Emotional Engagement: How Television Builds Big Brands At Low Attention

ROBERT HEATH University of Bath School of Management r.g.heath@bath.ac.uk

This article proposes a new definition for engagement that is independent of attention. Engagement is defined as "the amount of subconscious 'feeling' going on when an advertisement is being processed." An "emotional engagement" model is developed that shows how strong brands can be built without the need for the high levels of attention that advertising usually demands. Finally, empirical evidence is presented demonstrating that, although TV advertising excels at building strong brands, on-air commercials get less than half the attention of print advertising. This confirms TV advertising is a high engagement, low attention medium.

INTRODUCTION

attention of; engross" {Longman Dictionary of the English Language, 1984, p. 484). Longman also in-

The difficulty of defining "engagement" is demonstrated by the Advertising Research Foundation (ARF) 2006 "Engagement Definitions and Anatomy" white paper that advanced 25 different opinions on the possible meaning of the word. There was some consensus that the ultimate objective of engagement is to improve brand sales and equity. As Robert Passikoff wrote, "Engagement is the consequence of a marketing or communication effort that results in an increased level of brand equity for the product/service" (ARF, 2006, p. 6). And this is reflected in the working definition that emerged: "Engagement is turning on a prospect to a brand idea enhanced by the surrounding context" (ARF, 2006, p. 10). But when it comes to defining exactly how engaging advertising builds brands, the definitions start to diverge. The most common idea was that engagement is related to attention, with six definitions using the word directly and a number of others using terms (i.e., "activation", "connection," "receptivity," "internalizing," "involvement," "interaction," and "buzz") that can be loosely related to "attention." The dominance of "attention" is perhaps no surprise, given that one of the main definitions of "engage" is "to hold the 6 2 JDURflm OF HDUERTISIDG RESCiCH March 2 0 0 g

cludes a second definition: "to induce to participate" (op. cit.), which seems to be in accord with the other terms used. So what exactly is "attention"? Defining attention Marketing textbooks tend to use "attention" in a loose directional sense, similar to William James' definition at the end of the 19th century: "the taking possession by the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought" (James, 1890, p. 403). This makes it clear that attention is connected to the direction in which our conscious mind is being focused. But consciousness is not an on-off state, and we all are comfortable with words such as "subconscious" and "semiconscious" that describe different levels of consciousness. In the same vein, "attention" is not a directional on-off process going from attentive straight to inattentive. As noted by one behavioral neuroscientist, "both consciousness and attention occur in levels and grades, they are not monoliths, and they influence each other in a sort of upward spiral" (Damasio, 2000, p. 91). So it is
DOI: 10.2501/S0021849909090060

EMOTIONAL ENGAGEMENT

The most common idea is tiiat engagement is reiated to attention. Tiie only pKobiem is that this is not how TV advertising builds brands.

important to consider not just the direction of attention, but also the level of attention being paid. Our level of attention is closely linked to the amount (or "depth") of cognitive processing that is taking place, so the most meaningful definition of level of attention is the amount of cognitive resource being deployed at any one time (Maclnnis and Jaworski, 1989). For the purposes of this article, this means we can define level of "attention" as the amount of "conscious thinking" directed at an advertisement at any particular moment. One of the main attractions of using "attention" as the basis of a definition of "engagement" is that it creates a clear link between the effectiveness of an advertisement and the successful transmission of a message. Attention enhances our depth of processing, and increased depth of processing means better learning and better message recall (Craik and Lockhart, 1972; Petty and Cacioppo, 1986). So if engagement leads somehow to better message recall, then those who see advertising as "one-way communication: creating and sending messages" (Duncan and Mriarty, 1999, p. 44) are very satisfied. The only problem is that there is evidence that this is not how TV advertising builds brands.
How television advertising buiids brands

