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Tampa Professor Studies What Makes Ads Like 'Magic Fridge' Memorable
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Published: February 3, 2008
TAMPA - Can a Super Bowl commercial be too clever?
"Yes, if it misses the goal of establishing a brand name and doesn't help the bottom line," says Stephen Blessing, a University of Tampa psychology professor who has done research that tests people's memory of Super Bowl ads.
The main goal should be to sell the product, not the commercial, Blessing says, noting that the creative people who make the commercials can get carried away trying to outdo one another.
"The commercials that try to be too funny or too glitzy and forget to sell the product come up the shortest," he says. "Humor and creativity are useful tools, but advertisers need to remember to put their brand in there because that is what they are selling."
Last year, Blessing and Lisa Haverty, of Brain on Brand, a Boston advertising consulting firm, attempted to measure the most memorable commercials from Super Bowl XL.
Nearly a year after the big game, Blessing surveyed 84 people to gauge what they remembered about the ads that ran.
He found that viewers seldom made a definitive connection between the commercials and the product being sold. But when a connection is made, it can stick.
"Thirty-three percent remembered who played and who won the game, but 46 percent remembered Budweiser's Magic Fridge ad," he says,
That commercial, which also topped USA Today's annual poll of favorite commercials, featured a refrigerator stocked with Bud Light with the ability to disappear to keep unwelcome guests from grabbing the brew.
The fridge disappears via a revolving wall that, unbeknown to the fridge's owner, spins it into the adjoining apartment. For the guys next door, it becomes the "magic fridge" - an idol to be worshipped.
Blessing, whose research involves cognitive skills, recalls a striking commercial that had a beautiful model rising up out of the water being followed by a car.
"It was dramatic with blacks and whites and a monochrome look, but no one could remember that it was for the Cadillac Escalade," he says.
He says there was a commercial in which a caveman tried to send something with a pterodactyl and his boss yelled at him for not using FedEx. But some people remembered it as a UPS ad, and a few thought maybe it was Geico.
"When people remember the commercial but believe the brand was a competitor's, we refer to that as 'brand fuzziness,'" Blessing says.
"Honda ran an ad that the majority of people thought was Ford's. In essence, Honda spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to do an ad for Ford."
He says no one remembered the amusing commercials for AmeriQuest Mortgage Co., which had a short-lived "Don't Judge Too Quickly" campaign.
In one spot, two airplane passengers are jostled by turbulence and accidentally end up in what appears to be a comprising position.
"It was funny and was scored well with viewers after the game, but in our study, no one remembered it was for AmeriQuest," Blessing says.
"From a cognitive standpoint, this isn't surprising because what does being on an airplane have to do with mortgages?" he says. "The brand was only visually mentioned in the last five seconds of the ad."
Blessing and Haverty use a method that they call CogScore, which can be used to scientifically predict which commercials might be best remembered. Their results were presented at the annual meeting of the Cognitive Science Society.
"There are two simple things that advertisers should keep in mind in order to increase brand memory," Blessing says. "First, keep it simple. Don't present too much information, and make sure that any visual message doesn't interfere with a verbal message.
"Second, make sure to link the brand with what is going on in the commercial. We have all seen commercials where you don't know what the product is or they wait till the last five seconds to reveal the product. The viewer might remember the commercial, but they will likely forget the brand.
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