Mindful Immersion: Curating Awe-Inducing Experiences to Increase Brand Salience

Abstract

Mindfulness is gaining traction as an advertising tactic to boost audience engagement. Despite this, existing research provides limited insight into the impact of advertisements with integrated mindfulness elicitations, particularly regarding the mechanisms that might alter short-term memory retention. In the research, five studies examined how integrating elicitations of mindfulness, specifically through attention to the body, can be integrated into advertising. The studies explored how such integrated advertisements can manifest awe in consumers, thereby enhancing their immersion in the advertisement. Specifically, ads that incorporate mindful body cues (open body awareness, body scan, body senses, breath cues) versus a control condition absent of these cues enhance purchase intention and brand salience among viewers. This research practically introduces and defines mindfulness-integrated advertising to the field and theoretically illustrates the potential of mindfulness to influence information processing by elevating awe and immersion, and subsequently short-term memory, thereby boosting brand salience.