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The Marketing Architects
Nerd Alert: The Power of Imagery in Advertising
00:07:09
Welcome to Nerd Alert, a series of special episodes bridging the gap between marketing academia and practitioners. We’re breaking down highly involved, complex research into plain language and takeaways any marketer can use. In this episode, Elena...
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- [00:00]
A
Nerd Alert. Learning is important, right?
- [00:02]
B
Yes, exactly. What a bunch of nerds.
- [00:05]
A
Nerd alert. That's right.
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B
Marketing Architects. Hello and welcome to the Marketing Architects, a research first podcast dedicated to answering your toughest marketing questions. I'm Elena Jasper. I run the marketing team here at Marketing Architects, and I'm joined by my co host, Rob demars, the chief product architect of misfits and machines.
- [00:23]
A
Hello.
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B
Hello. We're back with your weekly Nerd Alert. Every week, I'll take a deep dive into academic marketing research and translate its complex ideas and into simple, understandable language for Rob and, of course, for all of you. Are you ready to nerd out, Rob?
- [00:35]
A
I'm feeling so overly nerdy that my footnotes need odor eaters.
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B
What are odor eaters?
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A
You know what odor eaters are? No. Stick them in your shoes so they don't stink.
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B
Oh.
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A
So it's footnotes and.
- [00:50]
B
Oh, my gosh, that's funny. That's a great one.
- [00:52]
A
Oh, it's always funny when you have to explain it.
- [00:55]
B
I'm sorry, I didn't know what those were. I'm sure some people found that funny. All right, all right. This week I read a study titled Image Fluency and Narrative Advertising Effects, published in the Journal of Advertising at a high level. It answers a deceptively simple question. Why did narrative ads work so well, even when they don't explain much about the product? But before we get too far, Rob, question for you. Why do you think that narrative ads tend to work so well?
- [01:23]
A
It really depends upon the narrative itself. Right. If all of it is about the narrative and not the product. Right. That's not advertising. That's a creative team auditioning for Hollywood. But when the narrative is tightly tied to the product is present throughout the story, when the story ultimately makes both the customer and the brand the hero, then the narrative is really working.
- [01:48]
B
I love it. You're, like, really close to, like, where this study is going to go, so that's perfect. This study shows that, like the narrative, just the thought of it being a story is only part of a story. The real driver is something called image fluency. So image fluency, it's the ease with which people can generate mental images while processing an ad. So not whether they can imagine something, how easy it feels when they do so. This. That ease quietly shapes how much we like the ad and therefore the brand. So to understand image fluency, the researchers break ad processing into a chain of mental steps. There's perpetual fluency, how easy the ad is to visually process conceptual fluency. How familiar the story feels. And comprehensive fluency, how easy it is to understand what's happening. And finally, image fluency, how easy it is to picture the story in your head. These all stack on each other. So if an ad is easy to see, it's easy to understand, it becomes easy to imagine, and then our brains use that ease as information. But let's talk about the experiments they conducted. 2. And in the first one, participants saw ads with identical copy. The only difference was that some ads showed images that matched the story, while others showed generic product images. And when the narrative matching images were shown, they were easier to understand, triggered stronger imagery fluency, generated more positive ad attributes, and led to more favorable brand attitudes. So when people had to work to understand a story, they were a little less likely to enjoy it, even if the idea was. Was good. The second experiment looked at narrative accessibility. Some ads used familiar stories, things people had experienced before. Others used less familiar scenarios. So, Rob, what do you think performed better ads with familiar or less familiar scenarios to the audience?
- [03:28]
A
Gosh, I'm probably going to be told I'm wrong here, but I again, I think both can really be powerful. I love watching the Bear, right? It's a great TV show. It just, it really captures the. An empathetic view of modern work life. And it makes it really dramatic and relatable. And so that makes it super interesting to watch because it, I feel like it really gets. It gets me. Right. But then I also like to watch Keeping up with the Kardashians now and again because it's just so novel. I'm like, I can't relate to it at all. But actually, the fact that it's just so novel captures my interest as well. So I feel like sometimes being super relatable is great, but I also think sometimes being different and more novel in the situation can actually pique interest as well.
- [04:14]
B
No, that's, that's interesting. For this study, they found that familiar was better because I think it says they're trying to. They're mapping it to what is easier to imagine so something feels familiar. Then that drove better ad and brand attitudes. And also, again, image fluency still mattered a lot. With that in mind. So how could a marketer apply this? You can make your stories easier to imagine, not necessarily bigger. It turns out people respond best when the story is easy to follow, grounded in familiar situations, and free of unnecessary complexity. You can use visuals to support your story. If the copy describes an experience, visuals should help people see it. And you could think about being more familiar than Novel more often, being original doesn't mean making things harder to understand. If people can't follow it, it's not doing its job. And finally, not everyone imagines equally. Some people naturally process stories more visually, which makes clarity even more important. All right, time for Rob GPT. Think of an ad like giving someone directions. If you say, go north for a bit, then maybe turn where the trees look familiar, they'll get frustrated, even if the destination is going to be great. But if you say, turn left at the coffee shop, walk two blocks and you'll see it, the journey feels easy. Imagery fluency is that feeling of clear directions when the path is easy to picture. People trust the destination and might even enjoy getting there. Rob, what'd you think of that one?
- [05:33]
A
I think it was good, you know, and maybe the Kardashians are actually relatable. They just have bigger bank accounts. Maybe that's why they're so popular.
- [05:40]
B
Well, I think. I don't know. A lot of people too watch the Kardashians because it's, like, comforting to them and familiar because it's been around for a while. This like part of the family. Yes. This research reminded me a bit of a topic system one has talked about more this year, which is how people abandon advertising too fast. And as human beings, we like things that are familiar. So usually you're abandoning your ad right as it's starting to work. And if you are running advertising that feels familiar, that we recognize, I think it doesn't mean it's the exact same ad, but I think of characters like mayhem and flow and, you know, situations that we're familiar with that can be more effective actually, over time. And this felt similar to that. Like, you want people to be able to easily grasp things, remember them, feel familiar.
- [06:24]
A
Right, Right. I like it.
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B
That's it for this episode of the Marketing Architects. We'd like to thank Taylor De Los Reyes for producing the show. You can connect with us on LinkedIn. And if you like the podcast, please leave us a review. Now go forth and build Great marketing.
- [06:42]
A
I thought that Footnotes and Odor Eaters was pretty funny.
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B
Yeah, I haven't.
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A
I made myself chuckle.
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B
Yeah, no, that's funny. When I got it. I haven't heard of we have those little balls you put in your shoes and stuff to make them smell good, but I didn't know they were called Odor Eaters.
- [07:01]
A
I'm sure. I'm very much dating myself.
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B
Marketing architects.