Inhibitive Effects of Publicity in Advertised Brand Recall and RecognitionJournal of AdvertisingJin, HS; Suh, J.; and Donavan, D.T.
2008
Authors from the College of Business:
D. Todd Donavan, Associate Professor of Marketing
The superbowl is the biggest single advertising event each year – attracting over ninety million viewers and costing over two-million dollars for a thirty-second advertisement. Due to the high cost of these ads, many advertisers are interested in the effectiveness of the commercials. In this study we investigate the ability to increase consumer’s memory of an ad and the effect on competitor’s advertising.
In recent years, a number of companies have done pre-exposure publicity about their superbowl ads. This pre-exposure publicity includes showing a portion of the advertisements on network television evening news and brief descriptions of the ads in national press releases. Our research question addresses whether this pre-exposure of one brand prevents consumers from remembering other brands that were not promoted prior to the superbowl.
We completed an experiment where half of the subjects read an actual pre-exposure press release, and the other half read an unrelated advertising story. We then measured the subject’s recall of advertisements one day after the superbowl. After controlling for viewership, we found a meaningful inhibitive effect. That is, subjects exposed to the pre-exposure publicity remembered fewer of the other brands advertised during the superbowl than subjects that were not exposed to the publicity. Hence, the effect of pre-exposure publicity dilutes the effectiveness of competitor’s advertising. We suggest that if firms are considering buying advertising time on the superbowl, then they should take the next step and release pre-superbowl press releases about the advertisements.