Switch the Flip: Pattern Interrupts for Creative

Aside from being wrong, the notion that people have attention spans shorter than goldfish ironically points to the increased capacity to maintain concentration in today’s world. The claim, first alluded to in a report from Microsoft in 2015, went viral and roughly half of us still believe that humans have an 8 second attention span today. Reality is more nuanced.

[If your ads aren’t performing, the problem you’re facing is rooted in something else entirely.]

People haven’t gotten worse at contending with the ceaseless barrage of content across their devices, they’ve adapted by filtering it out, and not just with the help of software, but by unconsciously sharpening how — and where — they focus.

People who spend more time with digital media are actually more efficient and intentional, and better able to extract more information according to their needs. They’re more adept at directing and focusing attention faster than ever before. This is especially true for young adults as they reach their peak developmental age for cognitive control. Whether they’re rapidly refocusing their attention across tabs, emails, and chats, or they’re using online media to “zone out” while scrolling, people have adjusted their patterns and are now incredibly skilled at filtering out messages that aren’t relevant to their needs.

We’re not goldfish, and we aren’t advertising to goldfish. But for the sake of the goldfish, let’s quickly set the record straight: goldfish memories last for months, not seconds. Evidence suggests that they can recognize people after long periods of separation. And they can be taught to navigate mazes (!)

If you’re a marketer, your ads need to cut through a constant barrage of content, grab attention, and appeal to your target customers — all at the same time. This simultaneity feels effortless when it plays into the strengths of cognitive flexibility, not against it. The same old approach has a few problems, 1. it’s the same, 2. It’s old, and 4. it’s wrong.

Developing compelling ‘hooks’ (dynamic ~3 seconds to start the ad) are vital to maximizing the efficacy of ad dollars, reducing CPMs and driving higher impressions.

Let’s look at how we can leverage the psychology behind pattern interrupts to produce highly memorable, scroll-stopping ad campaigns.

Pattern Recognition

We create patterns to make our lives easier. From an evolutionary perspective, pattern recognition helped us stay alive. Patterns are ubiquitous in nature, expressed in our social lives, our routines, and habits. Our brain constantly utilizes patterns for conscious processes.

One of the superpowers of the brain is its ability to oscillate between focused attention and diffuse thinking. This broadly describes two patterns of conscious mental activity.

Alert, active attention is goal-oriented, excited and seeking relevance. This activity relies primarily upon the executive powers of the prefrontal cortex (PFC).

When our minds are free to wander, we switch from focused attention into diffuse mode thinking. When we’re taking a break from what feels like “thinking,” it’s likely that we are relying less on the executive functions of the PFC and easing into the Default Mode Network (DMN).

Within the prefrontal cortex, the six networks that govern directed activity interact flexibly to carry out cognitive control. Until about 20 years ago, executive function was considered to be the sole purpose of the PFC until researchers confirmed the existence of the DMN, which changed everything. The DMN stands alone among these networks for three reasons: it consumes far more energy than the executive functions of the brain; it appears to be activated at the exclusion of the other networks coordinated by the PFC; and it’s active during periods of rest, including sleep. The DMN is considered an intrinsic system, specializing in cognitive processes such as daydreaming, reminiscing, orienting us socially, and future planning.

We experience harmony between goal-oriented activity and the DMN most of our waking lives, and this feels positive when entering into a creative flow state or daydreaming. Intentional direction can also harness the restorative qualities of the DMN through meditation.

Our brain’s ability to rapidly learn and evolve with the increased complexity of our daily lives relies on the PFCs ability to task switch, which includes the DMN. But prolonged intense focus that’s combined with excessive task switching comes at a cost: fatigue. It leads to cognitive tunneling, and has been shown to reduce self-regulation and overall focus. When this occurs, people become more susceptible to cognitive bias as they lose grasp of context.

