Advertising & Audience Perception Session # 8

Faisal K. Qureishi

Perception . . .

. . . is the process through which individuals are exposed to information, attend to information, and comprehend the information.

A MODEL OF AUDIENCE PERCEPTION

Perception

Exposure

Involvement
Attention

Memory

Comprehension

Three Stages of Perception

Exposure stage audience receive information through their senses. Attention stage audience allocate processing capacity to a stimulus. Comprehension stage audience organize and interpret the information to obtain meaning from it.

Audience Involvement . . .
. . . is the perceived personal importance and/or interest attached to the acquisition, consumption, and disposition of a good, service, or idea.
As involvement increases, the audience have greater motivation to comprehend information.

Two Main Types of Consumer Involvement

Situational - Occurs over a short time period and is associated with a specific situation, such as a need to replace a product that has broken. Enduring - Occurs when consumers show a consistent high-level of interest in a product and frequently spend time thinking about the product.

Several factors influence the level of the audience involvement:

Type of Product Advertisement Design Situation Personal Characteristics

Personal Characteristics

Product

Involvement

Advertising

Situation

Involvement has Multiple Dimensions:

Hedonic Importance Self-expressive Importance

Practical Relevance Perception of Risk

Multiple Dimensions of Involvement

Self expressive importance: Products that help people express their self concept Hedonic importance: Products that are pleasurable, interesting, fun, fascinating, and exciting Practical relevance: Essential or beneficial Perception of Risk: Possibility of negative outcomes

Types of Risk
Functional Financial Physical Psychological Social Time/Opportunity

Determinants of Risk
Intensity: The intensity/amount of loss that could happen if the risk materializes Probability: The likelihood that a certain risk might actually materialize

Empirical Sensations
Empirical sensations: Vision, sound, taste, touch and smell - are commonly used to enhance audience attention and involvement

Vision
Use of colors to create appeal Trade dress and integrated marketing communication Bright colors are said to appeal to lower income, semi-educated audience Diluted colors are found to appeal to higher income, well-educated audience with a sense of sophistication

Rich Use of Color to Create Appeal

Rich Use of Color to Create Appeal

Touch
The sense of touch is found to be imperative to consumer experience Consumers most often judge quality of fabric by its feel Cosmetics also create a selling point thru the sense of touch Generally, consumers like to touch any tangible object before purchase

This Caress Ad Uses the Sensuous Appeal of Touch as a Selling Point

This Softlan Ad stresses upon the lighter side of touch

Taste

Capturing Audience Attention

Use the unexpected to attract attention Use stimuli that surprise, threaten, annoy, or violate the expectations of consumers A well-known advertising tactic that is becoming popular by the day

This is a print advertisement of Just Liquid hand wash, which says that if you aren't totally clean, you are filthy. This advertisement attracts the human eye with the unique message of transferring germs to the baby.

This ad is of an aerosol spray for bugs, which uses a car - a beetle, to show the power of the spray.

This advertisement aims at reducing the consumption of imported vegetables and fruits; this particular ad enforces this idea by showing the environmental hazards that are caused by importing fruits and vegetables.

The Comprehension Stage . . .

. . . is the process in which individuals organize and interpret information
Perceptual organization is the way people perceive the shapes, forms, figures, and lines in their visual world. Interpretation process is how people draw upon their experience, memory, and expectations to attach meaning to a stimulus.

Figure-ground

We need to separate a dominant shape (a 'figure' with a definite contour) from the rest of the image, which is regarded as the back-ground
Is the figure a white vase on a black background or silhouetted profiles on a white background? We tend to favor one interpretation over the other (though altering the amount of black or white which is visible can create a bias towards one or the other) When we have identified a figure, the contours seem to belong to it, and it appears to be in front of the ground.

Billboard for Wrangler Jeans Makes Creative Use of the Figure-Ground Principle

An Ad for Absolut Vodka using the figureground principle

Figure Ground

figure-ground principle

Proximity What you are likely to notice fairly quickly is that this is not just a square pattern of dots but rather is a series of columns of dots . The principle of proximity states that features which are close together are associated.

Here are we likely to group the dots together in rows?

We are more likely to associate the lines which are close together than those which are further apart. In this example we tend to see three pairs of lines which are fairly close together (and a lonely line on the far right) rather than three pairs of lines which are further apart (and a lone line on the far left).

Similarity Here the little circles and squares are evenly spaced both horizontally and vertically so proximity does not come into play. However, we do tend to see alternating columns of circles and squares. This is because of the principle of similarity - features which look similar are associated. Without the two different recurrent features we would see either rows or columns or both...

An ad featuring the similarity/proximity principles

Similarity

Proximity

Continuity This principle states that contours based on smooth continuity are preferred to abrupt changes of direction. Here, for instance, we are more likely to identify lines a-b and c-d crossing than to identify a-d and c-b or a-c and d-b as lines.

AN AD USING THE CONTINUITY PRINICIPLE

Using the Continuity Principle

Closure Interpretations, which suggests that 'closed' rather than 'open' figures are favored. Here we tend to see three broken rectangles (and a lonely shape on the far left) rather than three 'girder' profiles (and a lonely shape on the right). In this case the principle of closure cuts across the principle of proximity, since if the girder shapes are actually closer than broken rectangles.

This Ad Demonstrates the Use of Closure: Audience have to Mentally Fill in the Gaps in the Sentence

Scotch-Brite. Cleans really clean.

An ad using the closure principle

Closure Principle

Closure

Closure Principle