Hi Pekka,

Thanks for the comments about the book. Ultimately if it makes people think then it served its purpose. Most of all I hoped it will make people think about the interaction between creativity, media planning and research (which is what you are asking about).

First of all: Robert and I have diametrically opposed views about the way that advertising can be effective, as I made clear in the book, and he made clear in his award winning paper. There is a website that argues the issues he raises and I have link to this in the tas on the left under ‘Robert Heath’.

Personally I like Robert, and has been his host in SA. I believe that the new areas that we are moving into need a lot of debate. At least he proposes a view that leads to debate. Most of his views are based on the same material that I use, we just reach different conclusions. His conclusions are very obviously wrong, in my opinion.

Let me comment on the statements that you make:

For the sake of argument, do you think that it is possible to like
an ad "unconsciously"?

You are entering a dangerous area of the sub-conscious etc. ( as a psychology student you will know what I am talking about).

In general you know what you like or what you don’t.

The Freudian argument about the sub-conscious involves more that you are scared of something (phobia) but you don’t rationally know why.

In other words you know how you feel, just not why.

In other words: it is unlikely that you consciously do not like an ad, but “unconsciously” like it.

Let's say that we make an audience watch an ad which has been rated
as "low-attention". What if this audience likes the ad now, when
they are forced to pay attention towards it?
Could it be that this ad would have been effective also when there
was not this kind of forced attention but we could rather just prove
that the audience has been exposed to this ad number of times.

Now you are redefining the first question in operational terms: ‘forced exposure’ and ‘frequency of exposure’.

It sounds as if you are describing a situation where an ad is pre-tested and gets a high ‘liking score’, but then when tracked did not get ‘Attention’ (or memorability), but you think it might have if it had a higher frequency of exposure.

If my re-wording your question in operational terms is what you asked then the answer is that you are right.

I have seen in the ADTRACK database some advertisements that achieved high liking in pre-test, and then not get memorability (attention) when launched. Invariably these ads build their penetration power when the frequency of exposure is increased.

In other words the problem was not the advertisement, but the media scheduling!

We believe in South Africa that this is one of the most important applications of the ADTRACK system: identifying media scheduling problems that clients might believe are creative execution problems.

I hope this answers your question.

In short it seems to me that the answer to your question would be: “YES, but it has nothing to do with Roberts’ views or the ‘unconscious’”.

I think the question you asked is very broad and opens many areas of debate. I would like to have views raised by others.