What makes different types of advertising effective?

Abstract

Experimental procedures were designed to investigate the effectiveness of different types of Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) print advertising. Following a series of pilot studies in which the methodology was tested, sets of adverts provided by the sponsor were assessed in 3 separate conditions, each with a different group of 50 subjects. Participants were female, aged between 25 and 50, and mainly responsible for their household shopping, representing the 'housewife'demographic Lever Faberge targets with FMCG advertising. In condition 1 the subjects were exposed to a set of 32 Poster adverts, in condition Z 32 Magazine adverts and in condition 3,14 Direct Marketing (DM) adverts. A combination of eyetracking and questionnaire methods were used. Three sets of questionnaires aimed to assess purchase behaviour, measure consumer attitudes towards the adverts and capture the brand associations that were being formed. Fixations for each advert from the intermediate eyetracking session were analysed across each group of participants, in terms of attention in specific areas of interest (AOls) defined earfier. These represented the major advertising components e. g. brand name, pack shot, slogan. AOI fixations were evaluated in terms of the overall % of fixations, overall % of fixation time, % of initial fixations (within 1000 msec) and average fixation duration. Results showed specific types of advert elicited the most positive attitudes, having some influence on how the brand was perceived. These adverts were generally simple with a straightforward message, and best liked with high impact. Brand recall was not always negatively affected by negative ad attitudes. Attention patterns across adverts with fewer A Ols were easier to predict, and there appeared to be optimum positions for specific AOls to increase the proportion of first fixations. The non-uniforin stimuli meant overall eye-movement observations could be presented but strict predictive models could not be applied.