. Much of advertising creates only marginal differences, but small differences can build into larger differences. Even small differences can tip the balance in favor of the advertised brand. This is especially true of ‘image advertising’.

Image advertising

The effect of image advertising is easier to see in relation to high-involvement products, so let us start with a high-involvement example—Volvo cars.

Volvo traditionally focused its image advertising on safety. Through repetition, it built up a strong image of the Volvo as a safe car. Other brands have caught up a lot in recent years but on a scale of 1 to 10 for safety, most people would still rate Volvo higher than almost any other car. Safety is now an integral part of our perception of this brand. (The fact that the car actually delivers on this promise has of course been a very important ingredient in the success of the safety campaign—but that is another story.)

One effect of image advertising, then, is to produce gradual shifts in our perceptions of a brand with regard to a particular attribute—in Volvo’s case, safety (in other words, to effect marginal changes in our mental rating of the brand on that attribute). This is often not perceptible after just one exposure because the change, if it occurs, is too small for us to notice.

Now let’s take a low-involvement product in the very late stages of its product life cycle—hair spray—and tease out some insights from its history of brand image advertising.

The first brands of hair spray originally fought for market share on the basis of the attribute of ‘hair holding’. That is, each brand claimed to hold hair. To the extent that they all claimed the same thing, they were what are called ‘me-too’ brands.

To break out of this, one brand began to claim that it ‘holds hair longer’. Just as Volvo claimed that it was safer, and thereby moved Volvo higher up the perceived safety scale, so this brand of hair spray made people aware that some brands of hair spray might hold hair longer than others. It then attempted to shift perception of itself on this attribute and marginally increase the mental rating consumers would give it on ‘length of hold’.

The next brand of hair spray to enter the market, instead of tackling that brand head-on, cleverly avoided doing battle on ‘length of hold’. The new brand claimed that it was ‘long holding’, but also that it ‘brushes out easier’—a dual benefit. In doing so it successfully capitalized on the fact that hair sprays that hold longer were harder to brush out (or were until then). Many years later came the attribute of ‘flexible hold’.

These examples of image advertising for hair spray and cars illustrate how one effect of advertising is to alter our perceptions of a brand. Advertising can marginally change our image of a brand by leading us to associate it with a particular attribute (like ‘longer holding’ or ‘brushes out easily’), and to associate in our minds that attribute with the brand more than we associate it with any other competitive brand.

Gauging the effects image advertising has on us is made even more complex because these effects may not operate directly on the image of the brand itself. Image advertising may produce small, incremental differences in the image of a brand, as in the case of Volvo—but sometimes it is aimed at changing not so much the image of the brand itself but who we see in our mind’s eye as the typical user of that brand.

User image

In advertising for Levis, Revlon, Guess, Louis Vuitton, or Dolce & Gabbana, the focus is often on people who use the brand. What changes is not so much our perception, or image, of the product as our perception of the user-stereotype—the kind of person who typically uses the brand, or the situation in which the brand is typically used.

When these brands are advertised, the focus is very much on image but often with this important, subtle difference. The advertising aims to change not how we see the brand itself—the brand image—but how we see:

Figure 1.4: Jim Beam ad reinforcing the stereotypical user image—young, single males.

If the user image of a brand resembles us, or the type of person we aspire to be, what happens when we come to buy that product category? The user image acts as a feather on one side of the beam balance. If everything else is equal it can tip the scale (but note, only if everything else is equal).

User, or situational, image changes usually fall short of the kinds of rational, heavyweight reasons that make perfect sense of any choice. But they can nevertheless tilt the balance in favor of one brand. Minor effects such as these constitute much of the impact of advertising. Yet they are usually much more difficult for us as consumers to analyze introspectively, and we tend to discount them because they clearly fall well short of persuasion.

Product image: bottled water

Advertising can marginally change our image not just of a brand but also of a product. When we associate a product in our minds with a desirable attribute, it can influence our behavior. Let’s examine the question posed earlier. Why do people purchase so much bottled water when perfectly good water is available almost free from the tap?

