Focus on Talking
Activity 1.

• Ask and answer these questions in pairs.

• What is your attitude towards advertising?

• Does advertising make our life better or worse? Would the world without advertising be a better place or not?

• What is the main goal of advertising? What would you call a successful advertising campaign? Does an effective advertising campaign need to be persuasive?

• Does advertising affect your choice of products and services? What kind of advertising do you find most effective?

• Whatʼs the best TV commercial you have seen recently? Why did you like it? Do you think it was persuasive?

• What kind of TV commercials do you find annoying? Why?

Focus on Reading
Activity 2. Scan read the article to find out:
1. What is the salience model of advertising?
2. What are its implications for advertisers?

NO NEED TO BE PERSUASIVE
memorable is good enough

Suppose you were asked whether advertising has ever persuaded you to choose a certain brand of cereal, washing powder or car. My gut feeling is that, just like me, you would be quite reluctant to admit that your decisions are influenced by what you can see and hear in the commercials we are all bombarded with every single day. We tend to think that our decisions are based on a logical analysis of pros and cons of each product or service. Yet, billions of dollars are spent each year by companies trying to persuade us to buy. Is all that money wasted, or are we,consumers, completely wrong about our decision-making? The new research carried out by neuroscientists and psychologists provides some evidence that we might, after all, be right. Recent years have seen a rapid progress in the understanding of how our brains work. This knowledge casts a new light on how our behaviour and attitudes are shaped, very often contradicting the views that are prevalent among advertisers.
 

One of the most widespread opinions is that advertising should be persuasive. It should change consumers’ thoughts and feelings about the brand in such a way that they will hurry to the shop to buy the product. Apparently, there is little evidence to support this view. We are very reluctant to change our attitudes, and it does not matter if it is an attitude towards a particular brand of chocolate bar or a political party. Ask yourself how likely you are to vote for a party which you did not vote for in the last election. Why should we be more eager to switch to a new brand of cornflakes? After all, the outcome of the latter decision, unlike exercising of the voting right, would really influence our daily lives. And even if we assumed that it is true that advertising can change our attitudes, how can we be sure that the shift in people’s attitudes influences their buying behaviour? In fact, there is little evidence to support this claim, too. Consumers often make purchase decisions in seconds and do not want to spend too much time and effort evaluating the pros and cons of all the brands on the shelf.

So far, it seems that our belief that we are immune to advertising is justified. Well, not really. The fact that advertising is not persuasive does not mean it is not effective. Quite opposite - it is very effective if its goal is not to persuade us but instead, to build brand salience. Brand salience is the likelihood that the brand will be recalled at the right time, which is in the buying situation. According to neuroscientists, successful advertising builds and reinforces consumers’ memories about a brand and hence brand salience. What we should expect from advertising is not that it is persuasive but that it is noticeable and memorable.

In a typical buying situation we never consider all available brands, instead, we consider two or three. Which brands come to our minds? Not those which tried to persuade us about their value but simply the ones we remember. Also, we tend to
choose what we find more familiar; the more information we retrieve about a brand,
the more likely we are to select it. So, according to the salience model, the main aim
of advertising should be to make the brand as prominent as possible in consumers’
minds. Advertising does not need to persuade to be effective. Instead, it should build
and consolidate memories about brands and thus increase the probability of being
chosen by consumers.