Seven Sins Of Memory Analysis
Advertising And The Seven Sins Of Memory
Larry Percy
Copenhagen Business School
INTRODUCTION
As if effective marketing communication were not hard enough to achieve, even if we succeed in getting our message attended to and processed, and a positive intention formed, the very nature of memory may step in and upset everything. Memory distortion and plain old forgetting are unfortunate facts of life. The important question, however, is: can we do anything about it? As with most things, if we are to have any hope of dealing with memory problems and their impact upon advertising and other marketing communications, we must first understand what is going on.
In this paper we will be looking at what Daniel Schacter (2001) has called 'the seven …show more content…
Moreover, given our tendency to see ourselves in a positive light, it follows that memories related to ourselves will be seen in a self-enhancing light. This suggests that copy asking people to remember a situation in a positive light should encourage an egocentric memory bias, e.g.: 'remember when you '. In the same way, egocentric bias can result from exaggerating the difficulty of past experiences: 'remember how hard it was to '. This idea is well illustrated in a campaign for National Rail 's Senior Railcard, where a dated-looking picture of a young child is featured, with headlines like 'Remember what it was like to go somewhere for the first time ' and 'Remember how it felt just to let yourself go …show more content…
(1997) What Emotions Really Are. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Hyman, I.E. Jr. & Pentland, J. (1996) The role of mental imagery in the creation of false childhood memories. Journal of Memory and Language, 35, pp. 101117.
LeDoux, J.E. (1996) The Emotional Brain. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Lieberman, M.D., Ochsner, K.N., Gilbert, D.T. & Schacter, D.L. (2000) Do amnesiacs exhibit cognitive dissonance reduction? The role of explicit memory and attention in attitude change. Psychological Science.
Ochsner, K.N. (2000) Are affective events richly recalled or simply familiar? The experience and process of recognizing feelings past. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 124, pp. 242261.
Percy, L., Rossiter, J.R. & Elliott R. (2001) Strategic Advertising Management. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Schacter, D.L. (2001) The Seven Sins of Memory: How the Mind Forgets and Remembers. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.
Schacter, D.L., Israel, L. & Racine, C. (1999) Suppressing false recognition: the distinctiveness heuristic. Journal of Memory and Language, 40, pp. 124.
Simons, D.J. & Levin, D.T. (1998) Failure to detect changes to people during realworld interactions. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 4, pp.
Larry Percy
Copenhagen Business School
INTRODUCTION
As if effective marketing communication were not hard enough to achieve, even if we succeed in getting our message attended to and processed, and a positive intention formed, the very nature of memory may step in and upset everything. Memory distortion and plain old forgetting are unfortunate facts of life. The important question, however, is: can we do anything about it? As with most things, if we are to have any hope of dealing with memory problems and their impact upon advertising and other marketing communications, we must first understand what is going on.
In this paper we will be looking at what Daniel Schacter (2001) has called 'the seven …show more content…
Moreover, given our tendency to see ourselves in a positive light, it follows that memories related to ourselves will be seen in a self-enhancing light. This suggests that copy asking people to remember a situation in a positive light should encourage an egocentric memory bias, e.g.: 'remember when you '. In the same way, egocentric bias can result from exaggerating the difficulty of past experiences: 'remember how hard it was to '. This idea is well illustrated in a campaign for National Rail 's Senior Railcard, where a dated-looking picture of a young child is featured, with headlines like 'Remember what it was like to go somewhere for the first time ' and 'Remember how it felt just to let yourself go …show more content…
(1997) What Emotions Really Are. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Hyman, I.E. Jr. & Pentland, J. (1996) The role of mental imagery in the creation of false childhood memories. Journal of Memory and Language, 35, pp. 101117.
LeDoux, J.E. (1996) The Emotional Brain. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Lieberman, M.D., Ochsner, K.N., Gilbert, D.T. & Schacter, D.L. (2000) Do amnesiacs exhibit cognitive dissonance reduction? The role of explicit memory and attention in attitude change. Psychological Science.
Ochsner, K.N. (2000) Are affective events richly recalled or simply familiar? The experience and process of recognizing feelings past. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 124, pp. 242261.
Percy, L., Rossiter, J.R. & Elliott R. (2001) Strategic Advertising Management. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Schacter, D.L. (2001) The Seven Sins of Memory: How the Mind Forgets and Remembers. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.
Schacter, D.L., Israel, L. & Racine, C. (1999) Suppressing false recognition: the distinctiveness heuristic. Journal of Memory and Language, 40, pp. 124.
Simons, D.J. & Levin, D.T. (1998) Failure to detect changes to people during realworld interactions. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 4, pp.