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50 television 2011 | international key facts
Brainwaves: what neuroscience can teach us aBout the Power of television
David Brennan and the team at thinkbox in the
uK have been at the forefront of research that
explores our understanding of the Power of tv.
their latest project covers arguably the most
important subject of all, how tv advertising affects
the brain.
We have learned more about how the human brain works in the
past ten years than we had learned in the previous couple of
centuries, driven in large part by advances in neuroscience.
We are now able to peek inside the human brain – even when
it is engaged in everyday activities – and work out what is going
on at an increasingly accurate level. Most importantly, it means
we don’t have to ask people to tell us what is going on in their
heads, a research approach that is often inaccurate and sub-
ject to misrepresentation. This is especially important when we
want to conduct research on the effects of television, which
often affects us on an emotional, implicit and subconscious
level. So, rather than asking people about these effects after
Pictures of SST in action Pictures of fMRI in action
Validated academically and clinically over 15 years, used commercially since 2005
SST benefits• Portable • Contextual sensitivity • Lowers cost, larger sample sizes• Time-based analysis
Glossary
SST: Solid state topography
LTME: Long Term memory encoding
fMRI: Functional magnetic resource imaging
EEG: Electroencephalography
Allows 3D visualisation of deep brain activity: reward, memory encoding, craving, etc.2,000+ benchmarking datasetsUsed commercially since 1999
fMRI benefits:• Encompasses all brain activity• Exact locations, directions and cause of responses• Depth and accuracy
Steady State Topography (SST) with Neuro Insight
Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI)
television 2011 | international key facts 51
the event (when they often forget, or
weren’t aware in the first place) or during
the viewing experience (which then inter-
feres with the “natural” state of viewing),
we can understand much more about
them by looking at which specific parts
of the brain are most active when they
are watching TV and what experiences
are associated with that activity.
There are two main ways of measuring
what is going on in the brain. Functional
magnetic resource imaging (fMRI) pro-
vides a three-dimensional image of
blood flow in the brain, allowing us to de-
termine which parts of the brain are most
active at specific times. It is highly accu-
rate and can measure deep brain activi-
ty, but the disadvantages are that sub-
jects must lie completely still in a full
body scanner and – because blood flow
changes are not instantaneous – it can-
not measure immediate changes in ac-
tivity very accurately. On the other hand,
electroencephalography (EEG) meas-
ures electrical impulses in the brain,
which change very quickly, and can be
measured via a small cap on the sub-
ject’s head, which frees them to do day-
to-day activities in a more natural setting,
but can only measure activity in the sur-
face areas of the brain.
We decided we needed to use both
techniques, so we could understand
how the brain was processing TV com-
mercials on a second-by-second basis,
in a natural setting, while also under-
standing which specific parts of the brain
were active across the whole commer-
cial. This would provide us with both the
depth and breadth of the viewers’ expe-
rience when they were watching TV.
We recruited seventeen major advertis-
ers who, between them, submitted more
than twenty-five pieces of content to be
tested. Some were tested via fMRI, oth-
ers via solid state topography (SST, a
superior form of EEG). We set up the re-
search so that we could measure the dif-
ferences in brain activity when people
were watching TV compared to when
they were interacting online (via a guided
online journey, taking in web browsing,
search and on-demand TV content). We
also wanted to look at how TV primes
online experience, and vice versa, as
this priming effect had been evident in
several of our earlier studies looking at
the relationship between TV and online.
The results highlighted just how powerful
TV ads can be in engaging us in their
content and transferring that content into
our long-term memory. They also taught
us about the importance of media con-
text; how the placement of an ad can turbocharge the cre-ative impact.
the power of tv creativity
The SST part of the study allowed us to
look at how TV commercials affect five
main parts of the brain, associated with
emotional intensity, emotional direction
(attraction or withdrawal), attention, en-
gagement and long-term memory en-
coding.
Previous studies have demonstrated that
it is levels of long-term memory encoding
(LTME) – especially for those parts of the
ad where the brand is featured – that has
the greatest effect on whether or not we
are likely to purchase that brand. The
challenge for creative agencies is in gen-
erating high levels of LTME and ensuring
that the brand or product is featured in
exactly the right places.
Our study demonstrated quite conclu-
sively that it is not attention that creates
long-term memory encoding, but en-
gagement. The neuroscientists define en-
gagement as “a sense of immersion in an
activity caused by personal relevance”,
Emotional direction (attraction or withdrawal),
attention, engagement and
long-term memory encoding
A research first!
SST – the breadthTIME SERIES ANALySIS:
the critical points at which the brain is being influenced
• 120 respondents• 60 TV first / 60 online first
fMRI – the depth FuLL bRAIN ANALySIS:
what is going on in the brain duringthese time-points and why?
