Music in Advertising and Memory
Take a minute to think about your favorite little jingle in an advertisement. Ask yourself, why do I know so much about State Farm insurance when it has so little relevance to me? That is, why and how does music have such a large effect on my recollection of a certain product? There are plenty of studies that address this, and there’s one that’s particularly interesting. Researchers from Liverpool found that music facilitates implicit learning and recall of products and therefore, we unconsciously take in the musical stimulus. In their study, the researchers were hoping to test how music in an ad affects participants in low-attention conditions.
In this experiment, the researchers took 95 participants and exposed them to advertisements with 4 different audio conditions: a jingle, instrumental music, instrumental music with voiceover, and environmental sounds with voiceover. They also included this ad in the middle of a tv show so as to encourage a more natural perception. This kind of research is key for advertising and marketing companies so as to better sell their products, and is also useful for researchers studying the effects of music in relation to memory. This study focused on the importance of implicit or unconscious memory, which is said to be tied more to future recollection.
To test their memory of the product, the participants took an overall memory test with six recall questions related to the TV episode that they watched. They were then given indirect tests to analyze their implicit memory in relation to the advertised product, and in these tests they were given lists of words and asked to choose one from the list (a few of which were relevant to the ad) and asked to fill in the blank to complete the name of the company for which they saw an ad. For example, for the State Farm jingle, they would have written out a fragment: S_ a_ e F_ r_, and had the participants fill in the blank. Filling it in with “State Farm” would demonstrate this implicit recall while filling in “Snake Fort” would not. Lastly, they used a direct test through multiple choice questions that asked about the product directly. Results indicated that the participants could accurately recall the tv episode in the overall memory test, and also scored high on implicit recall of the advertised product, however, the direct test scores were a bit lower. Implicit memory was determined by the participants’ choice of words (ad/product related), for example, if they could fill in the name of the company, as well as their choice of images (they were shown a few images and asked to narrow down their favorites). The participants remembered the advertisement the most with the jingle condition, followed by the music and music and voice over condition, and the lowest was with the control group. The study suggests support for the hypothesis that music impacts implicit memory of an advertised product and is in fact effective to create an association between the product and the advertisement.
Studies like this are common as many have wondered about the relationship between memory and music in advertisements. However, this study clearly demonstrates the implicit effects that may not always be seen directly. A more recent study, How Jingles in Advertising Affect Retention and Recall of the Product, also found an association between music in advertisements and consumer behavior, demonstrating that music can have a positive impact on what someone will buy. This study is interesting to evaluate as well as it was done in Pakistan, giving a more widespread and international perspective on music recall.
Overall, many companies can benefit from this knowledge and take a few extra minutes to come up with a catchy, fun jingle to place their products into people’s memory and better the chances of selling it. With an appeal to implicit memory, consumers won’t even realize that they know so much about a product, and it is more likely to enter their mind later. Advertisers and marketing experts should focus on targeting audiences’ implicit memory through catchy jingles rather than regular music or voice overs too, given that they seem to be the most effective method.
References
Alexomanolaki, M., Loveday, C., & Kennett, C. (2007, June). Music and Memory in Advertising : Music as a Device of Implicit Learning and Recall. Music, Sound, and the Moving Image, 1(1), 51–71. https://doi.org/10.3828/msmi.1.1.7
Shakil, A., & Siddiqui, D. A. (2018). How Jingles in Advertising Affect Retention and Recall of the Product. SSRN Electronic Journal. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3302192
