Summary
The strength of a brand is a function of the number and relevance of memories that have been generated in the brains of target consumers. Different brands are competing to colonise the same places in the mind with their memories. Research by Ameritest discovered that an ad that was performing at a superior creative level, competing against a less competitive rival, would actually erase the memory of the weaker ad. This demonstrates that a strong ad not only works by adding to the equity of its brand, but also like an alpha male, by dominating the competition.

Summary
Two studies were conducted to examine the effect that perceived brand status has on consumers’ responses to source confirmation of third-party advertising endorsements. In Study 1, a 2 (ad exposure with opportunity to confirm the source of the endorsement vs ad exposure with no opportunity to confirm) by 2 (topdog brand vs underdog brand) factorial design was used to examine hypothesised effects on message believability and brand attitude. Results indicated that, for underdog brands, augmenting advertising strategies with publicity pieces (source confirmation) is an effective approach in enhancing advertising message believability and producing more favourable brand attitudes. On the other hand, this ad strategy was not shown to have similar added benefits for the topdog brand. Study 2 further examined these interactive effects, finding that, in an underdog brand condition, individuals reported higher levels of involvement with a publicity piece than with an advertisement. An opposite effect (i.e. greater ad involvement than publicity piece involvement) was observed for individuals in the topdog brand condition. Theoretical and managerial implications of the findings are discussed, and future research directions are offered.

Summary
The authors assessed psychological ownership as a potential persuasive advertising message appeal in social marketing efforts. Psychological ownership is a feeling of possession; it occurs when individuals feel that something is theirs even though they cannot hold legal title to it. Interestingly, the first study indicated advertising messages that generate psychological ownership yielded less favourable attitudes, word of mouth and willingness to pay price premiums among women. Women responded more negatively to messages that attempted to induce psychological ownership than to neutral messages. The adverse responses of women prompted the second study, in which both the psychological ownership message and cognitive capacity were manipulated. Results indicate that, in a limited cognitive capacity condition, women responded similarly towards higher psychological ownership and neutral advertising messages. Further, these effects were mediated by inferences of manipulative intent and not feelings of guilt. Theoretical and managerial implications are offered for marketers attempting to use psychological ownership as an advertising message strategy and gender as a segmentation strategy.

Summary
Consumer research has demonstrated that emotions play an important role in the decision-making process. Individuals may use consumption or purchasing as a way to manage their emotions. This research develops a model to help explain the process by which individuals engage in consumption to manage their emotions, and examines the efficacy of an advertisement for a hedonic product that uses affect-laden language to stimulate such a process. Results suggest that favourable emotional responses from an advertisement can lead to positive attitudes towards the advertisement, prefactual thinking in the form of hedonic rationalisations and greater behavioural intentions. Additionally, guilt from consuming and purchasing these hedonic products can be mitigated, which is also associated with greater behavioural intentions. Findings have implications for marketers and advertisers of hedonic products.

Summary
Results of a UK research project exploring advertising's role in the cosmetics and beauty category. Specifically, it looks into the impact of airbrushed images on body confidence. Credos, the researchers, first performed a literature review of previous studies, and concluded that they provide insufficient evidence to back up the case for further regulation on airbrushing in advertising, and that additional research was required. Credos' own subsequent study showed that self esteem and body confidence is often low among young women. Their vulnerability appears to peak at around 16-17 years of age. Moreover, almost half of young women agree that if brands use airbrushing to significantly alter the way a model looks, it makes them less inclined to believe what the brand or product is telling them.

Summary
In this study, we proposed an integrated model with which we suggested that perceptions of peers and interpersonal communication with peers each mediate the influence of skin-lightening­ advertisements on college women in a South Asian country - Singapore. The model is built based on the influence-of-presumed-influence model. We found that college women in Singapore tended to infer their peers' advertising exposure and the corresponding advertising influence on peers based on their own advertising exposure. Their exposure to skin-lightening advertisements also induced their discussions about fair-skinned appearance with peers. Based on their perceptions of advertising influence on peers and interpersonal communication with peers, college women inferred their peers' favourable attitudes towards fair-skinned appearance. Finally, they aligned their personal attitudes with their female peers' attitudes and their attitudes predicted their intention to adopt skin-lightening regimes.

Summary
This research attempts to investigate the determinants of a sports team sponsor's brand equity and whether the proposed structural relationships vary across countries. Field data are collected from sports team fans in two Asian economies/countries, i.e. Taiwan and Indonesia. According to the findings, in general, team identification and perceived congruence between the sponsor and the sponsored sports team affect the sponsor's credibility, which in turn has an impact on the sponsor's brand equity. 'Country' moderates the above structural relationships. However, the effects of team identification and perceived congruence on the sponsor's credibility do not receive supportive evidence in Taiwan and Indonesia respectively.

Summary
This study investigates the context effects of TV programme embedded interactivity on the attitude toward an advertisement placed within the interactive programme. In the 2 (two way communication) × 3 (user control) experimental study, 246 respondents participated. The results show that the impact of actual interactivity on attitude toward the advertisement is mediated by perceived interactivity. Subsequently, telepresence (the feeling of being present in the mediated environment) has a crucial mediating role to explain the context effect of perceived interactivity on attitude toward the advertisement. With regard to the underlying mechanism, the results show that telepresence is positively correlated with the amount of positive programme thoughts. In addition, the positive programme thoughts have a positive effect on the attitude toward the ad, above and beyond the effect of positive thoughts about the advertisement.

Summary
Companies allocate significant marketing funds and set annual marketing objectives, and every one of those objectives is set in terms of some measurable market gain: more sales, more share or more both. However, Jeremy Bullmore argues that companies in the same market can't all come first; they can't all do better than each other. When concerned observers think about the purpose and value of marketing expenditures, it is this apparent futility that strikes them most. All that effort, all that time, all that money: but to what end? Reinforcing and reinvigorating attitudes, over a great many years, may provide a marketing company's most profitable return on its communications investment; but that return may never be totally measurable.

Summary
The Journal of Advertising Research has been instrumental in supporting new ideas about how advertising works, no matter how unpopular their implications. In 1971, Herb Krugman presented evidence that television watching was low involvement compared to print. Three years later, Andrew Ehrenberg postulated that repetition - not persuasion - was how advertising influenced most people. Received wisdom, however, still holds that television advertising works persuasively and works best at high attention levels. This article critically examines this assumption, concluding that the continued success of television advertising in building strong brands most likely will depend not on its ability to persuade but on how well it is able to influence emotions at low levels of attention.