The Science of saturation advertising

[Guest Syntax]

Most people would argue my opinion of science being embedded in modern business practices.

 

Everyone knows that advertising is simply a way to get your product, service, or even facts and opinions across to a specific group of people, and attract their attention to your group or organization.

 

Most people don't realize that there IS a science, and an art behind this.

 

When you see the first few seconds of a commercial you've seen many times before, you can almost hear the lyrics, or see an image of the product being advertised in the back of your head somewhere. When you're doing simple things such as reading a book, or driving to work, you'll start humming the song in the pepsi commercial. When you get to work, and you go to a soda machine, and your hand is already in motion to hit the button to buy pepsi, you've been hit with saturation advertising.

 

Saturation Advertising is a very effective technique used by a large percentage of big organizations to almost 'force' a customer into buying a product. Take for instance, AOL. There are many Internet Service Providers in the world, but AOL dominates the home users, simply because those users are so used to it. AOL uses saturation advertising heavily to market their products. Everywhere you go, you'll see a "Try AOL Free" CD. Just about every household with a computer has received this CD in the mail. People with TV's have seen the commercial, and everyone is aware of that "You've got mail" sound you hear when a new email is in your mailbox.

 

These methods of Saturation Advertising hit you by forcing information into your brain about a specific type of product. When most home users hear or see the word internet, something in the brain of that person automatically says "AOL". When you go to a McDonalds, and the person says "What would you like to drink with that?" Your mouth is non-hisitant to yelling out out "Pepsi"(or whatever drink you're so used to buying).

 

In order to figure out how to effectively utilize Saturation Advertising, you have to learn a little bit about how the human brain works(which I know very little of).

 

When the brain receives signals of information, the information can be repeated over and over until it is stored, therefore creating a "phonological loop".

 

Seeing a commercial once won't do so, especially if you're marketing something to a person who has already experienced that type of product. Which, in Pepsi's case, they compare it to coca-cola, to show that it's better.

 

http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/biology/b103/f03/web1/fmichaels.html

[Guest Syntax]

-- Continued --

 

Once something is seen (in any medium of advertising) it's placed directly into the person's short term memory. Getting it to the Declarative memory of someone in the target market takes repetitive attempts at smacking you in the face with a particular product or service. By making an advertisement funny, or weird in some cases, can become very effective.

 

Seeing the chin of a Fortune 500 executive hit an oak table with force can certainly trigger humor, causing you to place the commercial in your long term memory, simply because you think it's funny. When you laugh, your brain is replaying the commercial, over and over again until it becomes less humorous, and is placed in your memory. You see it again, and again and then when you're walking through a computer store looking for a word processor, you see a few different vendors that you've never seen before, sitting right next to Microsoft Office 2003. Some would evaluate them based on cost, and functionality. But the few(the ones that Microsoft are targeting) pick up the box simply because they're familiar with the name.

 

I hope this clarifies to the one (non-disclosed) person that argued with me that there is absolutely no science in business.

[Neurocomp2003]

would you really call that a science though? its like training for martial arts and the army...language and everything else that is behavioural...which i guess you could call science. Which simply implies that anything that can be learned is a science.

 

and reallly with AOL and Pepsi, i would really like to punch out their advertisers, those commericials are really annoying.

[Cheetah]

Whenever I hear "Pepsi" I think "Coca-Cola is best!"

[Guest Syntax]

You wanting to punch out their advertisers mean you most likely seen their commercial too many times, and you're sick of hearing the same old bullshit.

 

But yes, there is a science to it, and it's not on the side of the end-user, because those companies literally have to figure ways to 'force' it in your memory, without you even having the ability to stop it from getting there, unless you change the channel when you see every commercial come on.