Although, in recent times, doubt has been cast on the effectiveness of television advertising, there is no evidence that it has weakened in its ability to build brands. Quite the reverse: a wide-ranging analy-

sis of 880 IPA Advertising Effectiveness Award case studies found, "There is little evidence to support the widespread assumption that TV [advertising] is becoming less effective. In fact, TV effectiveness might be increasing" (Binet and Field, 2007, p. 9). A partial explanation of how TV builds strong brand relationships can be found in Heath, Brandt, and Nairn (2006). The first part of this research study tested online a total of 43 currently on-air TV advertisements (23 in the United States and 20 in the United Kingdom) for their emotional and rational content using the CEPTest (Cognitive Emotive Power Test). This test, operated by OTX, quantifies two constructs: Cognitive Power^'^, which measures the potency of the message and rational information in the advertisement, and Emotive Power^"^, which measures the potency of the emotional content or creativity in the advertisement. The second part of the Heath, Brandt, and Nairn study used an independent online sample to measure favorability toward each of the brar\ds being advertised, using a 10point scale, where 1 = extremely unfavorable and 10 = extremely favorable. In this test, respondents also were shown selected video sections of each advertisement to ascertain whether they had seen them before. The brand favorability scores then were split between those who did and did not recognize the advertisement, enabling the difference in brand favorability created by exposure to the advertisements to be calculated.

With these two data sets, it was possible to examine the correlation between the three different constructs: emotional content (Emotive Power), rational content (Cognitive Power), and shift in brand favorability. Despite differences in advertising styles across the two countries, the results were consistent. Emotive Power showed a significant linear relationship with the shift in favorability; Cognitive Power showed no significant relationship at all. The implications from this study are that it is not the rational "message" content that drives favorability toward brands and makes them strong, but the emotional "creative" content. Heath, Brandt, and Nairn explain this by referencing the findings of Watzlawick, Bavelas, and Jackson (1967), who show that relationships are built not by the rational information in communication, but by the emotional "metacommunication," which qualifies the information being delivered. In other words, it is not what you say that makes people want to have a relationship with you; it is how you say it. If this is the case, it is necessary to reexamine the idea that the main purpose of engagement is to enhance the attention, depth of processing, and leaming of the message. As was discussed earlier, Longman's second definition "to induce to participate" (1984, p. 484) accords with terms such as "connection," "receptivity," "internalizing," "involvement," "interaction," and "buzz," but it is apparent that none of these have to involve attention. Indeed, to refer to a word from the Longman primary definition, one can be "engrossed" in somethinga piece of music for examplewithout using much cognitive resource at all. If successful brand-building advertising is "engaging," and TV advertising builds strong brands via emotional creativity rather than a rational message, then

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If successful brand-building advertising is "engaging," and TV advertising builds strong brands via emotional

sidering the way in which emotion is processed.

Processing emotion

creativity, then it looks as though engagement is more of an emotional than a rational construct.

In a 1961 issue of the Journal of Marketing,

it starts to look as though engagement is more of an emotional than a rational construct. And going back to the ARF working definition ("turning on a prospect to a brand idea enhanced by the surrounding context"), it is evident that "turning on" is much closer to an emotional act than anything else. So the next area to examine is what emotion is, how it is processed, and how it might underpin successful brand advertising. From this, a model of emotional engagement can be developed.
DEVELOPING AN EMOTIONAL ENGAGEMENT MODEL

readily perceivable. Using this definition. Mast and Zaltman are correct when they write, "What makes emotions specific is cognitive appraisal" (ARF, 2006, p. 19). But the Oxford Dictionary definition of "emotion" includes "love" (Oxford Compact English Dictionary, 1996, p. 321), which

may not manifest as a physiological response, but may simply be a change in attitude. Similarly, Roseman, Spindel, and Jose (1990) describe "hope," "joy," "relief," and "liking" as emotions in their appraisal theory, and this opens the door to feelings such as optimism, contentment, appreciation, and gratitude. The definition adopted in this article is to use "emotion" to signify any stimulation of the feelings, at any level. It follows that emotional content in advertising represents anything that is capable of stimulating the feelings of the viewer. This might range from people expressing love, anger, excitement, boredom, curiosity, appreciation, or amusement; to situations that are humorous, poignant or dramatic; to visuals that are elegant or beautiful; to footage that is beautifully shot with high production values; to background music that is just plain nice to listen to. Note that using this definition, emotional content does not have to produce an overt "emotional" response by the consumer: A person does not have to laugh or cry for something in an advertisement to be categorized as emotional content. This becomes evident when con-

