Current Topic: Advertising

Why Your Brain Falls for the Casting Trick

In my neighborhood there are two coffee shops. The first serves only white, middle-aged businessmen in suits. The second buzzes with customers of all ages, ethnicities, and styles. Without reading a single menu, which shop do you think offers more variety?

Your brain just made a snap judgment. And it probably got it wrong.

This isn't about coffee shops. It's about a fascinating quirk in how we process information. When we see different types of people using a product, we automatically assume the product must cater to different types of needs. It's logical, intuitive, and an interesting tool for marketing.

Stanford researchers call this the Variety Perception Effect. And smart marketers are already using it to make their brands look bigger without spending a dime on product development.

Imagine walking down the cleaning aisle and spotting the newest plug-in room freshener with packaging adorned with scrumptious looking cinnamon rolls. You can almost smell it, right? That’s not just your imagination, it’s a powerful psychological phenomenon at play. 

A recent study by Sharma and Estes (2024) reveals that pictures of scented objects can actually make us "smell" them in our minds, influencing how we evaluate and choose products. Olfactory imagery can play a vital role in consumer decision making.

There’s a heated debate among advertisers about the role of attention in ad effectiveness. More specifically, the interplay between duration and frequency causes quite the controversy.

On the one hand, there’s the faith of ‘Total Time Hypothesis’. Its proponents argue that advertising effectiveness grows linearly with the amount of time devoted to that ad. So the more precious seconds of viewer attention, the better. This resembles the classical view of ad effectiveness, and it favors duration over frequency.

Go back to the last video ad that caught your eye. Was it the creative that stopped you from scrolling? Was it the message? Or perhaps it was the way it made you feel? While you might know why you liked it, your brain and body were telling a different story through subtle signals you weren't even aware of - small expressions on your face and tiny changes in your skin's sweat response.

Think about Netflix’s "Ta-Dum," NBC’s iconic Chimes, McDonald's "I’m Lovin’ It" Jingle, or T-Mobile’s catchy tune at the end of commercials. Chances are, you can hear each of these sounds in your head just by reading their names.  

Consumers are constantly bombarded with ads and cutting through the noise has never been more challenging. But what if the key to cutting through the noise isn’t in what you see, but in what you hear - sound itself? Enter Sonic branding.