Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Eating popcorn in the cinema makes people immune to advertising

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Posted by Andrew McCrea (Member # 674) on 10-13-2013, 07:30 PM:

Original article at The Guardian

quote:

Eating popcorn in the cinema makes people immune to advertising
Study by Cologne University concludes that chewing makes advertising ineffective

Eating popcorn in the cinema may be irritating not just for fellow movie goers, but for advertisers: a group of researchers from Cologne University has concluded that chewing makes us immune to film advertising.

The reason why adverts manage to imprint brand names on our brains is that our lips and the tongue automatically simulate the pronunciation of a new name when we first hear it. Every time we re-encounter the name, our mouth subconsciously practices its pronunciation.

However, according to the study published in the Journal of Consumer Psychology, this "inner speech" can be disturbed by chewing, rendering the repetition effect redundant.

For their experiment, the researchers invited a group of 96 people to a cinema to watch a movie preceded by a series of adverts. Half of the participants were given free popcorn throughout the session, the other half only received a small sugar cube which immediately resolved in their mouths.

A test at the end of the screening showed that the adverts had left no effect on those viewers who had chewed their way through popcorn throughout, while the other participants showed positive psychological responses to the products they had encountered in the ads.

"The mundane activity of eating popcorn made participants immune to the pervasive effects of advertising," said Sascha Topolinski, one of the researchers.

He goes as far as implying that his research may spell the end of the traditional popcorn machine in cinema foyers. "This finding suggests that selling candy in movie theaters actually undermines advertising effects, which contradicts present marketing strategies. In the future, when promoting a novel brand, advertising clients might consider trying to prevent candy being sold before the main movie."

Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 10-19-2013, 09:29 PM:

The research may be accurate, but their conclusion is nonsense --what does the exhibitor care if no one buys the advertisers products on the screen? He's made profit on both counts -- he's made profit on the screen time he's already sold to the advertisers; he's made profit for the popcorn sales. Do these Cologne twits really think exhibitors are going to take out their popcorn makers and give up popcorn sales profit? Silly researchers.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 10-19-2013, 11:46 PM:

I have a feeling that if any theater owner got a phone call from an advertising agency saying "We need you to take out your concession counters, because if you don't, we'll pull our ads" the owner would just hang up, thinking it was a prank call.

Posted by Martin McCaffery (Member # 37) on 10-20-2013, 10:33 AM:

Not what you would call a deep study. Maybe half a sugar cube increases the effects of advertising.
Quite frankly, I think most people forget the whole movie the second they walk out of the theatre most of the time.

Posted by Mark Hajducki (Member # 1732) on 10-20-2013, 11:07 AM:

Some more information about the study method in a BBC News article.

quote:
To investigate the effects of popcorn on memory, researchers at Cologne University invited 96 people to a cinema to watch a movie, preceded by a sequence of adverts.

Half of the group was given popcorn, which was replenished throughout the screening, while the rest received a small sugar cube.

They were shown genuine commercials for existing products which were, crucially, unfamiliar to the German participants - for example, for the Scandinavian butter Lurpak.

A week later, the participants were invited to a laboratory and asked to rate a series of products, including some of those which had been advertised.

The sugar cube group displayed preferences for the advertised products, but the popcorn munchers did not.

In a second study, 188 people were shown adverts in similar circumstances, then given money to donate to charity.

Again, the sugar cube sample tended to give money to charities that had been advertised in the cinema, but the participants who had been eating during the screening showed no such preference.

"The mundane activity of eating popcorn made participants immune to the pervasive effects of advertising," said Sascha Topolinski, one of the researchers.

The study posits that repetition of brand names is essential in imprinting them in our consciousness

"Particularly for novel brands, excessive exposure and repetition is necessary to establish the brand name in the first place," wrote the authors.

"Remember your initial irritation upon encountering the names Yahoo, Google and Wikipedia for the first time; now they are imprinted in your brain."

Mr Topolinski goes so far as to suggest that advertisers may try to boycott popcorn.

"This finding suggests that selling candy in movie theatres actually undermines advertising effects, which contradicts present marketing strategies.

"In the future, when promoting a novel brand, advertising clients might consider trying to prevent candy being sold before the main movie."

