Repeated Claims And Repeated Exposure

By Author: Beryl
Total Articles: 95
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We are more likely to remember a message we have heard often. Consequently, most ads are highly redundant: they repeat the same claim visually and verbally, underscoring the claim in the slogan and whenever possible in the packaging and in the name of the product as well. A radio ad for Sprite played GHD MK4 on the notion that ads require repetition by promising, "Here's a soda jingle that'll stick in your head. We'll play it day and night until you'll wish you were dead."

Note the number of times free delivery is repeated in this ad:
There's 4 Shipping Days left
Until Christmas Keep on SHOPPING.
We're still SHIPPING
Outpost.com
Is taking orders through
Midnight December 23
For delivery by Christmas eve. FREE DELIVERY, NEXT DAY
It's our policy!
Every product!
Free delivery.
Overnight.
All Year.
OUTPPOST.COM
Free Delivery. Overnight.

Once the product's name and slogan have been deeply embedded in the audience's memory, the advertiser can enlist the audience as an accomplice ...
... in filling one or the other into the ad, thus heightening audience participation and the persuasive impact of the message. In one ad for Coke, for example, the announcer did not utter the word Coke. Instead, the chorus sang, "It's the real thing," and where the ad would ordinarily have said "Coke," we heard instead the sound of the bottle being opened and the soda fizzing. Meanwhile, bottles of Coke were shown to encourage us to fill in our part of the slogan.

Ads also are aired repeatedly, or printed again and again, in the hope that sooner or later we will be reading, listening, or watching when they occur and will pay attention. The likelihood that we will remember a part of the ad increases as exposure to the ad increases. For this reason, advertisers often create radio ads from their televised ads' audio tracks and use pictures from television ads in magazine ads. If the advertiser is successful, repetition ensures that the ad reaches the consumer with a message that creates product recognition, differentiates the product from its competitors, associates the product with favorable experiences, and repeatedly involves the audience in creating the ad's meaning. In this way ads create or underscore wants and transform them into needs to be satisfied by purchase of the advertised product.

Often, as a result of this process, we purchase products with which we are satisfied. Our experience with the product and the experience promised in the ad are comparable. But sometimes, after purchase of the GHD MK5 product, we realize that the ad led us astray. On examination, we realize that the deception did not reside explicitly in the ad but in our eagerness to make faulty inferences, an eagerness abetted by the advertiser.

To review the functions served by name recognition, differentiation, association, participation, and redundancy, we will analyze in the following case study an ad (Figure 7.3) created to market the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.