Effects of Using a Nonverbal (Musical) Cue on Recall and Playback of Television Advertising: Implications for Advertising Tracking

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to understand the influence of nonverbal (musical) elements on long-term memory for advertising and relationship of memory for such elements to memory for verbal elements of advertising elicited by traditional verbal cues. The study uses the dual coding framework as the basis for generating specific hypotheses about consumer memory for a television advertising campaign in response to both a verbal and a nonverbal (musical) cue. These hypotheses are tested using data generated from a representative sample of prospective buyers who were within the target audience for a broadcast television advertising campaign in a natural viewing environment. The analysis focused on the verbatim playback of the ad “trace” generated in memory in response to both verbal and nonverbal cues. The findings suggest that the responses to the nonverbal (musical) cue evoke more responses involving images and visual associations. More important, the ad “trace” retrieved from memory in response to the non-verbal (musical) cue adds power to a model predictive of the consumer's consideration set of alternatives. The results have important implications for understanding advertising response and for the design of advertising tracking research.