WASHINGTON, April 30, 2002 (PRIMEZONE) -- A book unveiling a new theory about the way advertising works has already caused a sensation among European advertising professionals and is set to do the same here in the States.
When the incoming chairman of the AAAA refers to a new book in the centrepiece of his inaugural speech, you can be sure of two things - it's big news and you need to check it out.
Speaking of the dual pressures of recession and ever more restrictive research, Ken Kaess, CEO of DDB said: "Robert Heath, a British Consultant, who worked both on the client and agency-side has written a book, The Hidden Power of Advertising, espousing a theory he refers to as low-involvement processing. This theory contends that people are not inherently interested in advertising or product messages per se. Instead, he finds that people's product choices are based on their feelings about a product at the moment of purchase. These feelings are the result of a number of low involvement impressions: the advertising, the packaging, an enjoyable trip to the brand's web site, a pleasant memory of an interaction with the product itself. Following Heath's theory, instead of focusing on what people tell us directly about a product or commercial, new techniques will need to focus on the emotions and associations a brand communication taps into. Curiously, low involvement does not translate to low impact. It simply means that the way advertising works on people is much subtler than copy tests would have us and our clients believe. For our part, we can't afford to throw our hands up and say there is simply no way to evaluate magic. There is too much at stake not to try."
The Hidden Power of Advertising is probably the biggest and most important development in advertising thinking since AIDA, and will have profound implications for research, branding and advertising practice. It presents a radical new challenge to traditional theories about the way consumers interact with and process brand communication.
For over 70 years the universal assumption has been that advertising is only effective if it consciously persuades consumers to choose a particular brand. In such circumstances attention is critical, which is why most of the advertising industry's creative resource is focused on achieving the highest possible levels of interest and awareness. But how is it that advertising can and frequently does work, even when consumers have no conscious awareness of having seen or heard the ads themselves?
Recent neuroscientific research has shown that the brain's capacity to absorb certain types of brand information is far greater than we ever imagined. Building on these findings, Robert Heath is able to explain with exceptional clarity how advertising creates meaningful and enduring brand associations in our minds, even when we pay virtually no attention to it. These associations exert a powerful influence on our intuitive feelings, and can unknowingly drive us to choose and buy particular brands.
This mechanism - low involvement processing - turns out to be an especially effective way of getting through to consumers, who in general have little or no interest in learning about brands. Heath shows that low involvement processing has been a major factor behind the success of mega-brands in markets as diverse as insurance, cars, toilet paper, cigarettes and beer.
The Hidden Power of Advertising is a must-read for those involved with creating, planning and researching effective advertising, advertising and marketing academics, and anyone interested in the field of advertising and marketing communications
Praise for The Hidden Power of Advertising
"This is the best thing I have read for years...the implications for the future of conventional big budget TV advertising and traditional quantitative brand and advertising pre-testing tracking research make this mandatory reading for marketing professionals." Wendy Gordon, The Fourth Room
"In a well-written review of evidence from cognitive psychology theory and advertising literature, Heath builds the case for low involvement processing, whereby advertising plants branding seeds in the implicit memory, to powerful effect. A must-read..." Rob White, Fallon Minneapolis
"This is a rare beast: a new theory about advertising that makes retrospective sense of old instinctive practices. It is immediately exciting and sure to prove important." Jeremy Bullmore, WPP Group plc
"A great read ...It certainly will open the eyes of many to what branding is about." Simon Broadbent, BrandCon
"Mr Heath has had the presence of mind to consider the mind the way we all experience it - as an emotive rather than a motive construction machine. Marketing managers, take heed." Dr Robert D. Deutsch, DDB Worldwide
"If you only have time to read one book about how advertising works, choose this one. Robert Heath's new work provides a rational explanation for key aspects of brand behaviour that other theories to date have been unable to reach." Mike Waterson, Advertising Association
About the author
Robert Heath started out as an engineer. Apprenticed to Rolls Royce in the late 1960s, he read Mechanical Sciences at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, before starting a career in marketing with Unilever.
In the past 30 years he has worked in line marketing, advertising management and planning, research and brand consultancy. In the process he has studied literally hundreds of different brands and advertising campaigns. The results led him in 1998 to commence an investigation into low involvement processing, since when he has published over 20 papers and articles on the subject and been awarded prizes by both the International Journal of Advertising and the UK Market Research Society. He is currently reading a doctorate at Bath University School of Management.
Publication details
The Hidden Power of Advertising By Robert Heath ISBN 1 84116 093 8 128 pages; $67.50 plus s&h
U.S. Contact details
For further information about this press release and The World Advertising Research Center contact: Eva Kasten, World Advertising Research Center, 1000 Thomas Jefferson Street, NW Suite 512, Washington DC 20007, U.S.A
U.K. Contact details
For further information about this press release and The World Advertising Research Center contact: Sarah Miller, World Advertising Research Center, PO Box 69, Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire RG9 1GB, U.K.