By way of broad classification, there are two things one would want out of advertising: a) Viewers must remember it and remember as much of it as possible and b) The viewers must be favorably predisposed to the ad and by association, the object of advertisement. The first part of this issue is the related to memory and the second part is related to attitude.
A new research in psychology shows that bad weather can influence focus of people, leading them to recall information from that bad-weather period better. In short, people tend to observe and retain information better when they are in bad mood.
As one interested in psychology, its application in advertising and marketing communication and a predilection for gratuitous thought, I start wondering what it mean for advertising - how does it fit into what I know about memory and information processing. How do attitudes fit in here?
The obvious conclusion from the results of the study would be: if you want people to remember the ad and related information, they should be in a bad mood. This can be brought about in two ways – either they are already in a bad mood when they view the ad, which can be ensured by placing it in between a really bad show, or the ad itself should induce the bad mood, which can be done in n number ways, on way is by making really, really bad ads.
(One of the studies by the ELM researchers on effects of mood shows that, when consumers are asked to evaluate something when in a bad mood, they end up rating it more poorly than they would if they were happy. To know more about ELM follow the link)
Hence, by the ELM’s diktat of biasing effects of mood in information processing, the above mentioned method would end up causing you to intensely pay attention to information and form extremely strong and not so favorable attitudes towards the ad and the brand, which is a dreadful situation for an advertiser to be in. Now, to avoid this conundrum, if we decide to make the viewer happy, we must sacrifice some amount of expectation on memory. This means that viewers may have a positive attitude, but may not have adequate recall of information, that is, they may not really know why they think favorably about the ad and the brand. This in turn means that they can be easily persuaded to change their attitude.
Now, how can an advertiser handle this situation: should he decide that the viewers must have strong attitude with all necessary information and sacrifice some amount of favorability in attitude, or should he decide on retaining a high level of favorability and sacrifice some amount of recall?
Here’s another take on the research: http://exploring--psychology.blogspot.com/2009/04/here-comes-rain-again-falling-on-my.html
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