• 20 respondents• TV only
it is not attention that
creates long-term
memory encoding, but
engagement: “a sense of
immersion in an activity caused
by personal relevance”
52 television 2011 | international key facts
which is just about the best definition of engagement I have
heard to date.
Across all of our measured advertisements, the correlation be-
tween levels of engagement and long-term memory encoding
was well over 70%. Engagement itself is influenced by emo-
tional intensity, so it is not surprising that this also correlated
strongly with LTME. It is interesting that visual attention, in either
left-brain (detailed) or right-brain (global) hemispheres had no
relationship whatsoever with either engagement or LTME. This
supports theories such as Heath’s theory of low attention pro-
cessing, which suggests that attention can actually reduce an
ad’s ability to create associations and alter perceptions.
One other measure also failed to correlate with LTME: that of
emotional direction (like/dislike or attract/repel). Normally one
would expect this to correlate with engagement and LTME, with
a higher level of liking or attraction relating to higher levels of
engagement, but again we saw no relationship. I think this is
due to a part of the creative process that we can’t define or
measure so easily: the narrative power of an ad to tell a com-
pelling story in a matter of seconds. All great stories have ele-
ments of conflict or challenge and without a degree of “nega-
tive” emotion it would be
impossible for the story to
create enough of a sense of
intrigue or involvement. One
of the most powerful ele-
ments of neuroscience is
that one can see the shape
of the story taking place in
people’s heads – the stronger
the storytelling, the more pro-
nounced the peaks and troughs
of engagement and memory encoding!
Of course, it is all well and good having high peaks of LTME,
but it is not much use if the brand is not present when those
peaks take place, and our analysis from this study demonstrat-
ed quite clearly one of the challenges in making this happen.
We know that the brain “chunks” information into manageable
pieces, and when it feels a “chunk” of the storyline has been
told, it will go into shutdown for a second or so while it pro-
cesses the information it has received. This is known as “con-
ceptual closure”, and we saw many examples in our study. The
problem is that it is often the point in the advertisement when
Levels of correlation between SST measures
Engagement(L=.73, R=.71)
Attract/Repel LTMEVisual
attention
Emotionalintensity(L=.58, R=.62)
Liked/Disliked
Mental effort
Personal identification
Strength of emotion
Engagementand strength of emotion strongly correlated with LTME
NO correlation with visual attention!
No significance
Highly significant
Source: Neuro Insight (SST)
the importance of creativity
in tv advertising
television 2011 | international key facts 53
the brand or pack shot comes into view,
just after the resolution or the “punch-
line”, but this is often the point in the ad
when the brain is least receptive to new
information. We were able to advise a
work creatively. Things like the power of
music to drive emotions, engagement
and attention was seen a number of
times, and those ads that contained mu-
sic performed significantly better on
those parts of the brain than those that
didn’t. We were able to measure the abil-
ity of our mirror neurons to respond well
to smiling faces and positive emotions
expressed within the ads we tested;
there were some clear examples of emo-
tion and engagement following the emo-
tions expressed by the characters in the
ads we analysed. And we were able to
use the fMRI analyses to see the impor-
tance of TV ads in creatively engaging
the parts of the brain responsible for pur-
chase decision-making or empathy, both
of which have a huge influence on how our
brains respond to a piece of advertising.
What all of this work demonstrated was
the importance of creativity in TV adver-
tising. The central idea, and the way it is
structured to tell a story, can have a huge
impact on how well an ad works. We
provided irrefutable evidence of that ef-
fect in a study we commissioned along-
side our neuroscience work. We ana-
lysed the IPA databank of entries to the
annual Advertising Effectiveness Awards
across the last eight years and com-
pared the performance of those that had
won major creative awards against those
that hadn’t. Although the creatively
awarded campaigns generally spent sig-
nificantly less on TV airtime, they outper-
formed the non-creatively awarded cam-
paigns on virtually every measure. More
importantly, they were able to drive mar-
ket share far more efficiently – in fact,
they drove share eleven times more effi-
ciently per pound spent than non-crea-
tively awarded campaigns. That is why it
is so important that the creative process
is better understood, and techniques like
neuroscience are perfectly placed to
provide that understanding.
number of our participating advertisers
on how to make simple editing changes
to overcome this problem.
We were also able to see some clear ex-
amples of what makes a TV commercial
TV and Internet Neuro-States0.9
0.8
0.7
0.6
0.5
0.4
0.3Mean
SSTEngagement
TV Internet
MemoryRight
MemoryLeft
VisualAttention Left
VisualAttention Right
Source: Neuro-Insight (SST) UK
Differences in brain activity – TV vs onlineTV associated with much higher engagement and memory encod-ing, but lower levels of visual attention – where the Internet was dominant (consistent across different types of online experience).
television 2011 | international key facts54
the importance of media context
Although the power of good creative
planning and execution has always been
known to affect how well a TV campaign
works, the power of media placement
has always been more difficult to evalu-
ate. Our neuroscience work demonstrat-
ed that where the advertising appears
can also have a profound effect on the
campaign’s success.