Cinema-owners may not be so keen, though. On average, popcorn is sold at a 900% mark-up, according to economics professor Richard McKenzie at University of California - Irvine.

It is worth noting that the products advertised were not previously known to the viewers (foreign brands were used). To notice a new brand will require a lot more attention than to reinforce the knowledge of an existing brand.

Posted by Ken Lackner (Member # 1002) on 10-20-2013, 11:58 AM:

quote:
Half of the participants were given free popcorn throughout the session, the other half only received a small sugar cube which immediately resolved in their mouths.

Um. What am I missing here? Are they also trying to study the effects of sugar on advertisement retention? If not, why not give the other half nothing? Wouldn't that be more accurate for the control group? [Confused]

quote:
This finding suggests that selling candy in movie theatres actually undermines advertising effects, which contradicts present marketing strategies.

I thought we're talking about popcorn here. The group that was given nothing but sugar apparently retained the ads better than the group that was given popcorn, and doesn't candy contain massive amounts of sugar?

Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 10-20-2013, 07:08 PM:

quote: Frank Angel
The research may be accurate, but their conclusion is nonsense --what does the exhibitor care if no one buys the advertisers products on the screen? He's made profit on both counts -- he's made profit on the screen time he's already sold to the advertisers; he's made profit for the popcorn sales. Do these Cologne twits really think exhibitors are going to take out their popcorn makers and give up popcorn sales profit? Silly researchers.

Well, it’s all about the future I guess? Maybe, the exhibitor should care, probably not explicitly about this research (at least not yet). But once advertising in cinemas is deemed to be ineffective by a great bunch of advertisers, things might change for the "worse". (Actually, I tend to avoid venues that feed me with an endless string of commercials for a movie I already paid for.)

quote: Ken Lackner
Um. What am I missing here? Are they also trying to study the effects of sugar on advertisement retention? If not, why not give the other half nothing? Wouldn't that be more accurate for the control group?

Yeah, I also didn’t get that one. The conclusion was that the problem is “chewing”. The sugar cubes apparently melted in the mouth, so no chewing was necessary. But why was it necessary for the control group to eat anything at all? Also, they only tried this with popcorn vs. sugar cubes?!

Either the articles are skipping a lot of essential information, or this research cannot be taken serous in any way.

Posted by Martin McCaffery (Member # 37) on 10-20-2013, 08:45 PM:

quote:
The conclusion was that the problem is “chewing”

Your average movie goer can't watch commercials and chew gum at the same time [evil]

Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 10-21-2013, 01:11 AM:

It says to me that the movie industry thinks nothing of its moviegoers, the product sold and the service provided but, instead, they think of them as "targets" from which to extract revenue.

That some researcher who has little to no connection with the movie industry thinks this way and proposes that movie theater owners should think this way shows me that the cinema business is dead or will be dead in a short period of time.

What happened to the times when business owners served their customers instead of the other way around?

Posted by Chris Slycord (Member # 4239) on 10-21-2013, 02:57 AM:

quote: Randy Stankey
That some researcher who has little to no connection with the movie industry thinks this way and proposes that movie theater owners should think this way shows me that the cinema business is dead or will be dead in a short period of time.

Why does some researcher concluding that cinema owners should behave a certain way pose or predict certain doom for the industry/owners?

Posted by Lyle Romer (Member # 1266) on 10-21-2013, 06:26 AM:

This may be the dumbest study/conclusion ever. Unless advertisers are willing to pay over $3 per set of eyes it would make no sense for exhibitors to prioritize ads over concession sales.

Think about how ridiculous that ad rate would have to be. Even if you ran 4 minutes of ads it would be .75 per minute per customer. For a Super Bowl ad that would translate to over $37 Million for a 30 second spot.

Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 10-21-2013, 08:52 AM:

quote: Chris Slycord
Why does some researcher concluding that cinema owners should behave a certain way pose or predict certain doom for the industry/owners?

Societal attitude. That's the way the public, at large, think about movie theaters.

Customers are little more than cattle to be herded into corrals and bombarded with subtle to not-so-subtle messages designed to stimulate them to buy a particular product.

A Brave, New World. Just put your hand on the feelie pad.

Posted by Jonathan Goeldner (Member # 4854) on 10-21-2013, 09:24 AM:

funny, I eat popcorn to stay awake [thumbsup]