R. J. Lavidge and G. A. Steiner introduced what was probably the first advertising model that attempted to address the role of emotion (see Figure 1). Their model advocated three components of advertising effectiveness: cognitive (the realm of thought), affective (the realm of emotions), and conative (the realm of motives). They described a sequence of six stages: Awareness (cognitive) Knowledge (cognitive) > > Liking (affective) Preference (affective) > > Conviction (conative) Purchase (cona> tive). The thinking of the time was that cognition had primacy in processing over affect (Schachter and Singer, 1962). Simplifying the model, what Lavidge and Steiner were suggesting was that conscious thinking leads to feeling, which leads to attitude change, which, in due course, leads to a purchase decision. Though its architects did not know it at the time, the model was seriously flawed. Feelings are much more important and influential than we tend to think they are (Gordon, 2006), and, more importantly, they are processed much more quickly than thoughts. In 1980, R. B. Zajonc had been the first to assert this, concluding there were three main reasons why feelings must be precognitive. First, feelings are unavoidable: "One might be able to control the expression of emotion but not the experience of it" (1980, p. 156). Second, feelings operate without the need for words and are very hard to verbalize: "The communication of affect relies . . . on nonverbal channels.... Yet it is remarkably efficient" (1980, p. 157). Third, feelings are hard to measure: "If . . . preferences were nothing more than cognitive representations . . . then the problems of predicting attitudes, decisions, aesthetic judgements, or first

We talk about our attention being engaged, but we also talk about our affections being engaged. A person can be affectionate toward a girlfriend or boyfriend, without necessarily deploying any significant cognitive resource. This is reflected in the Oxford English Dictionary

definition of "engaging" as "attractive and charming" (1996, p. 325). This definition again suggests that the nature of engagement involves activation of the emotions, and, indeed, emotion is mentioned in five of the ARF 2006 definitions, only one less than attention. The Longman Dictionary of the English Language definition of "emotion" is "strong feeling (e.g., anger, fear, joy) usually involving physiological change" (1984, p. 478). This suggests emotion is something that is palpable, significant, and 64

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CONSCIOUS THINKING

FEELINGS

AHITUDE CHANGE

DECISION

Figure 1 Early Emotion Processing Model

impressions would have been solved long ago" (1980, p. 158). Zajonc concluded that cognition and affect may depend on separate psychological and biological systems. In The Emotional Brain (1998), J. Le Doux refined this idea, hypothesizing that there are two different emotion circuits operating in a state of anxiety. The first of these is a fastacting response that bypasses the "cognitive" cortex and "allows us to respond rapidly in threatening situations (Eysenck and Keane, 2000, p. 493). The second is a slow-acting circuit that passes through the cortex, "produces a detailed evaluation of the emotional significance of the situation, and allows us to respond to situations in the most appropriate fashion" (ibid.). Le Doux characterizes the two systems by describing the response of someone who comes across a snake-like stick on the path in a jungle. The fast-acting response causes the person to jump back and break out into a sweat; the slowacting cognitively-moderated response then identifies the object as a stick, and the person relaxes (Le Doux, 1998). Both these responses might be described as "arousal," but one is instinctive, and the other is driven by cognition. Le Doux's ideas are widely quoted by practitioners (e.g.. Du Plessis, 2005), but it should be noted that his model is developed specifically to describe anxiety-related responses (events that hopefully do not occur much in brand advertising!). Damasio (1994) can be credited with initiating modem thinking about how emo-

tions are processed. He references a "limbic" system in the brain that represents the original mammalian brain. Sometimes called the "visceral" brain, this system lies within the more recently developed neocortex and was originally responsible for the processing of mammalian instinctive and survival functions (for example, fear, sexual drive, and hunger). The limbic system is now our center of emotional processing. As it originated as part of the body's defense system, the limbic system operates precognitively and autonomically. If it did not, we would probably have been eaten by predators and have become extinct long ago.

