Ad study unveils how to create the buying mood

By DITA DE BONI

A three-year study just completed may prove useful to advertisers trying to identify the most potent mixture of mood, target demographic and advertising placement.

In short, the study finds that ads which use empathy work very well on females, and the effect is strengthened if the ad is shown after a tear-jerker movie.

But males and "masculine" females respond better to a happy ad after a soapy story or an ad full of pathos after a comedy.

University of Auckland senior lecturer in marketing, Brett Martin, has just finished the study, involving 555 people, and says he was motivated to look at the area of mood-induced programming because in the past ads have been looked at in isolation, rather than as a programming package.

"There's a chain reaction that goes on: what we think about an ad influences what we think about a brand, which in turn influences our intention to purchase," he says.

Gender - the type largely developed through social programming - is also a vital part of the equation.

"A lot of advertising research tends to treat consumers as a group rather than looking at gender differences too, but the research suggests advertisers need to take those into account," says Mr Martin.

Respondents in the study were shown either a happy programme (The Simpsons) or a sad programme (a documentary on cancer).

The ads following the programmes were also either happy (people dancing and smiling) or sad (a woman being jostled in the street as she thinks about her ex-boyfriend).

After each programme and ad, participants were asked to rate their mood.

Females and "feminine males" responded best to the sad-programme/sad-ad combination, and "can use a sad ad where they can empathise with a character in the ad to make themselves feel better," he says.

Men and "masculine women," on the other hand, reacted better to ads which were opposite in mood to the programme they had watched and the empathy approach "doesn't work" on that group.

"Males prefer to distract themselves, they like variety, something different. For women, even if the product is not prominent in the ad, the impact of the ad will be greater, drawing them into the situation presented," he says.

Mr Martin says that although he is not sure whether mood - "such an intangible concept"- is used by many marketers, the research could prove valuable to finding the most effective advertising placement.