How Effective is Creativity? Emotive Content in TV Advertising Does Not Increase Attention

Emotive creativity is generally believed to facilitate communication by increasing attention. However, during relaxed TV viewing, psychology suggests we may pay less not more attention to emotive ads. An experiment conducted in a realistic viewing environment found that ads that were high in emotive content correlated with a 20 percent lower level of attention and that attention toward these ads was unlikely to decline on repeat viewing. This supports the idea that TV advertising is not systematically processed but is automatically processed in response to the stimuli presented. We speculate that emotive creativity may benefit brand TV advertising by lowering attention and inhibiting counter-argument.