This concurs with the view that, "The processing that underlies (emotional) evaluation is enormously fast and does not require conscious effort" (Mast and Zaltman, 2006, p. 19). It also agrees with the opinion that the first level of engagement requires the consumer to be "emotionally receptive" (ARF, 2006, p. 4). So Lavidge and Steiner's modelfar from being about "thinking" leading to "feeling," leading to "motivation"should really be the other way round (see Figure 2).
Emotion and decision making

Lavidge and Steiner predicted that motivation would be the sole influence on decision making. Again, psychology has shown this is an incorrect assumption. Damasio (1994), referencing cases where rational decision-making capability was impaired, showed that emotions and feelings act as a gatekeeper to decisions, providing a bridge between the rational activity of the neocortex and the nonrational (limbic) functions of the subcortex. More recently Damasio has provided "The apparatus of rationality, traditionevidence that emotions and feelings are formed in what he called the proto-self, ally presumed to be neocortical, does not whereas thoughts are formed in the core seem to work without that of biological consciousness (Damasio, 2000). He shows regulation, traditionally presumed to be sub-cortical" (1994, p. 128). He concluded that activity in the proto-self always prethat cognition is "hard-wired" via the emocedes activity in core consciousness, so tions, and that feelings are therefore capaemotions and feelings are always formed ble of impeding cognition and even driving precognitively (2000, p. 281). Subsequent decisions in the face of negative cogniresearch supports this conclusion, identition. He uses this to explain intuitive defying three types of affective response cision making, which he believes arises evaluations, moods, and emotionsand from "somatic markers"feelings associfinding "considerable evidence of nonconated with outcomes and embedded in scious processes within each of these main semantic memory by past learning. A negcategories of affective responses" (Fitzsimative somatic marker associated with a mons et al, 2002, p. 274).

FEELINGS

CONSCIOUS THINKING

ATTITUDE CHANGE

DECISION

Figure 2 Recent Emotion Processing Model

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particular outcome acts as a disincentive, but "when a positive somatic marker is juxtaposed . . . it becomes a beacon of incentive" (1994, p. 174). There is support for Damasio's somaticmarker theory: "We suggest that such unconscious processes influence or bias a number of antecedents to decision making" (Bagozzi, Giirhan-Canlii, and Priester, 2002, p. 98). And, in later work, Damasio himself constructs a model showing two parallel processing routesroute "A," which is cognitive, and route "B," which is "affective." He predicts that although generally both routes will activate in parallel, "on occasion, path B can lead to a decision directly, as when gut feeling impels an immediate response" (Damasio, 2003, p. 149). Damasio's theory has been validated by a test in which two subjects are given an unrelated task to perform and, as a reward, offered the choice of either chocolate cake or fruit salad (Shiv and Fedorikhin, 1999). Half the sample was told to make their minds up immediately; the other half was told they could make the decision later. Those operating under the time constraint tended to choose chocolate cake; those who had no time pressure tended to choose fruit salad. In other words, when time is limited (for example, when busy parents shop for groceries with their children), our choices are likely to be driven by our feelings, rather than by logic or rationality. In circumstances such as the chocolate/ fruit salad experiment, the change in attitude may not be overtly evident. This concurs with the opinion that attitude change need not precede change in behavior: "It seems to be generally assumed that . . . attitude changes must precede the desired change in behavior. There is little or no evidence to support these assumptions" (Ehrenberg, 1974, p. 30). It is necessary to divide attitude change into

Time-rich CONSCIOUS THINKING FEELINGS ^ i ^ OVERT ATTITUDE CHANGE ^ % DECISION

COVERT ATTITUDE CHANGE Time-poor

Figure 3 Two Routes of Processing Advertising

overt attitude change, where the consumer is aware of and can answer to questions about their new attitudes, and covert attitude change, where the attitudes that have changed are subconscious and not evident. This corresponds to the idea of explicit learning and implicit learning (Heath, 2001; Heath and Nairn, 2005). So, reflecting Damasio's theory, two routes emerge for processing advertising (see Figure 3). The model in Figure 3, however, has a weakness, in that covert attitudes have no way of being attached to the brand. Brand linkage demands at least some passive learning to be taking place, even if at low levels of attention. So it is necessary to examine in more detail what happens in conscious thinking.
Conscious thinking

states. In respect of processing and learning from advertising, high-attention, fully conscious thinking is called "active learning," and low-attention, semiconscious thinking is described as "passive learning." But we can also learn without paying any attention at all, and this sort of subconscious learning is termed "implicit learning" (Eysenck and Keane, 2000, p. 532).
In Consciousness Explained, D. Dennett

"Level of attention" is defined as the amount of "conscious thinking" going on. William James defined two "boundary levels" of attentionactive and passive. Active attention, when application is willful or deliberate and the process is controlled by the individual's goals, corresponds to "top-down processing" (Eysenck and Keane, 2000, p. 2). Passive attention, when the application of attention is inadvertent and is controlled by external stimuli, corresponds to "bottomup processing" (Eysenck and Keane, 2000, p. 119). So conscious thinking (i.e., attention) can vary between these two boundary