The question is, are we in fact drinking bottled water as a substitute for tap water? It may seem that way . . . but is it? Certainly that is not the way it started. In the USA particularly, bottled water’s success can be traced to its original positioning as a substitute not for water but for cocktails and non-alcoholic soda/soft drinks. The image appeal and usage evolved from there.

Let me explain.⁸ In 1977, an American, Bruce Nevin, brought Perrier bottled water to the USA and launched it as a pure and healthier alter native for when you were having a cocktail or some non-alcoholic soda.⁹ Consistent with the new emphasis on a healthy lifestyle, it was positioned as an accepted, healthier alternative, especially (though not exclusively) when consumed in social situations. The brand name ‘Perrier’ helped this social acceptance, giving it an up-market ‘designer’ connotation con sistent with France’s fashion and wine image. In addition, the Perrier launch commercials starred Orson Welles, thereby blending celebrity associations with this product. Its appeal as a healthier substitute was buttressed by purity and celebrity and this worked to make Perrier a huge success. With the media constantly urging us to eat more healthily and drink less alcohol, the brand took off. Perrier bottled water became a socially acceptable alternative to drinking alcohol and drinking soda/soft drinks that were not so healthy. Perrier sold US$20 million of bottled water in its first year in the US and tripled its sales to US$60 million the next year. This ultimately attracted other ‘me-too’ entrants.

The next major entrant in the USA was Evian, coming seven years later in 1984. Evian did a ‘me-too’ with pure and healthy while at the same time playing the spotlight of attention on difference in taste. Reportedly, research showed that Americans preferred a still taste to a sparkling taste and Perrier was a sparkling water. So Evian offered a still taste and avoided claiming that it was healthier, but instead cleverly associated the brand with a different aspect of health i.e. active lifestyles and the gymnasium—images associated with young, healthy, toned bodies. Consistent with this active lifestyles image, Evian matched Perrier on celebrity associations by using cool, young celebrities like Madonna (who would drink it on stage).

Such positioning was reinforced even further by Evian being the first to offer a lightweight plastic bottle nationwide. Evian’s lighter, unbreakable bottle was easier to carry and more suitable for on-the-go lifestyles than Perrier’s signature glass bottle. In other words, Evian not only matched Perrier on purity, health, French name connotation and celebrity endorsement but it also projected a user image appeal of toned, active, good looking bodies. If that was not enough of a feather to tip the balance, then being more convenient to carry meant that it was not only ‘cool’ but functional. This paid double dividends for Evian; it extended the way bottled water was consumed and broadened the market to ‘active lifestyle’, socially visible situations.

As new, lower cost entrants like Dusani (from Coca-Cola) and Aquafina (from Pepsi) came in, the usage of bottled water evolved and extended, further becoming somewhat more commodified. Nevertheless the basic heritage of health and purity is intact and bottled water remains better for us than either soda/soft drink or alcohol. As Charles Fishman noted in his article ‘Message in a Bottle’, ‘. . . today, water has come to signify how we think of ourselves. We want to brand ourselves—as Madonna did—even with something as ordinary as a drink of water . . . We imagine there is a difference between showing up at the weekly staff meeting with Aquafina, or Fiji, or a small glass bottle of Pellegrino.’¹⁰

The reason we drink bottled water today is partly self branding and partly self statement about healthier lifestyle choices. Did advertising persuade us to use bottled water instead of tap water? No. Did it persuade us to use bottled water instead of less healthy alcohol and sodas? Perhaps that’s closer to the mark, but did anyone feel any persuasion? No. It was not persuasion so much as a series of image influences where virtue, convenience, self branding and self statement were aligned.

Persuasion is the exception

We have been told so often that the role of advertising is to persuade, that we seem to have come to believe it.

