Emotional engagement: how TV builds brands at low attention

This paper discusses an apparent paradox: TV advertising is found to be very effective, yet has little attention paid to it and is often poorly recalled.

Emotional engagement: how TV builds brands at low attention

Robert Heath

The consumer love affair with TV and its advertising reached its peak some years ago. Research more than a decade ago showed two-thirds of viewers doing some other activity when watching television, up to 40% leaving the room when the advertising break came on, and 70% playing ads fast-forward in previously recorded material; more recent research puts this last figure at 100%. Yet, in their analysis of over 1,000 IPA Advertising Effectiveness Awards papers, Binet and Field found that “there is little evidence to support the widespread assumption that...

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