Marketing Communication
Preparation Tutorial 1: Attention
2.1. Recap on Attention
In in everyday life (watching tv, browse on social media) advertisers want to catch consumers
attention, but how?
Attention is…
- Limited people have limited resources available, so can’t pay attention to everything
- Selective people selectively attend to the most salience pieces in the environment
- Voluntary or involuntary
- A precondition for further processing
Attention is the first, and necessary part for communication message!
Levels of Processing/Involvement
1. Pre-attention: little or no capacity required (automatic processing & unconscious)
information from a message comes in via our senses.
2. Focal attention: little capacity is required to process people zoom in on the information
and try to make sense of what they see etc.
3. Comprehension: modest levels of capacity required give meaning to our information, for
example: an apple, and then you combine it to Apple.
4. Elaboration: substantial levels of capacity required formulate propositions of what we
know about the brand.
2.2. Increasing Voluntary and Involuntary Attention
Some stimuli attract attention involuntary attractive automatic process
Some stimuli attract attention voluntary magnifiers intentional process
Attention makes sure that people will further elaborate and behave in accordance to what
we communicate to them.
,Increasing involuntary Attention
Bottom-up = the way how information is build up from the outside world, to our senses, to our
memory.
Saliency
Example:
See a spider life threatening cause you to allocate focal attention to it
Closer to marketing: ads with unexpected colors and novel
Life and death
If arousal is too high or too low, very little cognitive capacity is available and people find it harder to
process the information. Fear appeals are sometimes not very efficient in marketing-communication
because the arousal is high.
,Horizontal centrality
= Stimuli in the center receive more attention (and are more likely to be chosen). We tend to pay
more attention to stimuli in the middle of the screen, advertisement, webpage etc.
Primacy
= consumers are more attentive to items that are presented
first in a list. We have learned that items that are presented
first, are often the most important one. One major implication
is that during commercial breaks, the commercials that are
presented first get the most attention. On a search page
(Google) people focus on the first items in the search lists
Golden Triangle of Internet Research.
Picture Superiority
Pictorial information receives more information than textual information. To what elements do
consumers pay most attention to:
- Brand?
- Pictorial?
- Text?
Analysis of 1363 print ads with eye tracking technology:
- Pictures: attract attention, regardless of size
- Text: the bigger the text, the more attention
- Brand: the bigger the brand name, the more attention
Increasing Voluntary Attention
Top down = we relate incoming information with what we already know.
Personal interest & Inattentional Blindness
- Consumers allocate more attention to information that is consistent
with their goals
- Information that is not relevant, is often ignored, and will lead to
inattentional blindness.
- Banner blindness/Ad avoidance consumers skip the first coming
ad because it is not relevant to them. Challenge for marketers is to
make their ads relevant for consumers.
, Implications for SEA and SEO
- Organic results generate more attention and traffic because they are immediately relevant
- Sponsored results often suffer from inattentional blindness
Self-Referencing
Attention increases when personalized information is used
- Second person wording (“you”)
- Names
Proximity & EWOM
- Consumers pay more attention to information that is “close”
- The more proximate, the more relevant, the more attention
o Sensory proximity = closeness in experience
o Spatial proximity = closeness in physical space (In own town/city)
o Temporal proximity = closeness in time
A variety of applications
- E(WOM) comes from people close to us (spatial and sensory proximity)
- Viral marketing is emotionally vivid (sensory proximity) and is shared via friends
- Blogs are written by influencers that feel close (sensory proximity)
- Billboards and Abri’s
2.3. How Campaigns Can Stand Out: Increasing Processing Fluency
The easier to process:
- The less resources are needed for comprehension and elaboration
- The more likely it is that information is stored and retrieved
When we visualize this in our consumer behavior model we are talking about techniques that
stimulate the fact that people existing knowledge is used to interpretate the information delivered to
them.
Existing Knowledge Structures
- Linking your appeal to what consumers already know in their memory makes it easier for
them to comprehend/process
- Concrete information helps to link to existing knowledge structures
o Visual (vs. verbal) information
o Concrete (vs. abstract) words
o Narrative (vs. statistical) information
- More “memory traces” lead to
o Increased encoding
o Increased processing
o Increased retrieval
Preparation Tutorial 1: Attention
2.1. Recap on Attention
In in everyday life (watching tv, browse on social media) advertisers want to catch consumers
attention, but how?
