Sometimes the best decision is not always the familiar one. The mere exposure effect, also known as the familiarity effect, is when people chose preferred things, they’ve seen over things that are new. You can see why it is also called the familiarity effect because we tend to choose things that are familiar. This effect occurs even if the exposure is short and goes unnoticed by the viewer’s conscious mind. Therefore, the more someone has been exposed to something the more likely they are to like it. However, it should be noted that this only works when there is no preexisting negative attitude toward the product/service/brand. This is important for advertisers to know and implement. The more that people see your ad, the more likely they are to buy your product or service. It’s like when that jingle that you can’t stand comes on T.V. but eventually you find yourself singing it later in the day and it stops bothering you so much over time. The effect works with photos, sounds, foods and smells. Psychologists have come up with a couple of theories as to why this happens.
1. Uncertainty reduction
2. Perpetual fluency
Uncertainty reduction is the idea that the more we are exposed to something the less uncertainty we feel about it. This really goes back to human nature and staying alive. We’re hard wired to be cautious of new things since they could be dangerous. It helped us stay alive back in the early days of being human. Perpetual fluency is the idea that since we’ve seen something before it’s easier for us to understand and interpret it. Think about the first time you watched The Matrix perhaps. It was confusing and you were barely holding on to understand what was going on. After you saw it the second time you totally got it and knew what it was about. This is perpetual fluency. But this effect is limited. Studies have shown that seeing something more often will make people like it but if it’s shown too much then they will eventually get tired of it. This is why it is important to keep your ideas creative in marketing and advertising. Repeating the same concepts in many different ways keeps things exciting for the viewers. There’s no magic number that says show the ad this many times before returns start diminishing unfortunately. However, keeping the audience engaged with consistent branding is key to this effect taking hold and remaining effective.
