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CEP-Test - Cognitive Emotive Power Test - Brand - Relationships - Strengthened - by - Emotion - Articol
CEP-Test - Cognitive Emotive Power Test - Brand - Relationships - Strengthened - by - Emotion - Articol
CEP-Test - Cognitive Emotive Power Test - Brand - Relationships - Strengthened - by - Emotion - Articol
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ROBERT HEATH This article explores the way in which advertising builds brand relationships.
University of Bath
Behavioral research by Watzlawick, Bavelas, and Jackson (1967) suggests it is the
r.g.heatii@bath.ac.uk
emotional not the rational content in communication that drives relationships. This
DAVID BRANDT
assertion is tested using a new research copy-testing system—the CEP™Test—and
OTX Research
dbrandt@otxresearch.com
the results confirm that favorability toward brands is strongly correlated with emotional
content in advertising, but not with factual content. However, learning from psychology
AGNES NAIRN
indicates that high attention weakens the effect of emotional content, so the
EiVi Lyon
mnsacn@management. implications are that advertising aimed at building strong brand relationships might be
bath.ac.uk
more effective if processed at lower levels of attention.
It has always been assumed that high attention equates year alone it exceeded its ambitious sales
targets by 32 percent and achieved a 7 per-
to high recall which equates to high advertising cent share of the small car market. In an
award-winning review of the launch, the
effectiveness. brand's success was directly attributed to
the advertising, which ran for another six
years and was calculated to have earned
Renault some £59 million in additional
proper method to catch the reader's eye." dence relating advertising and sales, the revenue (Chandy and Thursby-Pelham,
Even the U.K.'s most celebrated market- persistence of small brands in the face of 1993).
ing academic, the late Peter Doyle (1994, massive advertising spend by competi- The success of the Renault Clio adver-
p. 240) wrote, "For an advertisement . . . tors, and the survival of brands when tising suggests is that it was some aspect
to be effective it must achieve first expo- advertising spending is cut. of the emotional appeal of the scenario
sure and then attention." One of the other key weaknesses of the being portrayed that influenced viewers.
The assumption that high attention is information processing model is that cam- This same might be true of the U.K. ad-
always beneficial has never been tested, paigns which apparently fail to convey vertising for Andrex toilet tissue. Their
partly because attention is so hard to mea- informational messages have been aston- advertising campaign, which has featured
sure. But then it has never really needed ishingly successful. The Renault Clio is a a srnall Labrador puppy for nearly 35
to be questioned, because of the nature of case in point: launched at a premium price years, has driven the brand to a state of
the metrics used to evaluate the effects of in the United Kingdom in 1992, to a mar- total dominance, increasing market share
advertising. Historically these have fo- ket generally hostile to French cars, it fivefold in 20 years and outselling the
cused on persuasion and recall (Haley promised "Small car practicality with big nearest branded rival Kleenex by any-
and Baldinger, 1991), and because both car luxury." Given the marketing environ- thing up to 3:1 despite commanding a
have been shown to be facilitated by high ment Renault might have been expected significant premium price (Stow, 1993).
levels of attention (Gardiner and Parkin, to run simple informative advertising, but The advertising featured in the early days
1990; James, 1890), it has always been instead they opted for advertising that a clear factual message that the product
assumed that high attention equates to featured affluent French people indulg- was "softer, stronger, and longer" than its
high recall which equates to high adver- ing in that most stereotypical of French rivals, modified later (when tests showed
tising effectiveness. activities—^philandering. To quote from the this to be untrue) to "soft, strong, and
But not all academics subscribe to the 1992 IPA effectiveness paper: "The story- very long." But what is important is that
information processing model as being line follows the supposedly clandestine perception of Andrex' product quality is
the only valid model. Krugman (1965) extracurricular activities of a father (Papa) little better than that of Kleenex and has
observed that much of the content of TV visiting his mistress and his daughter changed not at all during the life of the
advertising was "trivial and sometimes (Nicole) visiting her boyfriend. The Glio campaign. The success is therefore attrib-
silly" [sic] and did not fit the traditional RT was featured in both instances in the uted not to the message, but to the emo-
persuasion models prevalent at the time. role of an accomplice" (Chandy and tional appeal of the puppy itself. As Stow
"Does this suggest that if television bom- Thursby-Pelham, 1993, p. 241). The con- (1993, p. 53) says, "... this (sales) effect is
bards us with enough trivia about a prod- sequence was that the only thing people due in major part to a Labrador puppy,
uct we may be persuaded to believe it? remembered was "Papa" and "Nicole" and who has appeared consistently in An-
On the contrary, it suggests that persua- their flirting. And research showed clearly drex' TV advertising since 1972."
