Ad Type and Presentation Mode Effects on Logo Recall

Introduction

The advertising and marketing sectors have seen the adoption of novel tools — including cell phones, computer networks, the internet, and computerized games — in the modern era. The effects of these new tools, combined with the explosion of broadcasting stations, have led to stiff competition within the current advertising sector. Moreover, diverse broadcasting networks must now contend with the obsolescence of conventional advertising methods due to the fragmentation of consumers, market overload, and reduced consumer attention. This has forced broadcasters and stakeholders to devise methods geared toward product familiarization through various presentation mediums that encourage brand awareness, as well as advertising memory recall techniques to facilitate ingenuity in product delivery. Without a doubt, the marketing sector has long endeavored to address the problem of consumer inattention (Arrazola, de Hevia, and Reinares, 2016).

It is therefore important for advertising experts to estimate how successful these marketing methods and presentation formats are. Research indicates that visual memory in human beings is remarkably strong, whereby recollections are stored discretely and protected from interference, even when large numbers of observed images are encountered. Prevailing studies have likewise revealed enormous capacity in visual memory during continuous recall, demonstrating the ability to recognize more than 2,000 images and to identify variations in type, orientation, and nominal features of objects (Blake, Nazarian, and Castel, 2015).

On the other hand, advertising researchers and academics have noted that consumer attention is a limited and unpredictable resource. The emergence of public networks and communication platforms has increased this complexity. Given the present age of media multitasking — in which viewers engage in numerous activities simultaneously, such as watching television while responding to text messages — the level of distraction is at an all-time high. These multitasking consumers have shown a tendency to perform poorly on memory tests, particularly those related to advertising recognition and recall (Angell, Gorton, Sauer, Bottomley, and White, 2016). Attention is therefore a limited resource, and its division across advertising presentation modes and advertisement types raises the central question: what effect does advertisement type and mode of presentation have on a viewer's ability to recall?

The purpose of this study is to assess the effects of advertisement type and mode of presentation on viewers' recall ability. The researchers will assess how everyday attention to selected logos can be potentially facilitated by method of presentation and affected by the type of company the logo represents. The dependent variable of this study is participants' ability to recall company logos. The independent variables are "Type of Company Logo" and "Mode of Presentation."

The proposed study is somewhat similar to "The Apple of the mind's eye: Everyday attention, metamemory, and reconstructive memory for the Apple logo," carried out by Blake et al., as both studies test recall of common, everyday logos by having participants illustrate a logo. The key difference is that the researchers in the seed article did not implement a manipulation variable to assess what could potentially affect recall of the Apple logo. In the present study, advertisement type and presentation mode are used as stimuli to examine their impact on everyday recall.

Methods

The following sections describe the participants, design, materials, apparatus, and procedure used in this study, as well as the approach to data analysis.

Participants and Design

The participants will be 25 college students who will take part in the study for class credit. Taking into consideration the challenges of identifying a relevant sample willing to be surveyed, along with time and budget constraints, a non-random sample will be selected. Subjects will be identified through personal connections within the researchers' social networks, and the study will be organized informally with the assistance of those networks.

The study employs a 2×2 within-subjects design, meaning the same participants will be exposed to all conditions. The first independent variable is the mode of presentation — the manner in which the logo is presented to the participant. There will be two levels for this variable: a video advertisement and a stationary image of an advertisement containing the logo. The second independent variable is the type of logo, pertaining to the company the logo represents. The two levels for this variable are two popular fast food companies (McDonald's and Burger King) and two prominent internet retail companies (eBay and Amazon).

Four different company logos will be used across all conditions: McDonald's, Burger King, eBay, and Amazon. The dependent variable is participants' ability to recall the company logos. Recall will be operationalized by measuring how many accurate components each participant is able to draw when asked to illustrate each logo. Experimenters will identify key features for each logo — including color scheme, general shape, letters, and images — and award one point for each component a participant draws accurately (Blake, Nazarian, and Castel, 2015).