Memory Versus Advertising: McDonald’s Wrappers
August 23rd, 2007In How To Fight Advertising, I wrote about an article at Get Rich Slowly based on Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking
My favorite part of the article has to do with children thinking that store-bought food wrapped in McDonald’s wrappers tastes better. In How To Fight Advertising I talked about advertising appealing to our stories about ourselves, and an exercise I had done to determine what factors I was particularly susceptible to. What’s interesting about Lazy Man and Money’s article is that he questions whether it was advertising that caused the kids to think the food tasted better, or whether the fact that all but two of them had eaten at McDonald’s previously was more of a factor. While advertising can be very effective, I’d put my money on previous experiences as having a bigger impact.
Memories Of a Cheeseburger
Human memory is largely associative, so that we are constantly referencing past experiences and relating them to current experiences. NASA has a great site with five memory games on it.
Point being that if you’ve eaten McDonald’s before, and then you see food in the same wrapper, the brain stirs up all the sensations: smell, taste, and enjoyment, involved in eating McDonald’s. Whatever store-bought food your eating takes on some of the same sensations.
I propose a new study where you feed people McDonald’s while causing them pain. I bet they will associate McDonald’s with pain after that, and think the store-bought food is worse, regardless of how many commercials they’ve seen.
Do you disagree? Let me know what you think. I think the experiment needs some serious re-thought, but the basic idea would work.
-zot
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August 23rd, 2007 at 8:36 pm
Rather than cause people pain, I’d be curious to know if people with no previous McDonald’s experience thought the food was tastier. Since they’d have nothing to previously compare it’s a better test.
Perhaps the McDonalds’ wrappers are just like a placebo effect.
August 24th, 2007 at 10:08 pm
You’d be hard pressed to find enough children who never ate MacD’s before. And once you do, it would be easy to question whether they really are a representative population sample… Since the study dealt with children, they most likely associate MacDonald’s -and their wrappers- with happy meals. Giving them store-bought food in a purple bowl along with a new toy would probably have the same effect. After doing this a couple of times, purple bowls should produce the same Pavlov’s effect. Or at least it would be worth looking into.
August 25th, 2007 at 3:59 pm
Lazy man: I think you are right. I was trying to expand beyond the study of just McDonald’s food to focus more on whether experiential memory is a stronger factor than visual advertising.
Ioana: I like your idea too, but am thinking more along the lines of setting up competing influences: experiential memory on the one hand and advertising on the other. I’m willing to bet that experience is a much stronger factor.
Thanks you both for your comments!