sion as such . . . is not involved at all and that the factual informational message of So how exactly might these two
it is a mistake to look for it.. .." (Krug- "Small car practicality with big car lux- "emotional" campaigns have worked?
man, 1965, p. 353). Later, Ehrenberg ury" was completely obscured and never One model that appears to explain them
(1974) pointed out that the "informational recalled. is Ehrenberg's "Reinforcement" model.
persuasion-based" theory fails to explain Despite this apparent communication Ehrenberg (1974) proposed that advertis-
many of the facts of marketing communi- failure, the launch of the Renault Clio ing worked not by changing attitudes, but
cation, such as the lack of empirical evi- was an outstanding success. In the first by reinforcing attitudes already held by a
One of the other key weaknesses of the information ward Brown, proposes "knowledge," "rel-
evance," "delivery on promised benefits,"
processing model is that campaigns which apparently "competitive advantage," and "being best
overall" as measures of brand relation-
faii to convey informational messages have been ship (Wyner, 2003, p. 6). But at the same
time he uses the term "attachment" in the
astonishingly successful. context of brand relationships, which he
defines as ". .. how much the brand has
entered the consumer's mind and influ-
enced behavior" (Wyner, 2003, p. 6). This
implies that brand relationships can exist
consumer who had extensive usage expe- EMOTION AND BRAND RELATIONSHIPS among those who do not use brands, and
rience and knowledge of products. He Early discussions about the way people that both feelings and thoughts may be
challenged the traditional notion that ad- feel about brands centered mainly on the involved.
vertising 'Vorks by any strong form of concept of brand personality. For exam- Blackston (1992) is among the first to
persuasion or manipulation" (p. 25), and ple, Plummer (1985, p. 81) describes brand identify an overt connection between feel-
instead asserted that "advertising's main personality as: "... an articulation of what ings and brand relationships. He sees
role is to reinforce feelings of satisfaction we would like consumers out there in the brand relationships as analogous to rela-
with brands already being used" (p. 33). world to feel about our brand over time." tionships between people: "The concept
But close examination shows this is un- And although he does not use the term of a relationship with a brand is neither
likely to explain the success of either cam- relationship, he is clearly envisaging a novel nor outrageous. It is readily under-
paign. In the case of the Renault Clio, the relationship situation when he imagines standable as an analogue^between brand
brand was entirely new, and so it is hard those who use and favor brands saying and consumer—of that complex of cogni-
to see how any prior attitudes might have "... I see myself in that brand and that tive, affective, and behavioral processes
been created that advertising could then brand in myself" (p. 81). which constitute a relationship between
reinforce. In the case of Andrex, there Common usage of the term brand rela- two people" (p. 80). This suggests that
appeared to be no superior performance tionships grew in the late '90s, alongside feelings operate equally alongside perfor-
perception that the advertising could re- the drive to develop improved customer mance and usage in defining relation-
inforce, and even if there had been, the satisfaction. This has led some to assume ships, but most people now believe that
idea that it might have been reinforced by that brand relationships have little to do feelings tend to exert the greater influ-
a puppy is far-fetched to say the least. with advertising and come into existence ence. As Gordon puts it, "There is no
So we have a situation where two cam- only when a product or service is being such thing as 'rational' versus 'emotional'—
paigns appear to have worked without used. Duncan and Moriarty (1999), for the two are intertwined. Sometimes 'ratio-
imparting any specific facts or informa- example, see brand relationships as key nal' appears to take the high ground, but
tion about the brand, but rather by work- to the future success of advertising agen- 'emotional' is the underlying force" (Gor-
ing on the emotions. We can hypothesize cies, but they clearly regard advertising don, 2006, p. 9). And although experimen-
that the flirting might have made people itself as just an information processing tal work has been done on the nature and
feel that Renault Clio drivers are rather mechanism: "Advertising is one-w^ay com- properties of different types of person-
sexy, and the Frenchness might make them munication: creating and sending mes- brand relationships (Aaker and Fournier,
feel that the car itself is rather stylish. sages. . . . Agencies need to be more 1995; Aggarwal, 2004), and also on the
And we can also hypothesize that the involved in post-sale communications be- potential causes of break up of person-
puppy might make people feel that An- cause that is often what makes or breaks brand relationships (Aaker, Fournier, and
drex was associated with love and family brand relationships" (p. 44). Market re- Brasel, 2004; Fajer and Schouten, 1995),
values. In both cases we might therefore search companies also tend to separate little has been done to examine exactly
say that the advertising created some sort the two, generally characterizing brand how emotion in advertising contributes
of emotional relationship between the po- relationships as deriving from functional toward and strengthens brand relation-
tential user and the brand. performance constructs. Wyner, of Mill- ships. As Plummer observed in a recent
Journal of Advertisirtg Research editorial: Watzlawick et al. find it is not what you say that builds
"Practitioners acknowledged that effec-
tive advertising, which helps build relationships, but how you say it.
