How to improve brand recall? Show… or tell?

When it comes to advertising, a crucial factor in determining whether a creative will have an actual impact is formed by consumers’ brand linkage. Even when an ad succeeds in conveying a clear, convincing and appealing message, this ends up being worthless if consumers fail to link it to the advertising brand and hence will be unable to use that message to update their brand attitudes. The more consumers that can correctly recall the advertising brand in a copy test, the better the advertisement’s actual in-market brand linkage. We conducted research that tested how often, and in what ways, the brand’s name and logo should ideally appear in the commercial to enhance brand recall and foster brand linkage.

brand recall as a key to success

To successfully convey a clear, convincing, and appealing message that consumers will link to the advertised brand and use to update their brand attitudes, brand recall is a key element within many market research methods used for such copy testing. It measures the degree to which consumers can correctly recall the brand behind the advertisement to which they have just been exposed. In the pessimistic scenario, they are not able to recall the brand name or worse, they name one of the brand´s competitors instead. The higher the share of consumers that can correctly recollect the memory of an advertised brand in a copy test, the better the advertisement’s actual in-market brand linkage.

Including more brand mentions in creatives is one of the ways advertisers try to improve brand recall. Despite scientific evidence that the usage of brand mentions can make a significant difference in what is and is not remembered of specific stimuli (Simmonds et al. 2020), most studies on the impact of in-ad brand mentions either could not or did not make such a distinction.

brand mentions in TV commercials

To gain a better understanding of this topic, DVJ Insights conducted a study on the impact of brand mentions in TV commercials on viewers’ ability to correctly recall the brand afterwards. The findings will assist advertisers in determining how frequently and in what ways their brand’s name should appear in their next commercial in order to improve brand linkage. The results of our study can help advertisers determine how often and in what ways their brand’s name should ideally appear in their next commercial to foster brand linkage.

Read the full study to see the results.

Three lessons to improve brand recall