(1993) questions how much our conscious thinking needs to be involved in decision making. As an example, he relates the story of the Grey Walter Precognitive Carousela series of slides shown to patients who had an electrode implanted in their motor cortex. The carousel had a seemingly normal button for them to press to advance the slides; they were asked to do this whenever they wanted to. What they were not told was that the button was a dummy and the carousel was actually wired up to be advanced by an amplified signal from their motor cortex. If conscious thought is what initiates action, then the patients should have noticed nothing. In practice, however, they complained that the slides appeared to be anticipating them and moving forward not just before they pressed the button,
but before they made the decision to press

the button. The advance was so marked that the patients were expecting the slides to move a second time when they pressed the button.

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It therefore appears that much of our decision making happens at a subconscious level and is reported to our conscious brain post hoc. These findings have been confirmed using EEG scanning, which shows that we make decisions anything up to one-fifth-of-a-second before we actually become aware of them (Libet, Gleason, Wright, and Pearl, 1983 study cited in New Scientist, September 22,2007, p. 39). The notion of subconscious decision making enables us to interpret Damasio's tvyo routes slightly better (see Figure.4). What this shows is that we always form an attitude about a decision through emotional and subconscious rational processing before we start to consciously and actively "think" about it. So our conscious thinking tends either to support the decision or counterargue it. If you bear in mind that attitude formation happens very fast, then there is good support for this model. In 2000, Tim Ambler of London Business School developed a MemoryAffect-Cognition (MAC) model on exactly these principles. He proposed three levels of behavior. At the first level^ consumers operate only on memory, buying in a mindlessly habitual manner. At the second level, choice is strongly influenced by affect, and conscious processing is inhibited. At the third level, cognition is used to rationalize the decision, provided that affect is no obstacle, in accord with Damasio (1994).

There is empirical evidence to support Ambler's model. His first-level "mindlesshabitual" buying behavior is similar to the "thoughtless" buying behavior observed by Alba (2000). And his second level of inhibited conscious processing corresponds exactly with the "blocking" behavior articulated by Van Osselaer and Alba (2000). They manipulated the order of exposure of brand cues and attribute cues, and found that initial exposure to (emotive) brand cues caused consumers to test only enough additional data to see if it strengthened or weakened the brand association with quality. Once it did, then no further updating occurred, and further product information cues were ignored.

fined earlier, being "the amount of conscious 'thinking' going on." This yields the following two definitions: Level of engagement: The amount of subconscious "feeling" going on when an advertisement is being processed Level of attention: The amount of conscious "thinking" going on when an ,, advertisement is being processed. The value of these two definitions is that they are complementary and do not overlap. Theymeasure behavior toward advertising based on different constructs: one conscious and the other subconscious; one thinking and the other feeling. The question of how, if at all, these two constructs interact is examined in the next section.
EXPERIMENT TO MEASURE THE REiJVTIONSHiP BETWEEN ATTENTiON AND ENGAGEMENT

An improved, definition of "engagement"

Like Norm Lehoulier, Taddy Hall wrote that successful engagement begins with "a conscious or more likely unconscious, emotional response triggered by a piece of copy" (ARF, 2006, p. 3). But if, as in our model, attitudes can be changed without active conscious processing, then the level of engagement a consumer has with advertising will be entirely dictated by the amount of "feeling" that goes on at the start of the process. So level of engagement should be defined as "the amount of subconscious 'feeling' going on." This then operates as an "affective" equivalent to the cognitive definition of attention de-

If it is accepted that engagement arises from subconscious processing of feelings, might it not be even better if attention is also paid? In other words, might attention still be an important component of engagement? The way to establish this is to find out whether or not television advertising is processed at high levels of attention. Advertising on TV does build strong brands (Binet and Field, 2007), and it has already been shown that this empowerment happens largely by creativity, not just by presenting a message (Heath, Brandt, and Nairn, 2006). If we can establish that at-

Time-ricti (attentive) CONSCIOUS THINKING ^ COVERT BRAND-LINKED AHITUDE CHANGE

tention toward TV advertising is low, then we have evidence that attention is not essential for engagement. The first person to seriously question
DECISION