We specifically wanted to investigate the
differences between television viewing
and online activity, as our previous re-
search had suggested they played a
strong complementary role. We looked
at brain activity when people watched a
TV programme – complete with com-
mercial breaks featuring our participating
brands – compared to a range of online
activities, such as search, web browsing
and on-demand TV.
Across all of the commercials and online
ad formats that we tested, TV viewing
generated much higher levels of emo-
tional intensity, engagement (almost 30%
higher), detailed long-term memory (al-
most 30% higher) and global long-term
memory (more than 50% higher). As
mentioned earlier, these are the main
predictors of future brand purchase.
Online did generate more brain activity
for both left-brain and right-brain visual
attention (20% to 30% higher than for
TV). This is not surprising, considering
online activity tends to be more task-led,
and online activity requires active deci-
sion-making, which in turn requires at-
tention. What this means is that the high-
er engagement and memory encoding
of TV, mixed with the higher attention
levels online, produce all of the elements
needed for both brand building and re-
sponse generation.
The art of good media planning is not
just about placement but also about tim-
ing. Many of our previous studies had
previously identified a priming effect from
TV to online; if a commercial had already
been seen on TV, then the online pres-
ence of that brand would stand out far
more. When we conducted our study
with the IAB in 2007, awareness of online
display more than doubled if the re-
spondents had seen the TV work first.
We wanted to investigate whether this
phenomenon was related to brain activi-
ty, as well as to test whether it was a
one-way relationship or whether online
could prime TV as well.
We designed this study to investigate the
priming effect in depth. Half of our SST
sample saw the TV programme and ads
first, followed by the online activities; the
other half did it the other way round.
When we compared brain activity levels
across both activities, it became clear that
TV primes online by a significant amount.
Across all of the commercials we tested,
on average levels of engage-ment and LTME for online was much greater if re-spondents had seen the TV commercials for the featured brands first. It was just over 20%
higher for engagement (and a similar
level for emotional intensity) and an aver-
age 30–40% higher for LTME. We were
also able to map out the different priming
effect on different forms of online activity;
as expected, it was pre-rolls (video ads
in on-demand TV programming) where
the effect was the greatest, although we
also observed the effect across web
browsing and banner advertising. This
absolutely supports our earlier work in
this area and shows the added boost TV
advertising provides for online activity.
The effect was not, however, seen in re-
Internet scores without & with TV ad priming
0.9
0.8
0.7
0.6
0.5
0.4
SSTEngagement
Internet 1st TV 1st
MemoryRight
MemoryLeft
VisualAttention Left
VisualAttention Right
Source: Neuro-Insight (SST) UK
TV ads “prime” associated web activity processingSST found that memory and engagement online is enhanced when TV ads were viewed before associated web activity
55television 2011 | international key facts
verse; if respondents
had seen the online ac-
tivity (search, video ads
or website) first, they were
not more responsive to
the TV advertising.
We were also able to
identify some other media effects from
the neuroscience. The fMRI analysis
showed the importance of congruence
– TV commercials that were congruent
with the surrounding programming per-
formed significantly better on scores re-
lating to emotional saliency and memory
encoding. We were able to demonstrate
that ads perform better on average in
programmes which are more engaging.
We were also able to demonstrate that
ads which appear in the early part of the
break tended to perform much better
than those that appeared later. These
are all areas in which we would like to
conduct more work, but the neurosci-
ence uncovered media
effects well above what
more traditional re-
search methods have
ever been able to dem-
onstrate.
conclusions
Neuroscience as a media research tool
is still finding its feet, and there is a lot of
work to do in order to “calibrate” it with
actual behaviour. However, much of TV’s
impact is on the emotional, subcon-
scious and implicit mind, and the results
of this study (as with many others) sug-
gests there is a great deal more going on
when people are exposed to TV adver-
tising than those same people are able
to report or articulate for themselves.
What we also found with this study was
that our participating advertisers learned
far more about how their ads are working
than they could normally get from tradi-
tional questionnaire research. It opened
up discussions and insights into how
the creative process worked and where
it could be improved that are beyond
the scope of most creative pre-testing
research.
Finally, it taught us that TV advertis-ing works, often at a very deep level.
It is not just about messages and awareness, it is about creating emotional associa-tions, telling stories, influ-encing the way we feel about brands. That is why television con-
sistently comes out top in major effec-
tiveness studies: it’s all in the mind! ■
David Brennanresearch & strategy Director,
thinkbox
Ads performbetter on average
in programmes which are more
engaging.
Attention
SST: TV commercials affect parts of the brain, associated with:
Long Term Memory Encoding
Engagement
Emotional Direction(attraction or withdrawal)
Emotional Intensity