Their research examined the effect of other advertising on an ad for a CPG brand.
Looking at political ads, the researchers had found them to generate negative emotions in viewers regardless whether they were positive or negative ads. Emotional priming led to a negative impact on viewers’ reception of subsequent brand advertising, i.e. viewers rated the brand’s reputation, product performance, and value lower.
Extending this to other brand ads, an ad for an insurance company that generated negative emotion was found to negatively impact subsequent evaluations of the CPG brand.
Summarizing the findings and implications of this work:
- The context in which an ad is viewed must not be ignored.
- Advertisers should consider putting distance between their ad and other negative ads (e.g. political) in their media buy. Or go for the first position in the pod.
- When pre-testing creative, ensure the context in which the ad is seen aligns to the actual media context in which the ad will be viewed.