Anyone who has driven alone on a largely unchanging road for a long period of time has experienced the difference between drifting into the DMN in an alert state, and fighting off fatigue from the monotony of the road and a lack of sleep. This illustrates a variation of how people use “scrolling.” When a deer jumps out in front of your car, your senses are awakened immediately. That’s the equivalent of a pattern interrupt.

Patterns, Interrupted

Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) introduced the concept of the pattern interrupt as an approach to changing deeply ingrained routines or attentional habits in order to change behavior. In theory someone can use a pattern interrupt to break a habitual pattern of thought, emotion, or behavior by introducing another pattern to stop or change it. The individual is left without a next step in their thought process, so they will likely open up to whatever step is made available.

Pattern Interrupts are a tried and tested sales tactic and they can be applied to any pattern. The idea behind a pattern interrupt is to deliberately disrupt someone’s expectations to create a moment of surprise or intrigue.

The same is true for pattern interrupts in advertising. They can be used to re-frame your messaging or deepen your audience’s emotional involvement with your ad. The pattern interrupt can be applied across a wide range of contexts (from scrolling behaviors to commercial breaks), messaging (copy, email subject lines, etc), and narrative visual storytelling (images, narrative structure, use of aesthetics), to name a few.

PAD your Interrupts

A great hook for an ad helps make an ad great. Foremost, it announces to the individual customer that it deserves their attention. The PAD emotional state model can be a first step for planning the pattern interrupt for your hook.

The PAD model is a three-dimensional scale frequently used in psychology to categorize and measure emotional states. It stands for Pleasure, Arousal, and Dominance, the three dimensions the model uses to characterize an emotional response.

The individual emotions may not determine the effectiveness of your hook — what really matters is where the emotions fall within the PAD model. Each individual emotion is a combination of three characteristics:

• Pleasure (P): This dimension refers to the extent to which a person feels good, happy, or satisfied in a situation. It ranges from feelings of high pleasure (joy, happiness) to low pleasure (unhappiness, sadness). This dimension is also referred to as “valence.”
• Arousal (A): This dimension represents the level of mental alertness, physical activity, and stimulation in an emotion. It ranges from high arousal (excited, tense) to low arousal (calm, sluggish).
• Dominance (D): This dimension refers to the degree of control, influence, or power a person feels in a situation. It ranges from high dominance (empowered, influential) to low dominance (helpless, submissive). Another way to think about dominance is “status.”

In this model, every emotional state can be represented as a point in a three-dimensional space formed by these dimensions. For example, the emotion “anger” could be characterized as low in pleasure, high in arousal, and high in dominance. Further, emotions can be coordinated numerically across the three axes.

To illustrate this, let’s go back to the myth about the goldfish and the human attention span. If you read the headline “You Now Have a Shorter Attention Span Than a Goldfish” in Time magazine in 2015 you certainly encountered a deliberate pattern interrupt.

Intuitively, we know the idea is absurd. But, on the level, it makes so much sense. It explains everything. The claim went viral in 2015, primarily because it rings true. For most people around the world, it’s self-evident that goldfish have short memories (or attention spans). The headline is an incredibly effective pattern interrupt, made more persuasive as its story unfolds. For many of the same reasons that make pattern interrupts so potent, they share a lot in common with viral content. Here’s an example, using the goldfish example. (Note that the order as it relates to the structure of the message inverts the PAD to DAP, which is often the case for ads).

1. Dominance. The implicit claim — that a goldfish is smarter than you — immediately invokes high-arousal emotions that zero in on power through status: I’m no better than a goldfish?! Studies have shown a correlation between Dominance, engagement and sharing of online content. Then the claim passed another crucial test, social proof, which is powerfully linked to status as well: in this case, it was amplified across major media outlets like Time magazine, not to mention content marketing for e-commerce businesses everywhere (for years). Furthermore, the claim originated in a report by a trusted authority: Microsoft.
2. Arousal. If the intrigue of the implied threat to our status as human beings — the most-evolved species on earth — by a tiny fish wasn’t powerful enough, the original report was accompanied by an eye-catching infographic that perfectly illustrated its point. Not to mention, goldfish are popular pets for a reason: they’re bright orange little fish that stand out in a fishbowl.
3. Pleasure. Or, in this case, displeasure. It packed emotional relevance: who doesn’t feel like they’re constantly pulled in many directions, feeling that their attention suffers from multitasking?

