26 Tim Ambler, Andreas Ioannides and Steven Rose

References Note: for a full list of references, please go to the Business Strategy Review Website at www.london.edu/bsr. Ambler, Tim and Tom Burne (1999) The Impact of Affect on Memory of Advertising Journal of Advertising Research 39, 25—34 Bechara A, Hannah Damasio, Antonio R. Damasio, G.P. Lee (1999) Different contributions of the human amygdala and ventromedial prefrontal cortex to decision-making Journal of Neuroscience, 19 (13), 5473-5481. Cahill, Larry and James L. McGaugh (1998) Mechanisms of emotional arousal and lasting declarative memory, TINS 21, 294-299 Damasio, Antonio R. (1994) Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain, London: Papermac (Macmillan).

Ioannides, Andreas A., Liu Lichan, Dionyssios Theofilou, Jurgen Dammers, Tom Burne, Tim Ambler, and Steven P.R. Rose (2000 forthcoming) Real time processing of affective and cognitive stimuli in the human brain extracted from MEG signals, Brain Topography (in press) Kandel, Eric R., James H. Schwartz and Thomas M. Jessell (eds.) (1991) Principles of Neural Science, Norwalk, CT: Appleton and Lange, Figures 21-14 and 47-3A, 308 and 738. LeDoux, Joseph E. (1994) The Emotional Brain, New York: Simon and Schuster. Rose, Steven P.R. (1993) The Making of Memory, London: Bantam Books. Vakratsas, Demetrios and Tim Ambler (1999) “How Advertising Works: What Do We Really Know?” Journal of Marketing 63, January, 26-43.

Commentary

Challenge to Advertising Research Methods Simon Broadbent Professionals find nothing new in contrasting thinking and emotion. What is novel to us is the neurological discovery of physical evidence for these two reactions to the world around us, and clues about their relationship.

always processes input, but at a deep level.” Tim Ambler once summed it up like this: “Rationalists have been trying to explain emotion as some cunning covert cognition, when all along it is simply emotion.”

So “Brands on the Brain” is not only the description of a second experiment on the reaction of laboratory subjects to advertising. It is part of a reassessment, by a few pioneers, of many facets of advertising research.

Further, “emotional reaction not only sets the context for rational processing, but it acts as a gateway to attentioning”, “unless a perception is emotionally encoded it will not be rationally useful” (Du Plessis). “Advertisements with high affective components will have better recall following a single presentation”, because “affect (feeling, emotion) rather than cognition (perception, absorbing information, thinking) may be the key” (Ambler and Burne). “Brand decisions tend to be made intuitively rather than rationally, and most advertising is processed at very low attention levels using low involvement process” (Heath).

Some previously accepted ideas are now crumbling; others are given a sounder basis. The landscape is changing before our eyes, with possible effects over the next ten years it is hard to exaggerate. I find this revolution the most exciting I have lived through in this field. So far, psychology has queened it over qualitative advertising research; rational thought has been the order of the day. The two disciplines agree on the importance of non-conscious processing, but then differ. Du Plessis puts it like this: “Neurology postulates that you first react emotionally and this might be your total reaction. Psychology says that the subconscious

Business Strategy Review

As well as these distinctions, the importance of another is more obvious: “One of the biggest problems… is that brand meanings (images) are almost exclusively described in words – while they are probably present in our memories on a primarily visual, auditive and symbolic basis” (Franzen and Bouwman).

