Persuasive Advertising - J. Scott Armstrong [160]
Because logos can connote information and emotion across languages and cultures, they help in global marketing. They are important for providing brand identity when advertising to a target market that is unable to read, or when the target market uses many languages (as in South Africa, China, and India). Throughout the world, for example, Nike is recognized simply by its logo.
8.5.1. In a long-term advertising program, emphasize brand identifiers
Associate the logo with the brand name. Nike included its name in the Swoosh from its beginning in 1971 up through the 1980s; once it was well recognized, the image was sufficient without the brand name. However, few companies ever reach the point where they can omit the name and still be recognized. A safer strategy is to use the name as part of the logo.
By drawing upon common objects, such as a heart or a smiley face, the logo or mascot can help make an unknown brand seem familiar. However, the danger is that the logo will not become distinctive.
The logo should appear on all media, if possible. This includes print ads, websites, TV commercials, stationery, packaging, signage, gifts, and products.
For motion ads, Rossiter and Bellman (2005) recommend devoting two seconds to the brand identifiers. They also recommend mentioning the brand name orally.
Brand sign-offs add emphasis. Waste Management used both a visual and auditory sign-off in its award-winning TV campaign in the 1980s: “Waste Management— Helping the world dispose of its problems.”
For still media ads, place the logo where it will lead to instant recognition. The average amount of space for the brand elements (logo, mascot, and trademark) ranged from 9.3 percent (high-involvement, utilitarian products) to 15 percent (low-involvement, unfamiliar, hedonic products) of an ad’s total surface area. It is probably best to err on the side of making the logo larger than these averages, rather than smaller (Rik Pieters, personal communication, 2006).
In an analysis of 1,363 full-page Dutch magazine ads, which Rik Pieters (personal communication, 2006) did specifically for this book, about 12 percent of the space in full-page magazine ads was devoted to brand identifiers (primarily logos). Pieters found that the space for logos tended to be larger for unknown brands, for hedonic rather than utilitarian products, and for low rather than high-involvement products.
For websites, place the logo in the upper left-hand corner of each page (for languages in which people read from left to right). Nielsen (2000, p. 178), a web-design expert, stated that this is the number one rule for navigation. In addition, users should be able to click on the logo to return to the initial screen, making it functional as well.
Brand identifiers are widely used. For example, our WAPB analysis found that of the 480 tested full-page print ads by leading U.S. firms, 80 percent used brand identifiers. Of these, three-fourths used logos or trademarks, and one-fourth used icons or mascots.
Stewart and Furse (1986) found that 95 percent of the TV commercials reviewed used a visual brand sign-off and 71 percent used an auditory brand sign-off.
Evidence on the effects of brand identifiers
A lab experiment using nine split-book field experiments on magazine ads found that the use of a trademark increased calls from customers by 24 percent compared with a same-size ad that used the brand name only: that is, without a trademark (Abernethy and Laband 2004).
Our analysis of quasi-experimental data on print ads supported the use of band identifiers:
Print ads with brand identifiers had higher recall and persuasion. We found 26 pairs of WAPB ads in which one ad used a brand identifier, while the other did not. Recall for ads with identifiers was 1.10 times better than for the other ads.
Turning to non-experimental data, an eye-tracking study of 24 subjects who viewed 24 full-page ads on cars and skin care found that the subjects invariably looked at the