Message framing, non-conscious perception and effectiveness in non-profit advertising. Contribution by neuromarketing research

Abstract

Advertising for non-profit organizations through television commercials is a valuable means of communication to raise awareness and receive donations. When it comes to social aspects, personal attitudes such as empathy are significant for reinforcing the intention to donate; and the study of eliciting emotions has critical attention in the literature, especially some types of emotion, such as guilt which mediates empathy. Different methodologies have been used to measure consumer emotions when faced with TV ads stimuli: mainly traditional techniques such as interviews or questionnaires after the ads viewing. In the last ten years, there has also been a great interest in new neuroscience techniques applied to measure emotional and cognitive reactions by physiological signals, frame by frame. Our research has applied neuromarketing technologies during the observation of a UNHCR commercial promoting legacy calls. The objective was to study cognitive and emotional reactions in order to increase the effectiveness whilst having the possibility to verify the results by measuring the benefits in terms of calls from contributors. The purpose of this research is to empirically prove the impact in calls thanks to changes in the message framing strategy in non-profit advertising suggested and measured by neuromarketing techniques. Particularly we measured the cerebral activity through an electroencephalogram to obtain an Approach-Withdrawal Index (AW); the heart rate and galvanic skin response through different sensors in the palm of one hand, to obtain an Emotional Index (EI), and finally, eye fixations through an eye tracker device to obtain the visual attention on key visual areas of the ads. After these indicators’ recordings on a sample of subjects, some suggestions to modify the advertising were made to create a more effective campaign. The results compared, those elicited by the first version of the spot (LVE) and those by the second version (HVE), confirmed that (1) the number of sellable and legacy calls increased with the message framing strategy modified in the second spot (HVE), (2) a lower cognitive and emotional reactions have been obtained in the final section of HVE, (3) the visual attention on the key information of the phone number to call, in the final call to action frames(CTA), was higher in HVE than in the first version of the spot (LVE), (4) the cognitive approach increased during the same CTA frames in HVE.

Effect of emotion induction on potential consumers’ visual attention in beer advertisements: a neuroscience study

“…Due to cost and time considerations, mainly for studies using several types of equipment, neuroscience studies typically deal with low sample sizes and are not intended to be representative (Button et al , 2013; Martinez-Levy et al , 2021; Muñoz-Leiva et al , 2019; Nord et al , 2017). The sample size of the present study was similar to what was practiced in similar neuroscience experimental studies (Esch et al , 2012; Gordon et al , 2018) and larger than most of the research studies pointed out in a review of eye-tracking studies presented by Scott et al (2019).…”

“…In this context, it is seen that emotions can also impact visual attention to ads (Breuer et al , 2021; Martinez-Levy et al , 2021). Breuer et al (2021) indicate that viewers’ emotions during live broadcast games can influence visual attention to the sponsors’ messages exposed, and Martinez-Levy et al (2021) found that the induction of empathy through images showing the reality of war within the ads increases visual attention to nonprofit advertising and donations. However, no studies have been found that investigate the effect of emotion induction previous to the ads’ viewing on visual attention to them.…”

“…It is seen that the induction of emotions changes the way we make decisions (You et al , 2019), make judgments (Landy and Goodwin, 2015) and perceive reality (Lawrie et al , 2019). It is also known that emotions generated during advertisement viewing play a central role in visual attention to them (Breuer et al , 2021; Martinez-Levy et al , 2021; Poels and Dewitte, 2019). Thus, it is plausible to investigate whether the induction of emotions previous to the viewing of the ad can also influence visual attention to them, which is one of the objectives of the present study.…”

“…Visual attention is the process by which a person selects a specific element from all available information to examine further (Skaramagkas et al, 2021). The literature indicates that the induction of emotions can influence individuals' visual attention (Martinez-Levy et al, 2021), and this phenomenon is reported in studies in several areas. For instance, the study by Naumann et al (2019) investigated the effect of inducing positive and negative emotions on visual attention in the body in patients with Bulimia.…”

Relación entre Emociones y Recuerdo en Campañas Publicitarias de Servicio Público. Una Aproximación desde la Neurociencia

“…Partiendo de estas premisas, se ha realizado un gran número de investigaciones recurriendo a técnicas de neuromarketing para medir variables como la atención, el impacto emocional o el recuerdo de los mensajes publicitarios. A modo de ejemplo, en estudios sobre publicidad de servicio público, se ha investigado: la atención, recuerdo y emoción de los consumidores ante el visionado de publicidad social relacionada con la eficiencia energética (Gordon et al, 2018); la atención y la intención de donación en la publicidad benéfica no gubernamental (dos Santos et al, 2018); la relación entre la reacción cerebral de los sujetos ante mensajes publicitarios sobre homosexualidad y la actitud hacia el tema anunciado (Maison y Oleksy, 2017); el impacto del contexto social en las respuestas neurofisiológicas de los consumidores cuando se exponen a los mensajes publicitarios (Pozharliev et al, 2017); la relación entre las reacciones cognitivas y emocionales y la eficacia de mensajes publicitarios de asociaciones sin ánimo de lucro (Martínez-Levy et al, 2021); la respuesta emocional a los mensajes publicitarios contra el tabaco (Rath et al, 2019); el efecto de las percepciones de los destinatarios sobre la fuente del mensaje en audiovisuales sobre alcoholismo (Stanojlovic et al, 2020).…”