How often do we hear the comment, ‘It wouldn’t make me run out and buy it?’ This is common in market research when participants are asked to analyze introspectively how they react to an ad—especially if it is an image ad. It demonstrates the myth of how advertising is supposed to influence. No one really believes that any ad will make them run out and buy the advertised product. Nothing has that kind of persuasive or coercive power. So why do people say, ‘It wouldn’t make me run out and buy it’? Because they can’t think of any other way the ad could work. The effect of advertising is not to make us ‘run out and buy’. This is especially true with low-involvement products and especially true with image advertising. Rather, it is beam balance stuff.

High involvement

High-involvement buying contrasts with low-involvement, low cost purchases. When people are parting with substantial sums of money to buy a TV, a car or a vacation, they do not take the decision lightly. These are high-involvement decisions for most consumers. Before making them, we actively hunt down information, talk with friends and generally find out all we can about our prospective purchase.

Furthermore, the alternative brands available will usually have many more differences. They are unlikely to be almost identical, as is the case with many low-involvement products.

Advertising is one influence in high-involvement buying decisions, but it is only one among many. Often it is a relatively weak influence, especially in comparison with other influences like word of mouth, previous experience and recommendations by ‘experts’. In the case of high-involvement products, much of advertising’s effect is not so much on the final decision as on whether a brand gets considered—whether we include it in the set of alternatives that we are prepared to spend time weighing up. This is one of the ways that advertising influences our thinking indirectly. For example, there are hundreds of brands and types of cars, far too many for us to consider individually in the same detail. We seriously consider only those that make it onto our short list. But what determines which cars make it onto our short list? This is where advertising comes into play.¹¹

If we are unlikely to be in the market for a new car, television or wall unit for several years, the advertising we see and hear for these products falls on low-involved ears. However, if our old car or appliance unexpectedly breaks down today, we may find ourselves propelled into the market for a new one. Suddenly, the ads we saw yesterday or last week or last month under low-involvement conditions become more relevant. One test of their effectiveness will be whether they have left enough impact to get their brand onto our short list.

A lot of advertising, even for high-priced items, thus has its effect in a low-involvement way. Again we see that, in looking for the effects of advertising, we need to look for subtle effects. It is a case of ‘feathers’ rather than persuasion—‘feathers’ that influence what alternatives get weighed up as well as ‘feathers’ that add their weight to one side of the weighing-up process.

Two mental processes in decision-making

There are two fundamentally different mental processes at work in choice decisions. We have already considered the most obvious one, the weighing up of alternatives. But there is another process that consumers and advertisers tend to be less conscious of. Weighing up the alternatives is one thing. Which alternatives get weighed up is another!

Which alternatives get weighed up?

What determines the alternatives that are actually considered?

Think about a consumer decision that you probably make every day. It’s getting on for noon, you are feeling hungry and you ask yourself, ‘What am I going to have for lunch today?’ Your mind starts to generate alternatives and evaluate each alternative as you think of it. The process goes something like this:

There are two things to note here. First, what the mind does is produce alternatives, one at a time. This ‘mental agenda’ of alternatives is ordered like this:

What’s the choice for lunch?

1. Salad

2. Sandwich

3. McDonald’s

4. TGI Friday’s

5. Subway

Second, the order in which the alternatives are arranged is the order in which they are elicited by the mind. This order can influence your final choice. You may enjoy Subway more than McDonald’s. But in the example, you didn’t go to Subway, you went to McDonald’s.

Had you continued your thought process instead of stopping at the third alternative (McDonald’s), you would probably have gone to Subway. But if Subway is only fifth on your mental agenda of lunch alternatives, it is unlikely to get much of your business. You didn’t get to Subway because you didn’t think of it before you hit on a satisfactory solution—McDonald’s. You didn’t get there physically because you never got there mentally. Even if we like or prefer something, if it is not reasonably high on our mental agenda it is likely to miss out.

How many times have you found yourself doing something and realized too late that there was something else you would rather have been doing but hadn’t thought about in time? The most preferred alternatives are not necessarily the ones you think of first. (Anyone who has ever left an important person off an invitation list will appreciate this.) Next time you go out for dinner and are trying to decide which restaurant to go to, observe your thought pattern. There are two separate processes at work. One is generation of alternatives; the other is evaluation of those alternatives.

