The Advertised Mind

The emotional response to brands and ads can be researched

For emotion to fulfil its evolutionary role of ensuring we pay attention to the right things, it must work quickly and simply. Essentially the emotional response to any event makes us feel positive or negative, attracted or repelled. We may use different words to classify the strength and nature of the emotional response once it has happened, but the emotions themselves are easily recognised, if not easily described.

This means that simple introspective questions can provide good insight into the emotion created by a brand or ad. In other words, people may have trouble describing what love feels like, but they can easily discriminate between love, fondness and pleasure when they see the words in front of them.

Click on the highlights below to find out more:

• Emotion is critical to advertising because it is critical to all human thought
• Emotion is critical to advertising because it helps determine the depth of processing that takes place
• Depth of processing and repetition combine to establish new memories and feelings about a brand
• Brand equity is the sum of all feelings associations and memories related to the brand
• Brand memories are stored in a way that resembles an untidy overstocked cupboard
• Advertising contributes directly towards a brand’s equity
• Advertising response is the combined effect of creative and media planning
• There is no ‘one size fits all’ media strategy that can meet different advertising needs
• The emotional response to brands and ads can be researched
• The first response is the truest response