Sit up and listen
We always think about reach, frequency, and cost per
impression when we evaluate media choices for an ad we want to
place. But we rarely if ever integrate the message with not
where, but how, the target audience receives it.
Research on how the body position of the recipient of a
message affects how they react to the message now shows that
both the ‘how’ and the ‘where’ matter. (Harmon-Jones, E., &
Peterson, C. K. (in press). Supine Body Position Reduces
Neural Response to Anger Evocation. Psychological Science)
Researchers found that when respondents were in a reclining
position, they were less likely to react by demonstrating
approach motivation, or the urge to move toward something.
Approach motivation is closely linked to positive activation.
Since this positive activation of emotion is what we usually
seek to elicit in advertising messages, that turns out to be
an important finding. If the viewer or listener is in a
reclining position, they are less likely to experience
positive approach motivation (defined as joy that urges one to
move toward the source of the joy).
The obvious issue here is television watching. Print ads,
radio, and interactive media are much more likely to be
accessed from a sitting position, compared to television (at
least that’s my assumption, there doesn’t seem to be much data
on that.) So the richness of television’s multimedia
experience may be working against the “LaZBoy factor”.
So how do we get the audience to sit up and listen? Maybe
with DRTV we need to get people to sit up with a free
sweepstakes offer or something, to increase their approach
motivation for the real offer.
And how about you? Do you sit up when you watch TV, or are you
lying down ignoring all those expensive ads we run?
