On Sunday, April 5th, National Public Radios Weekend Edition Saturday program included an interview with Professor Gavan J. Fitzsimmons of Dukes Fuqua School of Business focused on the findings of a recent research study. In the study, Professor Gavan Fitzsimmons and his colleagues found that even subliminal exposure to brands may cause individuals to act in accordance with the traits that accompany those brands. Participants who were exposed to the Apple logo during the experiment, for example, generated more creative results than those exposed to the IBM logo.
Viewed through a "jobs-to-be-done lens, this research may have a significant impact on the products with which consumers choose to surround themselves on a daily basis. Imagine using Nike or Under Armor not just because the clothes are functional or comfortable, but because they have the sort of brand association that addresses emotional and mental jobs like "keep me focused or "motivate me to exercise. What potential power for marketers and consumers!
In Professor Fitzsimmons study, two separate groups of students were given a visual task to complete. The students watched a projection that alternately displayed numbers and patterns and were asked to sum the numbers as they were displayed. During the display, however, four versions of a companys logo would individually flash on the screen for 13 milliseconds, so quick as to ensure the impression wouldnt consciously be noticed by the participants. After completing the visual task, the students were then asked to list unusual, but not ordinary or impossible, uses for a brick. The total number of uses generated, as well as the creativity of those uses, was assessed to compare the overall creativity of each group of students.
In the first test, when researchers exposed one group to the Apple logo and the other to the IBM logo, the Apple-exposed students generated, on average, a longer list of uses for the brick as well as a more creative list of uses than the IBM-exposed students. In the second test, researchers primed students with either the Disney Channel or E! Channel logos and had each group complete a task designed to assess the level of honesty with which they answered questions. The results again showed a difference. On average, the students exposed to the Disney Channel logo proved more honest than those exposed to the E! Channel logo. The researchers also verified that none of the participants of either study could identify that they had viewed logos during the process.
The researchers concluded a paper on their study by raising intriguing questions on the impact of such brand priming on social activity: "If a consumer drives past a FedEx logo, will he drive faster? If he drinks from a can of Pepsi at a work meeting, will he behave more youthfully? Of course, more research needs to be conducted to truly demonstrate repeated causality. But in the meantime, it is interesting to contemplate the competitive advantage those companies, whose brands have a desirable impact on consumer behavior, might have over those companies whose brands have a less positive, neutral, or negative impact.