Attention is…
- Limited people have limited resources available, so can’t pay attention to everything
- Selective people selectively attend to the most salience pieces in the environment
- Voluntary or involuntary
- A precondition for further processing
Attention is the first, and necessary part for communication message!
Levels of Processing/Involvement
1. Pre-attention: little or no capacity required (automatic processing & unconscious)
information from a message comes in via our senses.
2. Focal attention: little capacity is required to process people zoom in on the information
and try to make sense of what they see etc.
3. Comprehension: modest levels of capacity required give meaning to our information, for
example: an apple, and then you combine it to Apple.
4. Elaboration: substantial levels of capacity required formulate propositions of what we
know about the brand.
2.2. Increasing Voluntary and Involuntary Attention
Some stimuli attract attention involuntary attractive automatic process
Some stimuli attract attention voluntary magnifiers intentional process
Attention makes sure that people will further elaborate and behave in accordance to what
we communicate to them.
,Increasing involuntary Attention
Bottom-up = the way how information is build up from the outside world, to our senses, to our
memory.
Saliency
Example:
See a spider life threatening cause you to allocate focal attention to it
Closer to marketing: ads with unexpected colors and novel
Life and death
If arousal is too high or too low, very little cognitive capacity is available and people find it harder to
process the information. Fear appeals are sometimes not very efficient in marketing-communication
because the arousal is high.
,Horizontal centrality
= Stimuli in the center receive more attention (and are more likely to be chosen). We tend to pay
more attention to stimuli in the middle of the screen, advertisement, webpage etc.
Primacy
= consumers are more attentive to items that are presented
first in a list. We have learned that items that are presented
first, are often the most important one. One major implication
is that during commercial breaks, the commercials that are
presented first get the most attention. On a search page
(Google) people focus on the first items in the search lists
Golden Triangle of Internet Research.
Picture Superiority
Pictorial information receives more information than textual information. To what elements do
consumers pay most attention to:
- Brand?
- Pictorial?
- Text?
Analysis of 1363 print ads with eye tracking technology:
- Pictures: attract attention, regardless of size
- Text: the bigger the text, the more attention
- Brand: the bigger the brand name, the more attention
Increasing Voluntary Attention
Top down = we relate incoming information with what we already know.
Personal interest & Inattentional Blindness
- Consumers allocate more attention to information that is consistent
with their goals
- Information that is not relevant, is often ignored, and will lead to
inattentional blindness.
- Banner blindness/Ad avoidance consumers skip the first coming
ad because it is not relevant to them. Challenge for marketers is to
make their ads relevant for consumers.
, Implications for SEA and SEO
- Organic results generate more attention and traffic because they are immediately relevant
- Sponsored results often suffer from inattentional blindness
Self-Referencing
Attention increases when personalized information is used
- Second person wording (“you”)
- Names
Proximity & EWOM
- Consumers pay more attention to information that is “close”
- The more proximate, the more relevant, the more attention
o Sensory proximity = closeness in experience
o Spatial proximity = closeness in physical space (In own town/city)
o Temporal proximity = closeness in time
A variety of applications
- E(WOM) comes from people close to us (spatial and sensory proximity)
- Viral marketing is emotionally vivid (sensory proximity) and is shared via friends
- Blogs are written by influencers that feel close (sensory proximity)
- Billboards and Abri’s
2.3. How Campaigns Can Stand Out: Increasing Processing Fluency
The easier to process:
- The less resources are needed for comprehension and elaboration
- The more likely it is that information is stored and retrieved
When we visualize this in our consumer behavior model we are talking about techniques that
stimulate the fact that people existing knowledge is used to interpretate the information delivered to
them.
Existing Knowledge Structures
- Linking your appeal to what consumers already know in their memory makes it easier for
them to comprehend/process
- Concrete information helps to link to existing knowledge structures
o Visual (vs. verbal) information
o Concrete (vs. abstract) words
o Narrative (vs. statistical) information
- More “memory traces” lead to
o Increased encoding
o Increased processing
o Increased retrieval
