Marketing communication – lecture 1: breaking through the advertising clutter
Information processing & communication objectives:
What is attention?
Attention = levels of processing/involvement
- Limited
- Selective
- Voluntary or involuntary
- A precondition for further processing
More attention = more cognitive capacity = more comprehension = more elaboration
Levels of processing / involvement
- Pre-attention: little or no capacity required (automatic processing)
- Focal attention: little capacity required
- Comprehension: modest levels of capacity required
- Elaboration: substantial levels of capacity required
, - Pre-attention: sensory inputs
- Focal attention: directed through specific info
- Comprehension: cognitive processing → meaning of stimuli
- Connected to other relevant concepts of knowledge
-
How campaigns can stand out: attracting attention
Increasing:
- Involuntary attention
- Voluntary attention
Increasing involuntary attention → attracting attention
- Various communication cues can increase an automatic orienting response
o Salient, original, and novel stimuli (saliency)
o Centrally located stimuli (horizontal centrality)
o Stimuli presented first (primacy)
o Pictures (picture superiority)
- Oftentimes unconscious and unintended
- ‘’attractors’’
- Associated with bottom-up processing = what our senses can detect
Saliency
- Salient stimuli:
o Perceptually prominent (size, color, contrast)
o Novel, unexpected, original stimuli
o Stimuli related to life and death (such as sexual and threatening stimuli)
- These stimuli:
, o Stick out and are hard to ignore
o Lead to mild psychological arousal
o Result in focal attention to the source of stimulation
Horizontal centrality
- Stimuli in the center receive more attention (and are more likely to be chosen)
Primacy
- Consumers are more attentive to items that are presented first in a list → Google search
Picture superiority
- Pictorial information receives more information than textual information
- Analysis of 1363 print ads with eye tracking technology
o Pictures: attract attention, regardless of size
o Text: the bigger the text, the more attention
o Brand: the bigger the brand name, the more attention
Increasing voluntary attention → magnifying attention
- How to increase voluntary attention?
o Increase self-relevance
▪ Personal interest avoids inattentional blindness
▪ Self-referencing
▪ Proximity
o Curiosity
▪ Unfinished ads
▪ Mysterious ads
- Oftentimes conscious and intended
- ‘’magnetizers’’
- Associated with top-down processing
- Attention that is applied and controlled by the individual, as opposed to attention that is
spontaneously captured by a stimulus in the environment
Personal interest & inattentional blindness
- Consumers allocate more attention to information that is consistent with their goals
- Information that is not relevant, is often ignored, and will lead to inattentional blindness
Inattentional blindness & banner blindness:
, Implications for SEO and SEO
- Organic results generate more attention and traffic because they are immediately relevant
- Sponsored results often suffer from inattentional blindness
Self-referencing
Attention increases when personalized information is used
- Second person wording (‘’you’’)
- Names
Proximity & EWOM
- Consumers pay more attention to information that is ‘’close’’
- The more proximate, the more relevant, the more attention
o Sensory proximity: closeness in experience
o Spatial proximity: closeness in physical space
o Temporal proximity: closeness in time
A variety of applications
- E(WOM) comes from people close to use (spatial and sensory proximity)
- Viral marketing is emotionally vivid (sensory proximity) and is shared via friends
- Blogs are written by influencers that feel close (sensory proximity)
- Billboards and Abri’s are prominent and often close in space (spatial)
How campaigns can stand out: sustaining attention
Processing ease
- Increases engagement
o The easier, the more likely that people will continue with the task
- Generates positive affect
o Fluency generally leads to positive feelings
- Increases comprehension
o The easier, the less resources are needed for comprehension and elaboration
Linking your appeal to what consumers already know makes it easier for them to comprehend
How?
- Concrete information is easier to process, and helps to link to existing knowledge structures
- Visual information strengthens memory traces (dual coding theory)
- Variability not only prevents boredom, but also strengthens existing knowledge structures
(encoding variability)
Processing ease, concrete information, ‘’memory traces’’, and the associative network theory:
The benefits of buying summaries with Stuvia:
Guaranteed quality through customer reviews
Stuvia customers have reviewed more than 700,000 summaries. This how you know that you are buying the best documents.
Quick and easy check-out
You can quickly pay through credit card or Stuvia-credit for the summaries. There is no membership needed.
Focus on what matters
Your fellow students write the study notes themselves, which is why the documents are always reliable and up-to-date. This ensures you quickly get to the core!
Frequently asked questions
What do I get when I buy this document?
You get a PDF, available immediately after your purchase. The purchased document is accessible anytime, anywhere and indefinitely through your profile.
Satisfaction guarantee: how does it work?
Our satisfaction guarantee ensures that you always find a study document that suits you well. You fill out a form, and our customer service team takes care of the rest.
Who am I buying these notes from?
Stuvia is a marketplace, so you are not buying this document from us, but from seller floorlieskamp1. Stuvia facilitates payment to the seller.
Will I be stuck with a subscription?
No, you only buy these notes for $9.42. You're not tied to anything after your purchase.