An analysis of the role of liking on the memorial response to advertising

After the publication of the results of the Advertising Research Foundation’s Copy Research Validity Project, ad liking has been extensively used as copy test predictor of campaign’s performance. Less favourable findings have been recently presented on the basis of its delayed effects. This paper addresses the question of carryover effects of ad liking on the recall, jointly modelling the patterns of recall, ad pressure and ad liking, by means of the specification of a vector autoregressive model with GRPs acting as exogenous variable. The approach is innovative since literature has mainly investigated until now only the simultaneous relationship between advertising, recall and liking. The analysis is carried out for the markets of small automobiles, deodorants and shampoos. Main empirical findings for the analysed categories highlight that: 1) carryover effects of ad liking on the recall measures may be detected but not systematically, and 2) the ad liking role of ad likeability on memorial responses varies among product categories. Moreover 3) a further finding shows that, whereas positive influences are thoroughly retrievable (in the small car category), ad likeability influences more advertising than brand awareness and more total than unaided awareness.