Memory Affects Marketing Communications and Advertising

For marketing messages to be effective, messages must satisfy three memory functions:

• memorization (encoding)

• retention in memory (storage)

• recall from memory (retrieval)

Following these functions, we can evaluate the effectiveness of ads and other marcom projects. We test:

• recall by asking subjects to produce the information on their own.

• retention by asking subjects to identify previously learned information.

There are several factors that influence the memory functions. One of the key factors is emotions, which affect the memory functions through the limbic system. (Read more about the neurophysiological effects of emotions in our marketing guide Persuasive Marketing Writing.) Obviously chemical and physiological factors also influence memory. 

Important lessons can also be learned by studying the factors that lead to forgetting information and to prevent or counteract them. Below are descriptions of the memorization process and how information gets lost. 

Memorization

Memorization or encoding is an active process. For information to be memorized, the information must first grab a person's attention. Different people have different attentional capacities. Hence not all people are capable of memorizing the same amount of information. 

For a marketing message to be memorized, the message must fulfill at least one of the following characteristics:

• have meaning

• be personally relevant

• evoke an emotion

• be perceived by any of the senses 

• have physical and structural characteristics

• associate with other information

• use visual imagery that can be remembered.

Obviously, a message that covers several of these aspects has the best chance to be remembered.

Retention

Storage or information retention is comprised of three stages: sensory store, short-term store, and long-term store. Sensory store retains the sensory image for only a small part of a second, just long enough to develop a perception. 

Short-term memory lasts for about 20 to 30 seconds without repetition of the information. With repetition, the short-term memory lasts as long as the information is repeated. The short-term memory can hold about 7 items or item groups. 

Long-term memory is permanent: nothing is forgotten; only the means of retrieving it may be lost. Items from the short-term memory are moved into the long-term memory by rehearsal. Short-term information can also be moved into the long-term memory according to their appearance in the short-term memory:

• First words get rehearsed more and move into the long-term memory.

• Words that are still in the short-term memory can be moved into the long-term memory either through simple recitation or by organizing the structure of the information.

Long-term memorization can be obtained when information is structured and allows that:

• Related items are remembered together.

• Information is classified to organize memories.

• Information is associated with other concepts.

• Information is abstracted from prior experience.

• Information is scripted and organized with knowledge about common things or activities.

For a marketing message to be retained in the long-term memory, the message must 

• start with the the message to be retained

• be repeated to be stored 

• have meaning

• be related to memorized items

• be classifiable 

• be associable to stored concepts

• be abstracted from prior experience with the information

• be scripted and organize the knowledge about common things or activities.

Recall

For a marketing message to be recalled, the message must have context cues. Recall is increased if the same mood is triggered when the message is stored than when the message will be retrieved.

Forgetting

Information gets lost when there is a problem with encoding, storage, retrieval, or some combination of the three. Most forgetting occurs very soon after learning. Several factors lead to forgetting:

• ineffective initial encoding: ineffective attention in the acquisition phase

• decay: memory fades with time 

• interference: competition from other information

• retroactive interference: new information interferes with what has already been learned.

• proactive interference: old information interferes with what is being learned.

• intermittent retrieval failure: information is sometimes retrieved and sometimes not.

• motivated forgetting: we may tend to forget things that we do not wish to remember.

Meaningful information is not lost as easily. The efficiency of marketing messages can be improved by simply preventing the message to be forgotten.

Get Your Questions Answered

If you have any questions about this marketing guide, give us a call or send us an email. We will be happy to answer your questions.