powerful, lasting brand relationships, is a
balance of 'head and heart.' Little invest-
ment in research and theory develop-
ment, however, has been dedicated to In their third axiom, Watzlawick, Bave- comrriunication aspect of communication
measuring the heart response" (Plummer, las, and Jackson (1967) draw an analogy that is the main driver of relationships. So
2006, p. 1). In fact, most research compa- between these two types of communica- Watzlawick et al. find it is not what you
nies simply ignore brand relationships and tion and the concept of "digital" versus say that builds relationships, but how you
focus on the ability of advertisements to "analogue." They see "communication" as say it. Or, in advertising terms, it is not
"persuade" nonusers of the brand to switch the rational digital message, which is clear, the rational message that builds brand
to the brand as the primary, and some- unequivocal, recognizable, easily analyzed relationships, but the emotional creativity.
time only, purpose of advertising. and classified, but lacks emotional values.
In contrast, the "metacommunication" is the TESTING WATZLAWICK'S THEORY
analogue qualifier, which is highly emo- In order to test if Watzlawick et al.'s theory
EMOTIONAL COMMUNICATION AND tional in character, and is often subtle, dis- applies to advertising, we need to do two
BRAND RELATIONSHIPS guised, hard to classify, sometimes even things. First, we have to find a measure
Work done in the field of psychotherapy difficult even to identify. It needs only a that quantifies the strength of the relation-
and interpersonal behavior, however, does little imagination to see that Watzlawick ship between a consumer and a brand.
shed light on how emotional communica- et al.'s description of interpersonal com- Second, we have to find a measure that
tion and relationships interact. One of the munication is analogous to the terms that quantifies communication and metacom-
foundation texts used by those who study advertising practitioners use when describ- munication. Once that is done it will be
interpersonal communication is the work ing advertising: where Watzlawick et al. talk possible to see what, if any, correlations
of Paul Watzlawick (Watzlawick, Bavelas, of "rational digital communication," the there are among the three constructs.
and Jackson, 1967; Watzlawick and Bea- practitioner talks of the "message"; and The relationship construct is relatively
vin, 1967). Watzlawick, Bavelas, and where Watzlawick et al. describe "emo- easy to quantify. A simple measure of
Jackson (1967) establish five axioms for tional analogue metacommunication," the relationship is the favorability that a con-
communication, and it is the first three practitioner talks of "creativity." sumer has for a brand. Favorability is not
that are most applicable to advertising. Watzlawick et al.'s study of the way in only a metric that can apply both to users
The first axiom is that in an interpersonal which relationships develop and break and nonusers, but, as Hofmeyr and Rice
situation communication is always taking down sheds further light on how these (2000) show, it can be quantified easily
place: "One cannot not communicate" two types of communication operate. They using an expanded semantic scale. In our
(p. 51). They establish that even when found that when relationships between case we used a 10-point scale ranging
two people are saying nothing they are couples were on the verge of collapse, the from 1 = "extremely favorable" to 10 =
still engaged in communication, via their "communication" was often perfectly rea- "extremely unfavorable."