Brands on the Brain: Neuro-Images of Advertising 27

We are all schizoid; we may respond to others with a kiss or a blow – or with a calm and civilised discussion. At one moment a viewer, a shopper or an informant is all gut instinct, at another sensible and polite. And this happens in one head, but literally at different levels, and called out by different situations. The rational viewer or shopper is often ignored or over-ruled by her unruly companion. Galbraith’s postulation of a rational economic man has long been seen as a poor basis for legislating about advertising. Now we have to consider how much we advertising researchers have ourselves been in error. Obviously the rational informant is summoned by nearly all existing research. The environment of the pre-test or the focus group, the application of an image battery – these call for the verbal, justifiable answer. Every person can always find a reason for her beliefs and actions. But slumped in front of the TV, or hurriedly browsing the supermarket aisle – these call for more basic reactions. The eyes of lower animals respond selectively to what is important to survival: the frog sees the fly, not the weeds. In our own way, we too screen out the background and concentrate on the titbit, the mate, the predator. Our rapid classification is often little more than “friend, foe or scenery”? Just because the informant can rationalise for us her attitudes and beliefs, we have assumed she does this while shopping. Our commercial’s details can be rehearsed in the group discussion. Why not in the supermarket? We have failed to appreciate that it is the model pupil who comes to the groups, the limbic system guides the trolley. Energy is saved by cutting down involvement in shopping and leaving the neocortex at home: decisions can be made at a simpler level. Even when a logical argument occasionally pops up, emotional commitment is needed to act on it. For advertising, the new learning supports Andrew Ehrenberg’s view that advertising is mainly publicity. Perhaps the copy point is not in fact the point. The marketing objective is mainly to get and stay on the repertoire – which now means to me to be classified as a ‘friend’ and not scenery. Researchers are constantly uncertain about which of a number of reported positive image dimensions is

actually motivating, and this difficulty in logical interpretation points the same way. Perhaps none of the scales really matter – it’s the halo that counts. The effectiveness of some apparently contentless advertisements is further evidence. Perhaps this is where the elusive brand equity is hiding – not so much in a bundle of reportable memories and associations and experience as in a warm glow in the pit of the stomach or wherever the amygdala shows its presence and its power. For meaningful pre-tests and post-tests of commercials, research finds it literally impossible to measure unprompted attention, or what messages are really recalled during shopping. Nor, for brand research, can we detect how instinct reacts when not tightly reined by the cerebrum. This is our Uncertainty Principle. For the new goal, Du Plessis again: “We will not be delving for the sub-conscious after establishing the rational, but we will recognise the subconscious before we delve into the rational.” The list of traditional views and techniques challenged by the advertising neurologists is comprehensive. Which will survive? What copy will prove to adopt best the new learning – or was it always one limbic system calling across the deep to another? I can see one technique only which does not now need extreme caution – or no more than it does already – the analysis of behaviour obtained without forceful intervention. The TV meter, the barcode scanner – these barely disturb the shopper’s quest for friend and food, the avoidance of foe – they are part of the fortunately ignored scenery. It is the care we have to take not to disturb the timid beasts we should really be studying which is our challenge in explaining behaviour.

Simon Broadbent is Director of BrandCon, UK

References Du Plessis, Erik Telmar seminar, 1997. Heath, Robert Low involvement processing – a radical new model of how brands and advertising work, ASI seminar in Prague, May 2000. Franzen, Giep and Margot Bouwman (2000, forthcoming) The Mental World of Brands Admap.

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Commentary

Ads, Brains and Social Text Thomas C.O’Guinn This is an extremely preliminary, but also potentially important work. For at least a century, the essential question of how advertising works has gone largely unanswered. The reasons are many, but certainly include the ones listed in this paper: the influence of an economic tradition and its nineteenth century baggage of rationality, as well as a fairly singular focus on cognition and information processing within the academy. The role of emotion (as well as other forms of affect) has been given relatively little attention by academics. As the authors suggest, this is one (of many) good reason practitioners and academics have had relatively little to say to one another. Practitioners knew humans were more complex, less rational, more emotional, and messier than the academics’ neat little hierarchical models of reason. That’s because, for one, practitioners actually worked with advertisements, and with actual consumers. Practitioners and academics also knew (or strongly suspected) that something must be going on physiologically in response to ads which elicited different reactions from consumers. We thought that something different must be going on in the brain when people laughed and cried than when they pondered. It made sense. But, sensitive methodology was said to be lacking. Beyond measured arousal was only speculation. Apparently, we now have less reason to say that. These three authors show us something difficult to dismiss. It appears that we can now demonstrate some differences in the way cognitive and affective parts of ads activate different parts of the brain. This may lead to something truly important. It may eventually get us beyond the merely opaque and truly black box models of response to thought and feeling, whether it is in response to a soft drink ad or Hamlet. Eventually, this might lead to a much more basic understanding of the physiology of emotion. However, what it does for advertising research is for me far less clear. While I applaud this effort wholeheartedly, I must also offer a few cautionary comments. First, this research is as preliminary as preliminary gets. The list of methodological and procedural based cautions is a Business Strategy Review