An advertising hook that effectively uses the dominance dimension can emphasize the control, empowerment, or influence that the consumer would gain from the product or service. Take this a step further and aim at social status.

Deeper into the narrative, pattern interrupts can break the pattern of your ad’s structure to draw your audience into the ad further, through narrative transportation, or to call attention to the product or brand, even the ad itself. Like the “hook” pattern interrupts, these can take the form of ironic or surprising emotional content, humorous actions, and they’re enhanced with unexpected edits, text, sound or video changes, for example.

The promise of feeling satisfied, experiencing the pleasure of security, and gaining independence by using the product or service provides a strong emotional motivation. While it can feel empowering as well, some studies show that Pleasure emotions tend to increase purchase. As the ad structure progresses, there’s flexibility to enhance the promise of pleasure or satisfaction to drive a purchase decision. This combination of Dominance and Pleasure in the ad structure creates a powerful push towards making the purchase decision.

The pattern interrupt is a versatile technique that enables your ad to momentarily hold someone’s attention to guide their intrinsic motivation. To truly know the pattern interrupt is to know its superpower, and to love it for what it actually can bring to your creative technique.

Use Pattern Interrupts, Wisely.

Pattern interrupts are great because they change a person’s typical thoughts and actions in the moment. They create intriguing new possibilities that tap into the power of narrative transportation and audience participation. Even subtle uses of pattern interrupts can be highly effective. Here are some additional guidelines for bringing them into your creative planning.

Do your research. Stay current with creative trends in order to find new ways to playfully disrupt expectations. Think about the pattern conventions that you’re playing with and how they are situated in a hierarchy of contexts. For example, when Ryan Reynolds first appeared in an online ad, his star power was a pattern interrupt for the entire ad ecosystem. By comparison, a great hook only needs to interrupt user scrolling behaviors long enough to grab attention. Within the ad, a static image or video/sound pattern interrupts shake up the ad itself.

Know your audience. Psychologist Daniel Kahneman estimates that an individual makes about 35,000 decisions a day. Only 2% of these are conscious. A pattern interrupt inevitably introduces some degree of cognitive strain, even if for just a split-second. This is no small matter. Pattern interrupts need to be intriguing enough to overcome this friction, and they should reward that intrigue by enhancing positive feelings and/or strengthening the relevance of your ad. If someone is lightening their cognitive load by zoning out, on some level they’re intentionally taking a break from decisions that require System 2 thinking, which is how we reason through complex decisions. When System 2 thinking is taking a rest, our unconscious fast thinking pathways are still quick, instinctive, and automatic. If your ad wants to stay in this System 1 zone, keep the pattern interrupt fun and emotional. On the other hand, if you’re using a pattern interrupt to dive directly into a product benefit or value offering that reactivates the conscious System 2 thinking, avoid creating disruptions that frustrate or confuse your audience. Create pattern interrupts that reward the extra effort with relevance, or humor, and encourage their participation.

Know your customer and read the room. This typically goes without saying but with pattern interrupts it is especially important. Negative angles sound funny, and when they work they’re fantastic, but if they inadvertently diminish your customer, you’re toast. The same goes for socio-cultural sensitivities that can lead to backlash, where one false note suddenly damages your brand.

Test your creatives and iterate. Implementing pattern interrupts requires some experimentation to get right. As always, test different approaches, measure their impact, and iterate based on the new insights gained to hone your creative approach. The unique dynamics of the pattern interrupt are a learned skill. At the end of the day it’s worth it when you witness ad performance that unleashes the KPIs that a rocking pattern interrupt can deliver.