Want better recall for your ads?

Like, what does it take to get people to remember that your ad was for YOU?

DVJ Insights did a lovely study to explore this issue in the Netherlands. (Go Oranje!)

They asked 1,200 people to watch a pod of 8 TV ads, answer some “distraction” questions, and then try to remember what brands were advertised.

The 8 ads were pulled randomly from a pool of 48 ads for 48 different brands. 

The team also counted how many times the brand was mentioned verbally or shown visually in each ad. Visual mentions ranged from 0 to 7 times per ad; verbal mentions ranged from 0 to 6. And visual/verbal combo mentions ranged from 0 to 3.

After getting a lot of “I don’t remember” and “uh, I think it was for Lindt…”, they did some math to find out how much brand recall would change given different numbers and types of mentions. (Go math!)

Increasing the number of mentions increased the chance of recall for all types of mentions, from a 17% boost to a 56% boost. 

Verbal-visual combo mentions had the biggest impact on brand recall even at one mention (+31%). 

Verbal-visual combos also had the biggest improvement with the fewest number of mentions — with just 3 mentions, brand recall jumped 56%.

Caveats? Of course! I mean, does the Dutch side wear orange? 🩳

But some lessons:

🍊 Repetition helps. (Not rocket science, but still nice to see.)

🍊 Audio mentions are powerful. Combo mentions are even more powerful.

🍊 Repetition helps.

🍊 Also, repetition helps.