Lectures summary Marketing Communication complete

Module 1: Intro




Module 2: Attention: Breaking through the advertising clutter

2.1 Attention: first step before decision and judgements
1. Limited
2. Selective
3. Voluntary or involuntary
4. A precondition for further processing

Levels of Processing/Involvement
 Pre-attention: little or no
capacity required (salient(in
het oog vallend)/automatic)
 Focal/voluntary attention:
little capacity required
 Comprehension: modest
levels of capacity required
 Elaboration: substantial
levels of capacity required


2.2 Increasing involuntary attention: automatic orienting response. Unconscious  Attractors,
Bottom-up (what we see and hear).
 Hard to ignore (Saliency): life & death, unexpected. Too low/high arousal is bad! See below




 Centrally located stimuli (horizontal centrality): stimuli in center more likely to be chosen.
 Stimuli presented first/last (Primacy/Recency): in beginning more cognitive resources.
Golden cross in internet ads, SEO  upper left.
 Pictures (Picture superiority): pictures > textual info. Pictures: attract attention, regardless
size, Text and Brand: bigger text or brand, more attention.

, Increasing voluntary attention: increase self-relevance and curiosity.  Magnetizers, conscious and
intended. Top down (what we already know and interpret what we see).
 Personal interests & inattentional blindness(not relevant=ignored): consumers allocate
attention to info that is consistent with their goals. Inattentional blindness has implications
for SEA/SEO: organic results generate more attention. Sponsored results suffer from it.
 Self-Referencing: attention increases when personalized information is used. ‘You’ more
attention than ‘It’.
 Proximity & EWOM: consumers pay more attention to information that is close. More
proximaterelevantmore attention.
 Sensory proximity: closeness in experience (friends)
 Spatial proximity: closeness in physical space (distance in town more attention)
 Temporal proximity: closeness in time (when I go vacation in 1 week more attention)
E(WOM): Electronic Word of Mouth: comes from people close to us (spatial and sensory)
Viral marketing is emotionally vivid and is shared via friends (sensory)
Blogs written by influencers that feel close (sensory)
Billboards close in space and big (spatial)

2.3 Increasing processing Fluency: the easier the process, less the resource needed and more likely
that info is stored. Resources are limited.

 Existing knowledge structures: linking your appeal to what consumers already now.
 Visual information
 Concrete words
 Narrative (vs statistical)
More of these memory traces (Associative Network Theory) lead to: increased encoding,
processing, retrieval = less attention needed to understand.

Stronger memory traces through:
1. Dual Coding Theory: visual and verbal modalities lead to different encoding strategies
 Words – verbal
 Images – visual
 Imagination also stored in visual info
2. Encoding Variability: novel (but related) information receives an extra memory trace
Hence, novelty does not only affect ‘mere attention’, but also makes it easier to process.

Know difference between self-relevance and self-referencing.
Self-relevance: because it is increasing personal interest.
Self-referencing: Personalized Ads: ‘You’. mild form of arousal, like Oh it’s my name. It’s important.

Spoofing  know when to use and when it is not a good idea.
= The art of spoofing an ad involves taking another brand's piece of creative - ideally one that has
transcended the advertising world and entered into popular culture - then moulding it into
something that viewers want to share, and which therefore benefits the spoofer's brand
Pro’s: cost-effective, cut out need of media spend.
Cons: only works for brands that can poke fun at themselves. Can hurt credibility