The mental effect of a well-adapted advertisement is manifold. It
appeals to the memory. Whatever we read at the street corner, or in
the pages of the newspaper or magazine, is not printed with the idea
that we shall immediately turn to the store, but first of all with
the expectation that we keep the content of the advertisement in our
memory for a later purchase. It will therefore be the more valuable
the more vividly it forces itself on the memory. But if practical
books about the art of advertising usually presuppose that this
influence on the memory will be proportionate to the effect on the
attention, the psychologist cannot fully agree. The advertisement may
attract the attention of the reader strongly and yet by its whole
structure may be unfit to force on the memory its characteristic
content, especially the name of the firm and of the article. The pure
memory-value is especially important, as according to a well-known
psychological law the pleasure in mere recognition readily attaches
itself to the recognized object. The customer who has the choice among
various makes and brands in the store may not have any idea how far
one is superior to another, but the mere fact that one among them
bears a name which has repeatedly approached his consciousness before
through advertisements is sufficient to arouse a certain warm feeling
of acquaintance, and by a transposition of feeling this pleasurable
tone accentuates the attractiveness of that make and leads to its
selection. This indirect help through the memory-value is economically
no less important than the direct service.
In order to produce a strong effect on memory the advertisement must
be easily apprehensible. Psychological laboratory experiments with
exact time-measurement of the grasping of various advertisements of
the same size for the same article, but in different formulations,
demonstrated clearly how much easier or harder the apprehension became
through relatively small changes. No mistake in the construction of
the advertisement causes so much waste as a grouping which makes the
quick apperception difficult. The color, the type, the choice of
words, every element, allows an experimental analysis, especially by
means of time-measurement. If we determine in thousandths of a second
the time needed to recognize the characteristic content of an
advertisement, we may discriminate differences which would escape the
naïve judgment, and yet which in practical life are of considerable
consequence, as the effect of a deficiency is multiplied by the number
of readers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account