FEELINGS c O

SUB & SEMI ^ > CONSCIOUS THINKING

OVERT ATTITUDE c ^ COUNTER-ARGUMENT

the amount of attention being paid to TV advertising was Herb Krugman in the Journal of Advertising Research (1977). He conducted a series of experiments with Norman Mackworth in 1968 using eye

Time-poor (inattentive)

Figure 4 Improved Advertising Processing Model

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cameras, noting the "relatively motionless, focused, or passive eye characteristics of TV viewing" (Krugman, 1977, p. 8). Krugman also had tested the brainwaves of a subject watching TV and reading a press advertisement (1971) and found that the nature of brain waves emitted during TV watching confirmed what he termed "low-involvement" processing when compared to print. Krugman's research used only one subject and took place in an environment when consumers were being asked to look at the advertisements. What his results suggested was that consumers could engage with TV advertisements without necessarily using the same amount of conscious thinking they needed to read a newspaper. Establishing levels of attention in reallife behavior is a lot more difficult. The amount of conscious thinking a person is doing at any one moment will vary according to his or her desire for information. And that desire can change with extraordinary rapidity (James, 1890). Sadly, we are not equipped with a handy forehead dial that tells everyone how much thinking we might have going on. Similarly, you cannot ask people to monitor how much attention they are paying at a particular moment because it is tantamount to asking them how much thinking they are doing. If subjects are asked to attempt to monitor their attention levels, their behavior is invariably affected, and attention levels generally increase. All this means that using simple questions such as "How much attention did you pay to the advertisement?" or "Did you think the advertisement was good at getting attention?" produce garbage data. Most of the research that has been carried out into attentiongenerally in the field of psychologyhas used experimental approaches in which attention levels are externally manipulated. These inevi-

tably result in high levels of abstraction from reality. But there is one indicator that indicates how much "conscious thinking" is going on and that is the frequency of our eye movements.
Measuring levels of attention in reai time

The use of eye movement as an indication of visual attention levels is well accepted (Corbetta et al, 1998; Deubel and Schneider, 1996; Kroeber-Riel, 1984; Underwood et al., 2003). The eye sees not by moving smoothly across the field of vision, but fixating successive points in "jumps," known as saccades (Huey, [1908 (1968)]). During moments of fixation, the eye can see full detail in only the foveal region, a circle around the point of fixation subtending approximately 2 of angle. This area is small (usually capable of reading roughly 6-8 letters) so if the brain wishes to gather more information, it subconsciously orders the eye to make the jumps more rapid and the time of fixation shorter (Rayner and Serano, 1994). Thus the number of fixations per second (fps) is an accurate indicator of level of cognitive activity (or attention), with increased numbers of (shorter) fixations denoting higher attention, and reduced numbers of (longer) fixations denoting lower attention. Eye movements are therefore a good measure of visual attention levels, and a number of recent experiments have explored how attention is moderated in media such as newspapers, magazines, and posters (Pieters and Wedel, 2004, 2007; Wedel, 2000). But in television watching, we activate two modes of processing visual and auditory. A review of literature on cross-modality (Schmitt, Postma, and De Haan, 2000), however, concludes that, in most situations, visual and auditory attention are well linked; it is only in distraction situations that auditory stimulus will overcome visual stimulus (Spence

and Driver, 1998). If TV exposure is not accompanied by external auditory distraction, then eye movements will reflect the subject's overall cognitive resource deployment and overall attention level. Direct evidence of the efficacy of eye movements in indicating the level of deployment of cognitive resource toward TV advertising was provided by S. B. Hutton, A. Goode, and P. Wilson, at the 5th International Conference on Research in Advertising in 2006 at the University of Bath School of Management. They exposed a reel of five TV advertisements to subjects three times in a row and noted a significant fall in number of fixations with each exposure. The results were consistent with a predicted fall in attention due to subjects conserving cognitive resource (Krugman, 1972; Peracchio and MeyersLevy, 1997).
EXPERIMENTAL PROCEDURE

