Image source: heroswiki
I love this study that NBC did, looking to see if people remember anything about the commercials they skim over then they fast forward them using their DVR. They used vests with sensors to record physiological data including, heart rate, respiration, galvanic skin response and physical activity, on 20 viewers of Heros (of course they had to choose that show.) The researches found that the volunteers in the study were just as physiologically responsive to the fast forwarded commercials as people watching at normal speed. Further, they had about the same brand recall as the others.
They raises some very interesting questions. First, to what extend are people susceptible to messages that they made have a physiological response, but may or may not recalled them. What the ethics of tapping into those responses?
Another question is more practical, how should brands, marketers and agencies react to finding out that audio-less micro-version ads have a similar response and recall to the million dollar full length originals?
This reminds me of Rebecca Tushnet, whose work on brands says:
“Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking popularizes some provocative research and anecdotes about rapid cognition, claiming that many of our opinions are formed in the first seconds of an encounter. Students viewing a few seconds of a teacher with the sound turned off produce basically the same ratings of her effectiveness as students who have her for a full semester. Ordinary research subjects can similarly use ten-second clips of a doctor talking to a patient to predict quite accurately whether the doctor will be sued for malpractice. If first impressions dominate, then managing a trademark’s selling power requires control over those first impressions in a consumer’s mind.”
Of course, I prefer Noah Tall’s Blank to Gladwell’s Blink:
http://www.amazon.com/Blank-Actually-Thinking-Mindless-Parody/dp/0060875763