body language and the very fact that they sonable and sensible, but it was the "meta- The quantification of communication and
are maintaining silence. This they expand communication" that was causing the metacommunication is a little more com-
further in their second axiom: "Every com- breakdown. In other words, although peo- plicated. Watzlawick, Bavelas, and Jack-
munication has a content and a relation- ple were saying good things, the way in son (1967) describe communication as
ship aspect such that the latter classifies which they said them was causing fric- essentially rational and metacommunica-
the former and is therefore a metacommu- tion and negativity. They found that by tion as emotional in nature. So the level of
nication" (p. 54). The communication is correcting the metacommunication they comrriunication is going to equate to the
the message itself, and the metacommu- could often repair the relationship rift, ratiohal content in the advertising, and
nication might be described as all the even when damaging and negative things the level of metacommunication is going
nonverbal paraphernalia that accompa- were occasionally said. From this, they to equate to the level of emotional content
nies the message. conclude that it is this analogue meta- in advertising. A new research system
being operated by OTX, the CEP'^^Test to that used in Heath and Nairn (2005) shift in favorability toward the brand are
(Cognitive Emotive Power Test), is de- was adopted. Respondents were first asked squares; those that produced a moderate
signed to measure exactly this rational the favorability question, and then shown shift are triangles; and those that pro-
and emotional content. selected video sections of each of the ad- duced a high shift are diamonds. It can
The CEP'^'^Test has been developed as vertisements to ascertain whether or not be seen that the shifts appear to correlate
part of an online copy testing system to they had seen them before. The brand with the vertical axis (Emotive Power^'^),
help evaluate the absolute and relative favorability scores were then split be- but there is no apparent correlation be-
levels of emotional and rational content tween those who recognized and those tween the horizontal axis (Cognitive
in advertising. Using a battery of 10 pro- who did not recognize the advertisement. Power•^'^) and Brand Favorability Shift.
prietary statements, the CEP^'^Test quan- This produces a "shift" in favorability (re- The significance of the correlations
tifies two constructs. The first of these ferred to below as Fav-Shift) that indi- among Brand Favorability, Emotive Pow-
is Cognitive Power^*^, which measures cates the extent to which the advertising er^*^, and Cognitive Power^^ was exam-
the potency of the message and rational has improved the brand relationship while ined using stepwise multiple regression.
information in the advertisement using on air. Note that levels of usage were The results shows a highly significant pos-
statements based on newsworthiness, dif- controlled to ensure that there was no itive relationship between Emotive Pow-
ferentiation, and factual content. The sec- bias introduced by having significantly er'^'^ and Eavorability Shift {R^ = 0.283,
ond is Emotive Power ^'^, which measures more users in either the recognizer or B = +0.014, p = .009), but an insignificant
the potency of the emotional content nonrecognizer samples. positive relationship between Cognitive
in the advertisement using statements This enables the relationship between Power™ and Favorability Shift (R^ =
based on emotion, mood, and tone. These shift in Brand Favorability, Emotive 0.290, B = +0.002, p = .661). Table 1 con-
two constructs—Cognitive and Emotive Power^^, and Cognitive Power^"^ to be firms this, showing the correlations be-
Power^*^—closely parallel Watzlawick established. A graphical representation of tween Emotive Power^"^ (Emotive),
et al.'s communication and metacommu- the U.S. results is shown in Figure 1. Cognitive Power^"^ (Cognitive), and Fa-
nication. So if Watzlawick et al.'s axioms Those advertisements that achieved a low vorability Shift (Fav-Shift).
are applicable to advertising, then it should
be the Emotive Power^*^ that correlates
with strong brand relationships, rather than
the Cognitive Power™.
• Low Shift
EXPERIMENTAL A P P R O A C H - 80 A Moderate Shift
UNITED STATES
^High Shift
60
The first experiment was run via two par-
allel online surveys in the United States 40
and the United Kingdom. In the first sur-
vey, a group of 23 TV advertisements
from a number of different product cat- s. 10 -80 -60 -40 0
• «
80 100
20 40 60
egories currently on air in the United States ••§ -20
was chosen and assessed among a gen-
-40
eral population sample of respondents,
using the CEP^'^Test measures. This gave -60
the scores for Cognitive Power^"^ and
-80
Emotive Power^'^ for each advertisement.
In order to measure the ability that each
advertisement had to improve brand re- Cognitive
EXPERiMENTAL APPROACH—
UNiTED KiNGDOM
To test if the results were applicable
HHigh
only in the United States, a second iden- O Medium
tical experiment was run in the United • Low
60
Kingdom, using a group of 20 TV adver-
tisements currently on air in the United • 40-
Kingdom. A graphical representation of •
20
the results is shown in Figure 2. Once
again the Favorability Shift correlation ap- 1 OH •
n
g - 1 ( )0 sW »60 -40 -20 () 9o 40 60 O 80 1( )0
pears to be with the vertical axis (Emotive
1 -9o- O
Power^'^) not the horizontal axis (Cogni-
tive Power™).