To eliminate priming, 17 subjects were recruited via an email from the University of Bath Department of Pharmacology and asked to take part in a study to test the effect of TV watching on the eyes. If the subject is primed to be aware that advertising is of interest to the researcher, then the attention levels toward advertisements may be artificially increased (Schmitt, 1994). This will especially occur if advertising is exposed on its own, or exposed in an abnormal context (for example, with out-of-date newspapers). It may also occur when adulterated or nonprofessionally designed advertisements are exposed. The ideal context, therefore, exposes real, unadulterated advertisements in a natural environment, without the subject being aware that the experiment has anything to do with advertising. The subjects were invited to a room on campus, where they were fitted with a lightweight head-mounted eye camera that

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not only allowed them full movement of their heads and bodies, but was effectively invisible once in place. They were then asked to look through a newspaper

TABLE 1 Npnadvertising Attention Levels

Weighted Newspaper News ^_ ^ 2.091 fps 2.296 fps 1.969 fps TV Program 1.033 fps 9:?J^.P^. 1.065 fps Ratio 2.22 2:51 2.04

while they became accustomed to the equipment. For 10 to 12 minutes they sat ,,, ^ ^ ' A l l newspapers alone. Subsequently, an operator returned, and they were asked to seat themselves at Su^.^ewsPape^ a comfortable distance from a TV screen Times newspaper to watch an episode of the sitcom Frasier. During neither the newspaper reading nor the TV watching were subjects made aware that advertising was the focus of the research. Stimulus materiai To enhance realism, current copies of two newspapers (The Sun and The Times) were offered, with no manipulation of advertisements. Television advertising was shown in a currently on-air program that had general appeal (Frasier) and was prone to being repeated. Fifteen TV advertisements were professionally incorporated in three advertising podsfive advertisements before the program, five in a center break, and five at the end of the program. These advertisements featured successful brands in a range of categories and demonstrated a spectrum of different creative approaches and emotional content. To allow for the effect of advertisements appearing at different parts of the break, two different tapes were produced using the same TV program, but with positions of advertisements rotated randomly.

^^^ ^ ^ ^ used to process news stories compared to the TV program, the ratio being even greater when The Sun was read. The highest ratio observed was news fixated at 3.6 times that of the TV program. Only one subject fixated print lower than TV programming, the ratio being 0.92. The results for the processing of advertisements are even more compelling. Print advertisements were classified as either having been glimpsed or fixated, and the fps are compared with the attention paid to TV advertisements (see Table 2). Scores were normalized by being shown relative to average TV program watching fps for that subject. On average, twice the attention was used to process print advertisements compared with TV. (In defense of television, only half of the subjects fixated print advertising for any length of time. But even when they only glimpsed the

advertisements, their attention levels were invariably higher.) Comparing the maximum and minimum attention levels paid to each medium (see Table 3), the highest attention paid to a TV advertisement was only about 20 percent greater than the lowest attention paid to a print advertisement. But the highest attention paid to a print advertisement was nearly seven times greater than the lowest attention paid to a TV advertisement. These results support Krugman's conelusion that print receives significantly higher attention than TV. But even more revealing is the nature of processing observed. With newspaper reading, the processing clearly was goal-driven, with subjects either starting at the front and turning from page to page, or selecting specific destinations within the paper (i.e.. sports or business news). In all cases, the

Resuits The data from the eye camera were analyzed to identify the fixations per second (fps) during certain stages of the experiment. This equated directly to deployment of cognitive resource, which, in turn, is a measure of attention levels being deployed. Looking first at the fps used to process the newspaper news and the TV program (see Table 1), over twice as much atten-

TABLE 2 Advertising Attention Levels (All Relative to TV Program fps)

Newspaper ^^y'*!*""*^ Newspaper advertisements glimpsed Newspaper advertisements fixated All newspaper advertisements ^^.i^hted.average 2.638 fps 2.266 fps 2.452 fps TV Advertisements 1.137 fps 1.137 fps 1.137 fps Ratio 2.32 1.99 2.16

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stem from its ability to communicate ere-

Advertising Attention Levels (All Relative to TV Program fps)

Newspaper Advertisements Maximum advertising attention Minimum advertising attention , 3.75 fps 1.45 fps TV,. Advertisements ^ ^ 1.72 fps 0.55 fps Ratio _^ 2.18 2.64

