In Bennett's very first example, he states that companies with names which are easy to pronounce and remember tend to do well in the stock-market. I see a case of correlation, but not necessarily direct causation. I'm not inclined to believe that it is as easy as that. The product must be up to expectations as well, or initial interest would quickly dwindle. A simple, catchy, and memorable company name does not make the company successful in itself; it is merely one piece of an effective marketing strategy. Assuming approximately equal products, perhaps it is better overall marketing that offers these companies an edge over competitors. So, Bennett has opened up with a largely unconvincing argument, that is unless he wants to assure me that his perspective is a bit narrow-minded.
The article goes on to observe that 'cognitive fluency' and its result, easy mental processing, are effective tools in a world of excessive communication, making judgments on decisions quick and effortless.
The reasoning based on evolutionary history makes sense, but I feel that many, many arguments can be based on the strategy of coming up with a way that a trait may have been useful in prehistory. Because humans have no divine insight into the inner thoughts of evolution, it can only be a theory. The evolutionary biology majors in the crowd should enlighten us if this section of the article seems any more certain to you.
We students of cartography know that unfamiliarity is an immediate deterrent, and conventions (by definition familiar and usually very easy to interpret) are meant to be followed to ease access to the content and message of a piece of rhetoric and may be strategically broken for effect. Such conventions include features like font, one of the article's examples. Using a serif font to label water bodies is simply expected, and facilitates easy processing. Knowing immediately that the button with the triangle means 'play' helps a viewer get right to the content of a video, while an unfamiliar interface is simply a frustration.
While agreeing with the points made about the effectiveness of fluency, as an individual who thrives on the unconventional, I appreciate the acknowledgement that "disfluency is intriguing and novel" (Bennett quoting Winkielman), and I would be very interested to see some evaluation of the effective use of disfluency.
Hey Caroline!! I like what you write, so I am responding to your post once again :)
ReplyDeleteI really like how you approached the idea of fluency with your own experiences from cartography. This added authority to your argument and strengthened Bennett's argument concerning familiar font and fluency as well. In this way you truly responded to the article and strengthened the argument rather than just repeating the facts.
I must disagree with you on your first topic concerning fluency and marketing. I believe familiarity is the first step to making a sale as many people are already very critical and on the defensive when they are being sold something. Billy Mays and Vince Shlomi are perfect examples of this. Companies use these men over and over again to sell multiple different products because they have established themselves and are familiar to viewers watching TV. Even I can help wanting "Mighty Puddy" or a "Slap chop" after watching Billy's familiar hand motions or Vince's fast talk.
For a skydiver and adventuress like yourself, the novel and intriguing are of course an appeal. I can definitely relate, however in marketing, one must gain the trust of their customers if they are going to sell anything as customers are naturally critical of the sales pitch.
Advertisements often employ pathos towards appealing to people, and I believe people have different standpoints on how advertisements should appeal to its customers in the most effective way. First of all, you stated that the fluency of a companies’ name is just one part of the marketing strategy, and it is not the sole factor of success. While I partially agree with your point of view, I also feel like that taking advantage of fluency and familiarity is one of the most important things for the companies’ marketing strategy. Especially for companies which have not established an empire in the market and are in the up-and-coming stage, it is wiser to advertise their name and their products employing fluent fonts. This is due to the fact that the company has not gained the trust of the customer, so it is safe to appeal to them in a more common way. On the contrary, a dominant software giant like Microsoft is more inclined to advertise themselves with disfluent catch phrases, because people already know that they are the best.
ReplyDeleteHowever, unfamiliarity and disfluency can be the most effective advertising strategy in some cases, especially in a very competitive market. It might be true for some people that their attention often goes towards more innovative and unique advertisements, because they might feel that it is redundant to seek for a product which other companies produce. This is probably due to their prior experiences or the exposure to advertisements of many similar kinds of products, which makes them attracted to new and innovative marketing. It is very important for a company to give reasons on why the consumers should choose their products. When the market is very competitive, companies definitely want to be more creative and push the envelope of making unconventional and unique advertisement. When people look at something which seems to be more cognitively familiar to them, it tends to have less of a visual impact. On the contrary, when something is unfamiliar or disfluent, it often catches the peoples’ attention and makes them wonder and explore the truth behind the advertisement. Therefore, I believe that disfluency can sometimes work very effectively in the success of certain companies reaching their customers.
To expand on the poster's point about ease of access to content as well as several other well communicated points that involve this idea of fluency, I wanted to share my experiences as a software developer.
ReplyDeleteIn the software world, you learn that the more complicated and mysterious you make your application, the less people are going to bother using it at all. In other words, if your program's user interface sucks, you're out of business. A good example of this is the Myspace vs Facebook battle for social network kingdom that we all know Facebook won very quickly. Facebook has a very clean and consistent interface. Unlike Myspace, users have no ability to change the fonts or move the layout around. This is desirable, because people can easily find the content they are looking for, and they don't have to think about it. In contrast, Myspace had options to allow their users to change the font colors, their background, and, let's be honest here, every Myspace profile began to resemble some sort of circus where no one wanted to even bother reading the content.
On the subject of Facebook, it is also of note to notice how people react when they (Facebook themselves) change the structure of the page to update the layout or add new features. People grumble because they can't find things, and there is general disfluency that lasts until people get used to the new layout and don't complain until the next change. It appears that we really have adapted a predisposition to certain, familiar things that are easy to process, and I am convinced that cognitive fluency has a good base in psychology that should be explored.
The two most important things I learned when actually designing a program for someone was:
1) People don't want more options, because that means more decisions. They just want your program to do what it should so they can get on with their day.
2) Most people will never, ever look at the manual, so keep that in mind when designing the interface (ie, make it as easy and familiar as possible)
Funny enough, the most important thing I learned in engineering classes was the KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) principle, so has a very general application from cartography to software design to rhetoric and beyond.