o
• -40
The U.K. results show a different pat- H
•
tern, with a tendency for advertising to -60
run from High Emotive Power^"^Z Low u
-80
Cognitive Power^**^ to High Cognitive
-1 nr\
Power^"^7 Low Emotive Power^'^. How-
ever, regression shows an even stronger Cognitive Power^'*'
significant positive relationship between
Emotive Power^"^ and Favorability Shift Figure 2 U.K. Results of Correlations among Brand
(R2 = 0.345, B = +0.006, p = .006), and in Favorability, Emotive Power™, and Cognitive
December 2 0 0 6 JOUROIIL OF 000E0TISII1G RESEHRCH 4 1 5
BRAND RELATIONSHIPS
"Significant correlation at 0.95 level of confidence. at low levels of attention, but it was Zajonc
The experimental results show clearly that it is the unattended stimuli" (Bornstein, 1989,
p. 281). Bornstein suggests that "The most
emotional "creative" content in advertising that builds obvious application probably lies in the
area of advertising, in which repeated,
unreinforced exposure . . . has long been
strong brand relationships, not the rational message.
one general approach used to enhance
attitudes towards a product" (p. 283). In
subsequent work he confirmed that the
(1980) who first hypothesized this over 30 identify three types of affective response: less aware consumers are of emotional
years ago. But it is Damasio (1994, 2000, evaluations, moods, and emotions. They elerrtents in advertising, the better they
2003) who can take the credit for modern claim "There is considerable evidence of are likely to work, because the viewer has
theories about exactly how emotions are non-conscious processes within each of less opportunity to rationally evaluate, con-
processed. Damasio uses the concept of a these main categories of affective re- tradict, and weaken their potency (Born-
"limbic" system in the brain, a construct sponses" (p. 274). But this then raises the stein, 1992).
develop by MacLean (1952) to represent the question of what happens when noncon-
original mammalian brain, which lies be- sciously processed emotional content is DISCUSSION
neath the more recently developed neocor- processed consciously. The answer, accord- Borristein's findings indicate that emo-
tex. The limbic system, sometimes also ing to the psychologist Robert Bornstein tional content in advertising will actually
called the "visceral" brain, was originally (1989), is that its effectiveness is weakened. work better if less attention is paid to it.
responsible for the processing of mamma- Bornstein initially used a meta-analysis Put together with our earlier findings,
of mere exposure research to demonstrate
lian instinctive and survival functions (e.g., this implies that if you are trying to build
fear, sexual drive, hunger, etc.), and it is that emotional attitudes are more greatly brand relationships, it may be better if
this system that is now our center of emo- enhanced in subliminal exposure; "... ex- your advertising receives slightly less
posure to subliminal stimuli actually re-
tional processing (Damasio, 1994). As it orig- attention, as this way your emotional
inated as part of the body's defense system, sults in attitude enhancement greater than appeals will be less likely to be counter-
the limbic system operates precognitively that produced by briefly presented recog- argued and weakened.
and autonomically—if it did not, humans nizable stimuli" (Bornstein, 1989, p. 278). This makes some sense if you consider
would probably have been eaten by pred- Kihistrom (1987) provides an explanation the Renault Clio and Andrex campaigns.
ators and become extinct long ago. for this, which is that "conscious counter- Clo$e scrutiny of the antics of "Papa" and
More recently an improved psychobio- control" [sic] processes are available to "Nicole" does nothing but render the ste-
logical explanation of emotional process- counter-argue against recognizable stim- reotypical associations they develop with
ing has been provided by Damasio (2000). uli, but these processes are not available "Frenchness" and sexiness absurd and ir-
He provides evidence that emotions and when the exposure is subliminal. But of relevant. Likewise, if you spend a lot of
feelings are formed in what he calls the more relevance to advertising is Born- time thinking about the Andrex puppy,
"proto-self" [sic], whereas thoughts are stein's later hypothesis, which is that his cuteness is revealed as no more than a
formed in what he calls core consciousness. Kihlstrom's idea will not only apply to ploy to lure you into thinking that the
He shows that activity in the proto-self subliminal stimuli, but also to "unnoticed. makers are really nice friendly people who
always precedes activity in core conscious-
ness, which confirms that emotions and
feelings will always be formed precogni-
tively and preattentively, before any infor- The less aware consumers are of emotional elements in
mation processing takes place (Damasio,
2000, p. 281). This is the exact opposite of advertising, the better they are likely to work, because
the assumptions made in most advertis-
ing models. the viewer has less opportunity to rationally evaluate,
Damasio's findings have been sup-
ported by Fitzsimons et al. (2002), who contradict, and weaken their potency.
December 2 0 0 6 JOUBIlflL OFflOOEBTlSlllGRESEIIRCH 4 1 7
BRAND RELATIONSHIPS
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