Advertisers generally fall into one of two camps: those who avoid putting ads on television programs filled with sex and violence and those who don’t.
   When it comes to getting viewers to remember ads, the advertisers who avoid the naughty stuff win.
   TV viewers watching neutral programs, meaning those without sex or violence, have a 21 percent higher level of advertising recall than when watching programs with sexual content and 17 percent higher than when watching violent programs. Those are the findings of a study released last week by the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research.
   “In our labs we have never found that people remember more if the ad is embedded in a violent or sexual program,” says Brad Bushman, a psychologist at the university who conducted the research.
   “It doesn’t matter whether the viewer is male or female. It doesn’t matter how old they are, and it doesn’t matter whether they like violence or sexual content.”
   The study is part of a long-term research project that consistently has found that people watching neutral programs have a higher level of recall.
   Over the past several years, 16 research studies have been conducted with about 2,500 people on the impact violence has on advertising recall, some of which Bushman was involved with, while two have been done on the impact of sexual content.
   On average, brand recall was 27 percent higher for ads in a neutral environment than those in a violent environment.
   The research done on sex and violence suggests both have nearly the same impact on recall.
   “It could be that the same portion of the brain that lights up when you see violence or sex could be the same portion of the brain responsible for memory,” says Bushman. “But we don’t know -- we haven’t done that research yet.”
   The most recent study, which was presented last week at the American Psychological Association’s annual meeting, was conducted with 324 people who watched programs with various types of content but always the same commercials. The viewers watched a 45-minute program and then were asked which advertised brands they remembered seeing.
   Ads in a sexy or violent environment proved less effective than those in a neutral environment, but it is not well understood why that is so. Further research will try to figure that out, but it’s assumed that sex and violence are simply too distracting.
  “From an evolutionary perspective, it makes sense that we should pay attention to violent and sexual stimuli,” says Bushman. “They are essential to passing our genes onto the next generation.
   “But if the violent or sexual program is grabbing our attention, it’s diverting our attention away from the ads.”
   Another explanation pertaining to violence is that it puts people in a bad mood. The theory is people then try to shake that mood during commercial breaks.
   Bushman also found that violent commercials diminish recall.
   People who watch those ads remember them 20 percent less often than sexy ads and 18 percent less than neutral ads.
   In other words, violence never helps build ad recall while sex can help when it's part of the ad, but not when it’s part of the program.

August 11, 2003© 2003 Media Life

-Kevin Downey is a staff writer for Media Life.

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