20. Experiments on the Effects of Advertisements
Thus far, the consideration of psychology in business has been entirely operational, considering the way of matching men and work. However, this is only one facet of economic life, and likely overlooks the more important connection between those who manage production and those who consume their products. The purchase and consumption of goods and services is the ultimate goal of the economic machine, and merits closer considerations.
Every store keeper uses "propaganda" to attract customers. He uses posters, newspaper ads, and other methods (EN: A quick reminder this book was published in 1913, before television and even radio) to inform them of his offerings and draw them to his store. If he fails to do so, he will fail in his business and customers will fail to have the products they need to address their desires.
"Desire" is more important to advertising than need. People will put considerable effort into finding ways to satisfy their needs, and if they did not do so they simply would not survive. There is no basic need that drives people to purchase most products - but a mental need, and an emotional one, that causes them to desire luxuries, or even the desire to save time or money that they might spend on other luxuries. And so, advertising is all about desire.
Insofar as the effects of advertising are lead to the fulfillment of economic demands, the psychological aspects of advertising should be of serious interest to economists. The connection between desire and its fulfillment by means of trade is in fact the driving force behind the commercial markets.
However, genuine scientists are disdainful of commercial interests, regarding them as vulgar and mercenary. Meanwhile in the commercial sector, there is great interest but not a lot of expertise. (EN: And in over 100 years, little seems to have changed.)
He spends a bit of time insisting that science and commerce should make a better partnership in this manner. If it is worthwhile for science to painstakingly study the filament of an electric lamp in order to determine hoe it might be made more functional, it is likewise worthwhile for science to understand the desire of man for light - for if man does not desire light, the work on the filament will never find its way to practical application.
As to advertisements, their relation to the science of the mind should be clear. To be effective, an advertisement must get attention, must rouse desire, and must be remembered. If it fails in any of these regards, it will not accomplish the goal of getting a customer to purchase. Munsterberg suggests that work is already underway in a "somewhat systematic" manner by unnamed "psychological laboratories."
There is also the caveat that psychology is a very young science - there is much to be discovered and psychologists "cannot fully agree" on much of anything. Commercial interests place unreasonable demands for precision and certainty, and are often disappointed at its inaccuracy. It will improve over time, but it will require investment and much patience.
In terms of advertising, Munsterberg suggests a number of critical qualities to the success of advertising:
- Apprehensible - the message must be perceived and understood, and one should quickly follow the other.
- Vivid - the message must command attention, either by consuming the full range of focus (a full-page ad, which gives the reader nothing else to look at) or through some other factor such as color or layout
- Repeated - it is very unusual for something that is heard but once to lodge itself in memory, and even the things we wish to learn require repetition
- Appropriate - the message must accommodate the literacy of the reader, in terms of his comprehension of language, imagery, and visual symbolism
- Attractive - things that are offensive will garner attention, but these reactions to advertising will also be associated to the product that is advertised
He suggests that advertisers seek large audiences because they are not very good at advertising. In effect, they are so bad at getting attention and speaking in a relevant way to the interests of an individual that they must reach millions in order to win a meager few customers.
He mentions experiments with advertising (Scott) that consisted of offering test subjects a magazine and asking them which advertisements they recalled after having read it. One experiment specifically noted the difference in the size of the advertisement: a full-page advertisement is highly memorable, and an eight-page almost unnoticeable. He remarks that "The customer who pays for one eighth of a page receives not the eighth part, but hardly the twentieth part of the psychical influence which is produced by a full page."
He also suggests that the physical size of the ad, measured in inches, does not matter - the ratio is the same in a large magazine and a small one, as whatever size the paper happens to be, the advertisement has the same ratio of the readers' attention. Moreover, the actual content of the ad didn't seem to matter quite as much as its relative size.
(EN: As usual, he goes into granular detail about the experiment's methodology and analysis.)
Another experiment (Starch) is mentioned in which the placement within a magazine was considered, which showed a tendency to remember things at the beginning or end. Given a 12-page booklet, 68% recalled messages on the first and last page, 52% on the second and second-last pages, and 34% on any of the pages in-between.
(EN: Which is interesting, but I wonder if the brevity might be an issue. I suspect that it may have to do not with the page number, but with the occurrence within the span of time. In a longer publication, a person reads an article that begins on page 40 and ends on page 52 - and those twelve pages are the sum of their attention window.)
Another experiment (also Starch) tested add placement on the page, showing that the upper-right corner is far more noticeable than other quadrants. While those who buy quarter-page ads pay the same for the ad size, the buyer whose ad is upper-right gets twice as much for his money than the one whose ad is on the lower-left. (Specifically, recall is 33% in the upper right, 28% in the upper left, 23% lower-right, and 16% lower left.)
He stops there, as there is a great deal more to be said - and he hopes that these few examples should suffice to indicate how much there is to be considered about advertising, and how little consideration is given to the way in which advertising is managed in his time.
(EN: And having worked in print publishing and advertising in the early 1990s, I can attest that very little has been learned, and not even these few lessons have been applied. Ads were still sold by space, and advertisers seem to be little concerned about their placement. And now in the online medium, very little seems to be understood.)