very, very long one. But those are obvious, and will go without further comment. To me, the more important concern is more fundamental. It is about the nature of ads, and the interpretive act from which they are inseparable. Ads are text; they are, more importantly, social text. Ads do not exist on the page, on the videotape, as independent variables, as definite and static things. They are works in progress, socially and interpretively fluid. They are socially constructed. Experimental research that has tended to view emotion in ads as a dependent as opposed to independent variable is fairly consistent with this interpretive stance, but ones that view them as independent variables (as this study does) are not. Further, we must remember that ads are to most consumers cultural ephemera, seen six or eight in a row, while they are talking to their spouse or child, or maybe even paying attention. Some are dismissed, some are discussed, some become forms of cultural capital and become part of language. Ads are social texts whose meaning is determined just as much by social process as what goes on between the ears. While this research does not dispute this at all, reliance on such socially isolated methods should be kept in mind when the question is the practical interpretation of real consumers, all of whom are social creatures, collectively determining the meaning of real ads in the real world. So, this research is both potentially very important, and a long, long, long way from application. Advertising copy research is collectively an under-achiever. State of the art is a poor state indeed. So, any basic research like this is very welcome. But one must certainly understand that, in its present configuration, it would be impractical, cost prohibitive, and horribly threatened in terms of ecological validity. I often fear that this complaint is trivialized and misunderstood. Critics are not simply saying that laboratory results cannot be extended to the “real world”, (that’s really not the right question when one is seeking process). However, the tougher question remains: is what you are studying with all that machinery, in that setting, really even an ad at all any more? At the level of basic process research, perhaps yes, and at the level of actionable

Brands on the Brain: Neuro-Images of Advertising 29

copy research, I don’t think so. But, interestingly I would tend to value this work and its potential in some ways more than some of the more standard paper and pencil tests. This is because it does not require the human subject to verbalize and report his or her thoughts and feelings (labeling all the way) as ad responses stream though varying levels of consciousness, and then have the researcher infer References Edell, Julie and Tony M. Dubitsky (1990) Emotion in advertising: theoretical and practical explorations, (ed.), by Stuart J. Agres, Julie A. Edell and Tony M. Dubitsky. New York : Quorum Books. O’Guinn, Thomas C. (2001) Advertising Effects, in Michael Schudson (volume editor), “Applications,” in Neil Smelser and Paul Bates (eds.), International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, Elsevier Science, 2000. O’Guinn, Thomas C., Chris Allen, and Richard J.

process from some fairly mechanical cognitive model. Actually, by being more physiological, I have more faith in it than I might otherwise. Thomas O’Guinn is Professor of Advertising and Business Administration at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champagn.

Semenik (1998) Advertising, Cincinnati: Southwestern. Ritson, Mark and Richard Elliot (1999) The Social Uses of Advertising: an Ethographic Study of Adolescent Audiences, Journal of Consumer Research, 26, December 260-277. Scott, Linda M. (1994) The Bridge from Text to Mind: Adapting Reader Response Theory for Consumer Research Journal of Consumer Research 21 (December), 461-486.

