The latest study from the US suggests that emotionally arousing advertisements may not always help in improving consumers’ immediate memory. The trend of advertising by understanding human emotions has seen popularity in the market. Companies are trying to bring up themes and scenes which trigger emotions among the viewers and take up a place in their hearts. Unfortunately, the results of the research conducted at the University of Illinois are against the concept. It also says that if the ad’s claim does not fit the emotion aroused in the viewers, then the message conveyed may not stick in the consumer’s mind.
The International Journal of Advertising, published research which says that the emotional arousal capability of an advertisement harms immediate memory but can benefit the delayed memory, and for that ad’s claims should be congruent with the emotion which it develops in the viewers.” Emotionally arousing thoughts have long been used in advertising, but the effect of those on consumers’ memory has not been so clear,” stated the scholar, Hayden Noel, Assistant Professor, at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the US.
With the help of three experiments using print and video ads from different countries, Noel and co-author Hila Riemer of the Ben Gurion University of the Negev studied the retention time and the connection between the emotional arousal communicated in the ad and its actual claim. They used combinations of low- and high-emotionally arousing ads. They found that if the ad’s claim does not fit the emotion aroused in the viewers, then the message conveyed may not stick in the consumer’s mind.
Emotional topics continue to be significant tools for marketers, and emotionally moving ads are generally considered an effective method of advertisement, “leading to higher levels of profit relative to other ads that may appeal to intellect or rational thought,” Noel said. The research expects to bring in practical implications for advertisers interested in developing message strategies that are apt under different occasions.
