To see, hear or both? Sensory cue effects on memory

A main component of advertising is to successfully link advertisements to sensory cues that facilitate brand name memory. This thesis investigated participants' memory for brand names when: (1) information was presented verbally (written, spoken, written and spoken), and (2) nonverbal information (product picture or instrumental background music) was added into verbal-only advertisements. In an experiment, 347 participants at the University of Guelph were assigned to one of the 3 X 3 between-subjects factorial design treatment conditions. The first factor was mode of verbal code with three levels of modes: written, spoken, and written and spoken. The second factor was mode of nonverbal code with three levels of modes: no nonverbal information (verbal information only), picture, and instrumental background music. The dependent variable tested was participants' explicit memory (recall, aided recall, and recognition) for brand names. Results show that memory was significantly improved when (1) written and spoken information were presented simultaneously (versus spoken alone), (2) picture was shown along with spoken information (versus spoken alone), (3) background music was combined with written information (versus spoken and background music), and (4) written and picture were displayed concurrently (versus spoken and background music). The findings from the study suggest that advertising practitioners can exploit a particular and different combination of sensory cues to effectively execute advertising messages.