Recall - Recognition Complementarities: Assessing the Role of Outdoor Media as Catalyst in Modern Advertising

Abstract

Recognition and recall are important components of effective advertising. The impact of different media over recall and recognition is also different. The debate is centered around which group of media has an edge over the others in terms of advertising effectiveness, while accepting the notion about their effectiveness in this regard. However it ignores the mutual interdependency and nature of interdependency between the two categories of media, i.e. electronic and non-electronic media, especially the outdoor media. In the present study, we have taken the same issue for systematic investigation to find out the mutual interdependency and its characteristics in a particular region of India having its own unique socio-economic and cultural features. In this sense, our basic question is whether the outdoor media has primary or secondary role, or supplementary and catalyst role in advertising effectiveness. It appears that television (TV) media has a crucial role in initiating and creating interest in ads, but the strategic role of sustaining and promoting interests in ads is in the hands of other media exposures, viz., outdoor, in-store display, etc. In this sense, outdoor and other media, including in-store display, have the role of a catalyst for TV media-created ad interests and recall at the point of purchase.