^*^^" ^^^""' ^"^ '^^^' **^'"^sh emotional

contentan analysis that agrees with the findings of "Brand Relationshi.ps Strengthened by Emotion, Weakened by Attention," a 2006 article in the Journal of ' ^ Advertising Research (Heath, Brandt, and Nairn 2006) Two hypotheses can be drawn from this: Engagement and attention do not appear to be dependent on one another. As the definitions proposed, suggest, the two are different constructs that operate independently. Engagement, if it can operate without attention, must depend on emotional communication, not rational communication. If it did not, then we would find that TV would be getting less and less able to build brands, and high-attention print advertisements would be becoming better and better. This is evidently not the case.
CONCLUSiON

pages were scanned carefully and systematically, with advertisements sometimes glimpsed, sometimes briefly fixated, occasionally carefully read. Rarely did the eyes wander over the paper aimlessly, and subjects did not look away from the newspaper except when they changed to read another newspaper. With television, processing followed a completely different pattern. A few subjects started by watching the screen carefully and continued to follow the action. But most watched in a "lazy" way, exactly matching Krugrnan's description of "motionless, passiye eye characteristics." Some looked directly at the screen; others continuously scanned from side to side across it. Within a few minutes, almost all subjects had looked away from the screena pattern that continued throughput the 30-minute program. At least one subject fell asleep just before the center advertising break (even at the hour of 11:00 AM). So processing of the two types of media appeared to be quite different. Newspaper processing conformed to systematic goaldriven "top-down" processing. Television processing, on the other hand, appeared to be a predominantly automatic, stimulusdriven "bottom-up" processing. This is frankly no great surprise. Television is watched primarily as a form of relaxation, and consumers "do not yearn for ads" (Tellis, 1998, p. 121). One study reported that two-thirds of its respondents did some other activity as they

watched television (Clancey, 1994); another cited a series of other reports that found that anywhere from 20 to 40 percent of TV viewers left the room whenever an advertisement came on the screen (Soley, 1984). And, as long ago as 1989, a report in the Journal of Advertising Research demonstrated that between 70 and 90 percent of viewers "zipped" (i.e., fastforwarded) advertisements in previously recorded material (Gilmore and Secunda, 1993). But the findings do suggest that, although the model in Figure 3 may apply to print, for many television advertisements the model is going to look more like a "Time Poor" model (see Figure 5). Reiationsiiip between attention and engagement The findings of the eye fixation experiment confirm that television advertising receives far less attention than print advertising, even though it appears to be an excellent brand builder. In other words, although TV advertising appears to engage, it does not appear to get much attention. It can be concluded that the effectiveness of TV is unlikely to arise from its ability to effectively communicate a message and is much more likely to

This article defines level of "attention" as "the amount of conscious 'thinking' going on when an advertisement is being processed." It also suggests an improved definition of level of "engagement": "The amount of subconscious 'feeling' going on when an advertisement is being processed." This definition of engagement fits very well with the ARF working definition: "Turning on a prospect to a brand idea enhanced by the surrounding context" (ARF, 2006, p. 10). "Turning on . . . enhanced by surrounding context" can

FEELINGS

SUB & SEMI OONSCIOUS THINKING

COVERT BRAND-LINKED ATTITUDE OHANGE

DECISION

Figure 5 Television Processing Model

7 0 JOURORL or RDUERTISinG RESERRCR March 2 o o g

EMOTIONAL ENGAGEMENT

Engagement, if it can operate without attention, must depend on emotionai communication not rational communication.

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only be achieved if the creative execution achieves a high level of "feeling" response in the consumer. Of course, that feeling needs to be linked to the brand idea. Otherwise it will be nothing more than a meaningless passing moment of stimulation. What is important about these two definitions is that they do not overlap. In other words, advertising can get high attention, but not engage much feeling; it can engage strong feelings, but not get much attention. Experimental research presented suggests that television, in particular, is a medium that is rarely capable of getting high levels of attention, but is capable of "engaging" consumers and building strong brands. There is no question that most marketers would like their advertising to do both of these things, i.e., get attention and engage feelings. That is possible only if the advertising has a genuinely new and interesting message supported by strong creative values that provided emotional support for the advertised brand. But, reality rarely provides such opportunities: few brands have anything to say that is of real news to the consumer (Ehrenberg, 1974); those that do often have their claims matched before they are able to develop and transmit a television advertisement (Heath, 2001). But any brand theoretically is capable of producing unique, empathetic, and creative advertising that can build strong brand relationships and induce the con-

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