A History Lesson: Seducing the Subconscious

“Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it”

This quote rings true even for advertising and the content produced by agencies. By understanding how the industry has progressed from early stages to now, we can better understand the methods and strategies that help to build brands. Luckily, this information was easily accessible in Heath’s book, ‘Seducing the Subconscious’. In part one he discusses the history of advertising through four methods: Persuasion, Low Involvement, Reinforcement, and Elaboration Likelihood.

Me reading ‘Seducing the Subconscious’

Persuasive Model

This method works by aiming to deliver one or more brand message using a four step model:

1. Get Attention
2. Provoke Interest
3. Create Desire
4. Get Action

Developed at the start of the 1900s, this linear model purportedly works by trying to rationally change brand-linked beliefs, which in turn changes brand-linked behavior resulting in a rational response to purchase. Brands use a Unique Selling Promise (USP) to get across the one strong claim the brand has to sell the product. When creatives come in they use this message to construct the creative idea that will grab attention. As long as creatives can get viewers to watch and attend to the ads there will be higher attention resulting in higher recall. Obviously, this aims at making the brand top-of-mind when it comes to consideration for purchase. This model is dependent upon the understanding that people rationally pay attention to ads to process them, which leads to an impact in their decision making. Persuasion might’ve worked when advertisements were just for newspapers and TV, but as media has changed so should the content placed in them.

Low Involvement

First brought up in 1971, the concept of low involvement states that advertising is processed at low levels of attention. Herbert Krugman made the bold finding that television was a medium of low involvement compared with print. In the experiment used to deduce this finding, Krugman used an electroencephalograph machine to measure the type of brain waves being emitted when shown a print ad versus a television ad. To simplify his methodology, the more fast brain waves, the more active and attentive the ad was process; the more slow waves, the more passive the processing. The results showed that while the subject was reading a magazine, brain waves were faster suggesting that the information was being processed actively, while brain waves remained slower for TV commercials indicating lower involvement. Krugman also found that the more a TV ad was watched the less attention was paid to it. These results, however, were called into question after the methods of the study were revealed. The first problem arose because he only had one subject, a 23 year old secretary. The second flaw was that the machine he used only recorded a certain level of brain activity so any activity taking place below the neocortex wasn’t recorded. Lastly, the measurement of print advertising covered reading the whole magazine, not just the ads and the TV commercials were shown in isolation away from any programming.

Though his methodology was flawed, Krugman was on to something, Heath in 2009 reproduced his research concept with sounder methodology. Confirming that ads are processed differently in different contexts.

Reinforcement

This method is rooted in the belief that advertising can work without changing attitudes. Andrew Ehrenberg, challenged that the notion that advertising could change attitudes and instead stated an ad’s main role is to reinforce feelings of satisfaction with brands. In 1974, he thought along the same lines as Krugman, advertising as low involvement and came up with his own three step model to follow.

Awareness (brand not ad) → Trial → Reinforcement

This model suggested that advertising could create or strengthen brand awareness and push users toward trial purchase. Ehrenberg saw repeat advertising as reinforcing already developed repeat buying habits. Advertising was used as a nudge to push a brand to the top of consideration at the point of purchase. This model didn’t have the kind of response within the industry as Ehrenberg was expecting. There was a lot of rebuttal for his model, saying that while advertising may be incapable of changing attitudes, it still increases consumer’s knowledge which can lead to a change and then persuade people to purchase a brand they had not previously considered. The main argument for this model is over attitude change, where one side says advertising works by changing attitudes which changes behavior and the other side says purchase must happen before attitude change.

Elaboration Likelihood

This method suggests that there are two routes advertising could take to achieve a change in behavior. The Central Route, a more traditional method of persuasion, is where processing is controlled, deep, systematic, and effortful. The second route, Peripheral Processing, is an automatic, heuristic and mindless way to process information. In 1996, Petty and Cacioppo conducted studies which showed that the high involvement, active thinking, Central Route had a more persistent and predictive behavior change than the Peripheral Route. The fault in this study was that the college students were primed to be focused on the material, being told they were going over information on a new test. Advertising is not presented in this way in reality, so there’s no reason for viewers to use their Central Route for processing. In essence, we are telling people what they already know, and in any oversaturated market people tend to be even less alert to messaging.

These four methods were concepted and developed in the early stages of advertising. As our understanding of human psychology and how it relates to the processing of advertising has changed, so too should our methodologies. Persuasion, Low Involvement, Reinforcement and Elaboration Likelihood show the past ideologies of our industry, but as we progress through ‘Seducing the Subconscious’, we plan to share Heath’s insights on the future. Stay tuned.