Commentary

Neuro-Images of Advertising Larry Percy The potential for neuro-imaging of advertising holds real promise. Until now, the real difficulty with brain activity measures of advertising, as with all physiological measures, has been the inability to relate the measured activity to the effect of the actual processing. Clearly, something is going on, but what was it in the advertising that was actually causing the reaction, and how could we interpret the reaction in terms of its effect upon brand attitude? The really exciting aspect of the work reported here is the potential to relate the neuro-images to known corteal activity. While it can never be a perfect measure of the actual result of processing and how it is likely to affect brand attitude and intention, it is a giant step closer.

product of prior learning. And indeed there is a great deal of research on the biology of emotional learning that leads to the general conclusion that the amygdala is the likely hub of a neural system that supports nondeclarative memories of emotional events. The ability of emotion to enhance declarative memory is mediated by the amygdala. But we should remember that emotional learning is not the only kind of nondeclarative memory that works in conjunction with our declarative memory. A very readable discussion of how the actual workings of the mind influence and accommodate memory may be found in Squire and Kandel's (1999) Memory, from Mind to Molecules for those interested in really exploring this issue.

There has been research (one is reminded of the work of Zajonc and his colleagues) that suggests learning involving emotions can occur independently of conscious cognition. In other words, how we evaluate information can be to a large extent an unconscious

Amygdala activity would seem to correlate with the ability to recall the material associated with emotionally-arousing stimuli, and that seems to be what we find happening here. But we need to consider this more closely. Does this really mean that the Autumn 2000

30 Tim Ambler, Andreas Ioannides and Steven Rose

‘affective’ messages were more successfully processed, that there was a significantly stronger positive brand attitude response just because there was better recall? We are back to the same vexing question that has dogged brain activity measures for so long. Just what exactly is the consequence, in terms of the desired communication effect, of the brain imaging we are measuring? While we might still not be able to directly answer these questions, we do see a new potential here because of the understanding we have about what these areas of the brain being measured are responsible for. But regardless of this potential, it is important that we do not lose sight of the fact that it is not always necessary to “like” advertising for it to be effective, and that emotion should and does operate in the processing of all communication, even “cognitive” adverts. This is a critical point, and one repeatedly made by Rossiter and Percy (1997). Because something is emotionally arousing does not mean it must be an “affectively” oriented advert, at least in the way the affective-cognitive distinction is generally made. A good recent example of this was a commercial for Bayer aspirin that showed a man being rushed into emergency surgery from a heart attack. This was a straight “cognitive” message: taking aspirin daily helps reduce the risk of heart failure. But the execution was emotionally charged. In fact a great deal of the emotional learning experiments have involved fear; especially the work

References Cahill, L, et al, (1996) Amygdala activity at encoding correlated with long-term, free recall of emotional information, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, 93:8016-8021. Davis, M. (1992) The role of the amygdala in conditioned fear, In J.P. Aggleton (ed), The Amygdala, New York: John Wiley & Sons.

of LeDoux (1994) and Michael Davis (1992). It is not just positive emotions that engage the amygdala. In a study by Cahill and his colleagues (1996) among young adults shown either neutral or emotionally distressing film clips, it was found that, when a memory test was administered without warning three weeks later, the emotionally-arousing film clips were significantly better recalled. This result was directly related to the metabolic activity of the right amygdala at the time the film clips were shown. The more activity, the greater the number of emotional clips recalled, but not the number of neutral clips. It would seem that the results of this study are consistent with Ambler, Ioannides, and Rose's results, but as we have seen, the emotional arousal was negative and not positive. What this all means is that we need to be careful not to confuse “emotion” with positive affect. Emotion, even negative emotion, can energize memory. And a good thing, because not all adverts must be liked. On the other hand, for those that must be “liked”, those dealing with positive purchase motives such as advertising for things like beer, snacks, fashion, or cosmetics, neuro-imaging could be an important tool in measuring the desired emotional arousal. Larry Percy is a consultant in marketing and communications and a visiting profesor at a number of European busness schools.

LeDoux, J.E. (1994) The Emotional Brain, New York: Simon and Schuster. Rossiter, J.R. and Percy, L. (1997) Advertising Communication and Promotion Management, New York: McGraw-Hill. Squire, L.R. and Kandel, E.R. (1999) Memory, from Mind to Molecule, New York: Scientific American Library.