How advertising uses memory
- Advertisers need people to remember a product long after the advert has finished.
- They use what psychology knows about how memory stores information and finds it again.
- Four techniques do most of the work: cues, repetition, avoiding overload and autobiographical advertising.
- Cues work on retrieval, repetition works on rehearsal, avoiding overload respects the limits of short-term memory, and autobiographical advertising changes the memory itself.
Key Idea
- An advert is built out of the same processes you revise with: a cue to trigger retrieval, repetition to rehearse, and a message short enough to fit in short-term memory.
- That is why one short line runs for months while a cluttered advert full of information is forgotten.
- Autobiographical advertising goes further and edits the memory itself, so you can end up sure about a childhood moment you never had.
Cues in advertising
Definition
Cue
A reminder or trigger that helps you find a stored memory, such as a place, a smell or a word. It can also be the surroundings or the mood you were in when the memory was first formed.
- A cue is anything that triggers a stored memory, and advertisers build cues in on purpose.
- A jingle, a colour, a shape or a slogan is repeated until it is stored alongside the product in long-term memory.
- Meeting that cue again, on a supermarket shelf or during an advert break, triggers retrieval of the product.
- A great deal of forgetting is retrieval failure, so supplying the cue makes a stored brand easier to recall.
Note
- A cue only helps when the brand is already stored, because a reminder cannot retrieve something that was never learned.
- The cue works best when it matches what was there during learning, which is why a jingle stays unchanged for years.
- The same principle is behind revising in the room you will sit the exam in, since the surroundings act as cues.
Repetition and rehearsal
Definition
Rehearsal
Repeating or actively thinking about information so that it passes from short-term memory into long-term memory.
- Showing the same advert again and again rehearses the information for the viewer.
- Each showing repeats the information while it sits in short-term memory, and enough repetitions transfer it into long-term memory.
- A campaign therefore runs one short line for months.
Avoiding overload
Definition
Short-term memory
The store that briefly holds the small amount of information you are working with now, for around 15 to 30 seconds unless you rehearse it.
- Short-term memory holds only about seven items at once, so an advert carrying more than that loses most of what it says.
- Once the store is full, each new item displaces something already there, and the brand name is often what gets pushed out.
- A short advert built around one message is remembered better than a cluttered one, so many adverts carry a single image and a handful of words.
Example
- The Specsavers slogan works as a cue, because hearing it brings the brand straight to mind.
- The Compare the Market meerkats repeat one simple line across advert after advert, which is repetition acting as rehearsal.
- A billboard with one image and five words respects the limits of short-term memory.
Autobiographical memory
Definition
Autobiographical memory
Your memory for events and experiences from your own life, such as a childhood holiday or your first day at school.
- Autobiographical memory holds the events of a person's own life, and those memories come with feelings attached.
- Childhood memories are especially vague, so they contain gaps.
- Because a memory is rebuilt each time it is recalled, whatever fills those gaps becomes part of what is remembered.
Autobiographical advertising
Definition
Autobiographical advertising
Advertising that ties a product to memories of your own life and invites you to picture yourself using it. Because memory is rebuilt rather than replayed, details from the advert can end up inside the memory you recall.
- Autobiographical advertising ties a product to memories of the viewer's own life and invites them to picture themselves using it.
- A John Lewis Christmas advert shows a warm family scene that stirs the viewer's own memories of Christmas, and those feelings then attach themselves to the shop.
- Details from the advert can be built into the memory that is rebuilt, so a person can end up confident about something they never did.
- Braun, Ellis and Loftus (2002) found that after a Disney advert participants were more confident they had shaken hands with a favourite TV character, including people who had never visited a Disney resort.
Common Mistake
- More detail does not make an advert more memorable, because overloading short-term memory makes recall worse.
- Autobiographical advertising is more than nostalgia, because it can create a false or distorted memory.
Turning this into marks
- Start with what the advert does, such as a repeated slogan, a jingle, a single image or a family scene from years ago.
- Name the memory process behind it, whether a cue, rehearsal, the capacity of short-term memory or reconstruction, because the technique on its own does not secure the knowledge mark.
- Finish by saying how that process makes the product easier to recall.
- The mark most often lost is offering two techniques that are really one point, so keep cues and repetition apart, one working on retrieval and one on rehearsal.
Self review
- How does a jingle or slogan work as a retrieval cue?
- Which memory process does repetition in advertising copy?
- Why should an advert avoid overload, and roughly what limit is it respecting?
- What is autobiographical advertising?
- How does Braun, Ellis and Loftus (2002) support the use of autobiographical advertising?