To affect the outcome of buying decisions, advertisers can try to influence:

When we think of advertising’s effects we almost invariably think of how advertising influences our evaluation of a brand. Yet much of advertising’s influence is not on our evaluations of a brand but on the order in which alternative brands are evoked.

Agenda-setting effect

Influencing the order of alternatives has its basis in what is known as the agenda-setting theory of mass communications. This says: the mass media don’t tell us what to think. But they do tell us what to think about! They set the mental agenda.

The agenda-setting theory was originally developed to explain the influence of the mass media in determining which political issues become important in elections. Adroit committee members and politicians claim that if you can control the agenda you can control the meeting. The relevance of this to advertising was recognized over a quarter of a century ago.¹² We can produce mental agendas for lots of things.

Table 1.1 Mental agendas for lots of things

We can discover our mental agenda by pulling out what is in our minds under a partic ular category and examining the order (in which it emerges). The category may be ‘What’s the choice for lunch?’, ‘What’s news?’, or ‘What brand of soft drink should I buy?’

When we reach into our minds to generate any of these agendas, the items do not all come to mind at once. They are elicited one at a time and in an order. The items on top of the mental agenda are the most salient and the ones we are most likely to remember first. It’s the same with choosing which restaurant to go to or which department store to visit or which supermarket to shop at this week. It is the same with the decision about which cars or televisions to short-list and which dealers to visit. The order in which we retrieve the items from our memories seems almost inconsequential to us but may be critically important in determining the chances of our going to McDonald’s rather than Subway.

This effect also occurs if we have a list of the alternatives or a display of them such as in the supermarket. Even here, where the brands are all set out in front of us, all of them do not get noticed simultaneously. In fact, they do not all get noticed.

Think about the process. We stand there at the display. We notice first one brand, then another and then another. It happens rapidly, but in sequence. So despite the fact that the brands are all displayed, they are not necessarily all equal in terms of the probability that they will come to mind or be noticed. For the last decade, supermarkets have carried more than 30,000 items, up from 17,500 a decade before.¹³ This raises a question. At supermarket displays, what makes a brand stand out? To use the marketing term, what makes it ‘break through the clutter’ of all the alternative packs and get noticed? What makes one brand get noticed more quickly than others at the supermarket display?

This introduces the concept of salience, which is formally defined in the next section. In this context we ask how a brand can be moved up from fifth, to fourth, to third, to second, to become the first one noticed. The higher up it is in this order, the better the chance it has of being considered and, consequently, the better the chance of being purchased.

The brand’s physical prominence, the amount of shelf space it occupies and its position in the display are very important. But advert ising can influence choice when other factors (like shelf space or position) are otherwise equal. Advertising can help tip the balance.

Asking what makes one brand more salient—more likely to come to mind or get noticed—than another is like asking what influences Subway’s position on our mental lunch agenda. In the supermarket, instead of having to recall all the alternatives by ourselves, we are prompted by the display. However, the brands we notice and the order in which we notice them can be influenced by more than just the display.

Salience

We think much more often about people and things that are important to us than about those that are not. The psychological term for this prominence in our thoughts is salience. Advertisers would like us to think of their brands as ‘more important’ but they will settle for ‘more often’.¹⁴ In other words, they would like their brands to be more salient for us.

My definition of salience is the probability that something will be in the conscious mind at any given moment. One way advertising can increase this probability is through repetition. We have all had the experience of being unable to rid our minds of a song we have heard a lot. The repetition of the song has increased its salience; it has increased its probability of being in the conscious mind at any moment. Repetition of an advertisement, especially a jingle, can have a similar effect. Through repetition of the ad, the salience of the brand—the star of the ad—is increased in our minds.

Another way that advertising influences what we think about and notice is through ‘cueing’. To explain this, answer a few questions: