Memories of an individual ad
To be clear, in this post and the post that talked about implicit memories, I am referring to an individual item of advertising content, like a video. Impressions of a brand accumulate over time, from many sources, but the way people remember an individual ad rarely changes. Excessive frequency will not mean people suddenly appreciate what your ad is trying say. Individual ads do not wear-in.
Why does this matter? Because if you want your brand advertising be effective, you need every ad to do its job. Why waste your media budget on content that will not add to people's implicit knowledge of your brand?
Repetition cannot make up for a lack of attention
The other day, in talking to a friend, I played back the tagline, "Tense, nervous, headache? Take Anadin."
I have not seen that ad for decades. However, I must have seen it a thousand times when I lived in the UK. But you know what? I only remember the introduction. I have no conscious recall of anything that comes after that phrase, and yet there is another 25 seconds of the ad that I recognize on seeing again but cannot recall otherwise. Given that this was linear TV, I probably watched the rest of the ad, but without much attention, and further repetition did not help me remember the boring ingredients recital. Still, the ad did achieve the bare minimum of connecting the brand name to a category entry point if nothing else. (BTW, US readers, that is not a typo. The brand is Anadin in the UK, Anacin in the US.)
Why do I spontaneously remember that phrase?
What made that initial phrase memorable to me? I suspect that each time I saw the ad I attended long enough to recognize the phrase, but then tuned out. If they had existed, a 5 second bumper ad would be just as effective. But then, of course, I was exposed to the ad many, many times (and the phrase was often used in joking, colloquial references). Importantly, my exposure was spread out over a long period of time, something else that helps make memories more durable. The sad thing is that given today's media prices, I doubt any but the biggest, most profitable brands could afford to fund a campaign on the same scale.
Recognition lasts, recall not so much
The interesting thing is that despite my inability to recall anything about the last 25 seconds of the ad, I do recognize it. I know that I have seen it before. And it points to an important distinction between recognition and recall.
Recognition refers to remembering that an item was encountered previously, but without necessarily being able to remember anything further.
Recall involves spontaneously remembering specific details about what has been learned. So, when I used the phrase, "Tense, nervous, headache? Take Anadin," I was retrieving a memory cued by the conversational context.
Recall is a more difficult task than recognition because it involves searching for associated memories, not simply recognizing a cue. In both academic research and from real-life ad tracking, recognition lasts longer than recall.
Recognition is fast
Before incoming visual stimuli trigger conscious thought, the brain is already at work figuring out what is being looked at. The process is eyeblink fast, particularly, if the stimulus has been seen before. Discussing results of research conducted at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research, Dr. Lucia Melloni states,
"Processing is thus faster if the brain only has to compare the incoming visual information with a previously established expectation. As a result, conscious perception occurs earlier. In contrast, if the brain has to assess a stimulus from scratch due to a lack of prior information, the processing takes longer."
This study was done using EEG, but I have seen similar results from studies using fMRI, which find that novel stimuli are processed more slowly and response times get faster with repeated exposure.
Recognition triggers expectations
Note Dr. Melloni's use of the word "expectation." Years ago, Gordon Brown, co-founder of Millward Brown used to talk about people's ability to anticipate "the good bits" in TV ads. Essentially, recognition triggers anticipation of what will happen next if a video has been seen before. (I should note, that if the expectation is that the experience will be boring, people will probably tune out, just as I did with the Anadin ad.)
The fact that recognition triggers recall and expectations explains why fast forwarding through a familiar ad can trigger associated memories. And it also explains low attention processing. Provided people have attended to an ad before and have encoded memories, seeing the ad again, even with low or divided attention, has the potential to trigger those memories once more.
Repetition refreshes recall
Basically, repeated exposure to the same ad triggers recognition and rehearses recall. The ideas, memories, and associations conveyed by the ad get triggered again, keeping them easily retrievable for the future. In the absence of repeated exposure, the ability to recognize an ad as seen before may continue but recall of associated memories will decay. What repetition does not do is add memories after the first few impressions. In other words, ads do not wear-in. Instead, memories start to consolidate, to focus in on the most memorable aspects of an ad.
Effective brand advertising requires attention and repetition
All of this is a long-winded way of saying if you want to influence future buyers of your brand, there is no such thing as one and done.
First, you must get people to attend to the ad, which is why you need distinctive, noteworthy content. Given that family, apps, or a nice cup of tea might demand more attention than watching an ad, getting attention might take several exposures in its own right.
Then, if people find the ad meaningful in some way, memories get encoded. If they do not, game over. Your ad might be recognized but nothing recalled.
However, memories decay, and you need them to last until the time comes for someone to buy your category. So, repeated exposures to the same ad, spread out over time, makes sure the associations are easily retrieved when people come to buy.
Are there alternatives? Yes, but only if your brand has a huge advertising budget. You can spray and pray something sticks, or you can take advantage of the recency effect with continuous media spend. The first is wasteful, the second is expensive. For an exploration of the question of effective frequency, check out my post, What is an effective frequency for advertising?
Meanwhile, please share your thoughts on the role of repetition in advertising.