In the avalanche of content, brands must consider consumers' cognitive fatigue
In this article, Alena Kostyk, EDHEC Associate Professor, describes why, for a brand, getting noticed (although this is difficult!) is not enough, and how dealing with cognitive fatigue is critical to manage consumer engagement.
When launching a (re)branding campaign, companies hope to stand out in a busy and cluttered information space. This task is not easy. The first hurdle is to grab the attention of their intended audience – a scarce resource in the era of digital distractions (1) and content bombardment.
Getting the audience to notice
Much of the brand’s communication efforts can go entirely unnoticed, due to the phenomenon known as “banner blindness” (2). Researchers at the global UX research agency Nielsen Norman Group define “banner blindness” as people’s tendency “to ignore content that resembles ads, is close to ads, or appears in locations traditionally dedicated to ads”. In other words, even when the audience scrolls directly past brand’s communications, they might simply not “see it” or not pay any attention to it.
Contextual advertising (i.e., placing a brand’s messages within related content that the audience is already interested in) can somewhat alleviate this selective attention problem (3). Even so, noticing brand’s content in principle does not guarantee cognitive, emotional, or behavioral engagement. In other words, merely being noticed as a brand does not directly lead to consumers thinking about it, feeling certain emotions about it, or hitting that “like” button.
Getting the audience to engage
Today’s internauts might have low motivation and limited cognitive resources to spare for brand-generated content (4). Marketing researchers have tested a plethora of different techniques that can aid in engaging these online users (5, 6, 7, 8).
One such approach is rooted in the idea of processing fluency – “the subjective experience of ease that consumers can experience when processing information” (9). This experience can range from effortless to highly effortful, and it stands to reason that online users who might be overwhelmed by other information or unmotivated to expand mental effort would engage better with brand content that is fairly easy to process.
For example, in one of Alena Kostyk’s most read papers, she explores people’s engagement with images posted by companies online (10). It turns out that when those brand images are symmetrical (i.e., their left and right side or their top and bottom half look similar), they are easier to process, which generates better social media engagement. The same is true for image contrast, where higher contrast makes mental processing easier, so people like those images more, both figuratively and literally.
In the excitement of unveiling a new (re)branding campaign, it might be easy to forget that the target audience is not sharing the same excitement (yet!). Getting them to notice a brand’s content and engage with it requires careful planning and coordinated marketing efforts that take evolving consumer psychology in digital environments into account.
References
(1) The lost art of concentration: being distracted in a digital world (2018) https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/oct/14/the-lost-art-of-concentration-being-distracted-in-a-digital-world
(2) Pernice, K. (2018). Banner Blindness Revisited: Users Dodge Ads on Mobile and Desktop. https://www.nngroup.com/articles/banner-blindness-old-and-new-findings/
(3) Shepard, B. (2021). The New Rise Of Contextual Advertising. https://www.forbes.com/councils/forbesagencycouncil/2021/07/22/the-new-rise-of-contextual-advertising/
(4) Pittman, M., & Haley, E. (2023). Cognitive load and social media advertising. Journal of Interactive Advertising, 23(1), 33-54 - https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15252019.2022.2144780
(5) Hollebeek, L. D., & Macky, K. (2019). Digital content marketing's role in fostering consumer engagement, trust, and value: Framework, fundamental propositions, and implications. Journal of interactive marketing, 45(1), 27-41 - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1094996818300501
(6) Ashley, C., & Tuten, T. (2015). Creative strategies in social media marketing: An exploratory study of branded social content and consumer engagement. Psychology & marketing, 32(1), 15-27 - https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/mar.20761
(7) Munaro, A. C., Hübner Barcelos, R., Francisco Maffezzolli, E. C., Santos Rodrigues, J. P., & Cabrera Paraiso, E. (2021). To engage or not engage? The features of video content on YouTube affecting digital consumer engagement. Journal of consumer behaviour, 20(5), 1336-1352 - https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cb.1939
(8) Dessart, L., Veloutsou, C., & Morgan-Thomas, A. (2015). Consumer engagement in online brand communities: a social media perspective. Journal of Product & Brand Management, 24(1), 28-42 - https://www.emerald.com/jpbm/article-abstract/24/1/28/255289/Consumer-engagement-in-online-brand-communities-a
(9) Kostyk, A., Leonhardt, J. M., & Niculescu, M. (2021). Processing fluency scale development for consumer research. International Journal of Market Research, 63(3), 353-367 - https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1470785319877137
(10) Kostyk, A., & Huhmann, B. A. (2021). Perfect social media image posts: Symmetry and contrast influence consumer response. European Journal of Marketing, 55(6), 1747-1779 - https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2021-59217-009
Photo by Vitaly Gariev via Unsplash
