Effect between stimuli and suction
These days ZaK, the "newspaper for stimulating communication", has been sent to 2500 interested people. For In Flagranti, this is more than just self-promotion. With the magazine, the agency also wants to explore the power of stimuli.
Stimulus is one of the original tricks of advertising. But do stimuli still work in advertising at all? Can you advertise without stimuli? And how do you advertise with them? These are the questions posed by the strategists and creatives at the In Flagranti agency in Lyss in their latest research. The results were published in the agency's own magazine ZaK, or "Zeitung für anregende Kommunikation". The magazine has a circulation of 2500 and is sent to "friends and clients". However, self-promotion is on a very small scale. "Up to 90 percent of the content is for the research topic," explains Lorenz Schmid, partner and head of consulting at In Flagranti. "We are more than an advertising agency," the self-promotion says. With a claim like that, he says, it is therefore crucial to keep coming up with new knowledge and to be able to deal with it. "We want to transfer, deepen and sensitize knowledge," says Franziska Wehrle, Head of Marketing.
When searching for topics, "we're always interested in those that get lost in the big howl," explains copywriter and strategist Jon Andrea Florin. "There are new buzzwords all the time. At the moment, transmedia storytelling is all the rage. But we're questioning supposed certainties, such as knowing what makes the average Swiss tick or how stimuli work." According to Florin, In Flagranti is convinced: "Attraction is a topic that is slowly being neglected because of all the content. But appeal is something that is closely linked to advertising. It doesn't work without it. Not even in nature: No deer can advertise rutting without a rutting cry. No flower catches the eye without attractants or colorful blossoms." In order to get to the bottom of the phenomenon and the mechanisms of the stimulus effect, In Flagranti has started research together with the specialists from Management Tools in Beckenried.
"This company understood perfectly how to respond to our problem," Schmid finds. As a basis for the stimulus study, various teams at In Flagranti designed ads for the fictitious mineral water "Zakua" that were as differentiated as possible. Each of these was to work distinctly with a stimulus. Motto: "What makes me curious?" After studying countless works from the broad field of advertising, four basic stimuli were defined for this purpose: The Kindli scheme, "with the Jöh effect, which also works with animals." - Sex and eroticism, "what immediately comes to mind". - Physical stimuli, "which has a very direct effect on the senses" - and finally irritation. A fictional ad was designed for each of these four stimuli. "We would not have been able to test the four stimuli with existing products, because with well-known advertisements there is a large disturbance factor at the trade show," says Florin.
At Management Tools, the ads were then presented to 40 test subjects. The course of gaze and the time spent on the individual elements were measured within 5 seconds. "It was impressive to us how a strong stimulus can absorb the whole perception. True, the attention is given. You look, you engage with what's shown, which is also what the heat maps show. But too strong a stimulus sucks everything away from the brand. No one knew what it was about anymore, let alone what the brand was called," Schmid also noted. Another insight: within a second, you have to have understood an ad, otherwise it falls through. "What is highly irritating is not liked," says Florin.
The results can of course not flow 1:1 into the further work. In advertising, "a lot of gut feeling" is still involved in the design. "But we learned a lot and had some stimulating discussions during the analysis," Franziska Wehrle reveals. The next research idea is therefore already in the pipeline.
Andreas Panzeri
