Imagine owning a company that produces health and beauty
products. Your company has developed a new mouthwash that
you want to introduce to the public, and you're planning the
ad campaign. You hope for a good response, so you hire a
well-known personality to endorse it. If you have two choices,
Joe Montana, a handsome athlete, or Christie Brinkley, a
beautiful model, who would you choose?
If you selected Joe Montana, you should resign yourself to
your handicap at picking endorsers and trust your ad
agency. But if you picked Christie Brinkley, it may interest
you to know why this is correct and to learn what Jaideep
Sengupta, from Hong Kong University learned in research he
conducted on the west coast.
People associate Ms. Brinkley with romantic relationships
because of the products she models, most of which aim to help
people attract each other: clothes, jewelry, perfume, and
health and beauty products. Mouthwash fits in perfectly.
Ms. Brinkley provides a boost to the ad message because
people hold well-developed attitudes about romance and
attraction that they associate with her, and these attitudes
immediately attach themselves to the new product, your
mouthwash. In the trade, her presence in your ad is a
related cue. She contributes attitudes desired by customers
that can be satisfied with your product.
Try the mouthwash test again. Which endorser is best, Jerry
Seinfeld, the T.V. personality, or Crest, a respected brand
name in oral hygiene products? If you selected Jerry
Seinfeld, that's another wrong answer, and you know the rest.
Jaideep Sengupta investigated cues in advertisements looking
for a solution to the dual problems of time delay and minimal
attention to ads. You can illustrate these problems in your
own mind.
Think of all the advertising you were exposed to in the last
24 hours: print ads, billboards, radio, and T.V., and count
on the fingers of one hand the brands you recall. Now try to
remember brands from week-old ads. The conclusion is
disheartening, and illustrates forgetfulness and the minimal
attention you gave to examining these ads. The truth is,
they flew by, yet when purchase opportunities arise, you do
make decisions, and at these times some ads demonstrate their
impact. But which ones, and why?
Sengupta learned that ads featuring endorsers who are related
to the product they're endorsing create enduring, positive
attitudes that successfully attach to the product when the
ads receive minimal attention. In contrast, ads featuring
unrelated endorsers fail to create persistent attitudes even
though the endorsers are equally attractive. Because they
are unrelated, they fail to attach to the product.
The conclusion is obvious, and you should now have some skill
in picking endorsers, but remember, the advantage of related
cues disappears when customers seriously consider your ad
message. When this occurs, the effort they expend creates a
persistent memory, and the favorability of this memory
depends upon the ad message, not on the cue paired with it.
You should also remember that pairing a related cue with your
product can occur in other settings besides product
advertisements. For example, walk around your favorite
grocery store and notice the odors in different departments.
Odors can be a related cue. Does the bakery smell like
baking bread? Does the meat counter smell like dead fish?
Which area enjoys growing sales?
Here's an exercise: Identify a few relevant cues for your
product: endorsers, symbols, odors, sounds, and so on. Next,
examine your advertising and business setting and look for
opportunities to pair cues with your product. For example,
pair recorded sounds of a beach scene with surf and
calling gulls in a travel office or on its telephone hold
recording. Finally, try a few of these pairings and see what
happens. In all these examples, attitudes associated with the
cue can become attached to the product without any conscious,
serious thought.
Reference: Sengupta, Jaideep, Ronald C. Goodstein, and David
S. Boninger (1997) All Cues Are Not Created Equal: Obtaining
Attitude Persistence Under Low-Involvement Conditions.
Journal of Consumer Research, 23 ( March, 1997), 351-362.
Customer Psychology Findings, by James Larsen, Ph.D.
Creating Memories
Researcher demonstrates a way to create positive, enduring attitudes with product ads that receive only minimal attention.