Call in the Experts

In December 2009, Heath published, along with Angus Nairn and Paul Bottomly, a paper titled "How Effective is Creativity? Emotive Content in TV Advertising Does Not Increase Attention" in the Jounal of Advertising Research.

Its starting point is that, because attention is a difficult thing to gauge, marketers are often over-liberal in the way they use the term attention. He quotes a paper which use the word "attention", while what they were actually measuring was recall.

Fixations

So, how does Heath recommend we measure attention? Through measuring tiny, involuntary eye movements . He says "The use of fixations-per-second (FPS) as a measure of visual attention levels is well established in medical and social research."

So, what evidence does he provide that these fixations are a reliable measure of attention? "Wedel and Pieters, developing a comprehensive model connecting eye fixations with memory for advertisements, confirm that “the number of fixations, not their duration, is related to the amount of information a consumer extracts from an ad” (2000, p. 297)

Suberb. So, to be clear, he is critical of approaches which use ad recall as a surrogate for attention. And instead recommends measuring these fixations. Because they relate to ad recall. Really, you couldn't make this stuff up.

So, is the use of fixations 'well established' as a measure of attention?

Well, no. For example, there is a "comment" in Psychological Science in 2007 by Horowitz, Fine, Fencsik, Yurgenson and Wolfe from the Visual Attention Laboratory, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Cambridge, MA. The title says it all; "Fixational eye movements are not an index of covert attention." 

Let's be clear; I know next to nothing about fixations. But what is clear is that rather than being "well established" there is real disagreement about this topic.Why does Heath not reflect this? Was it a willful omission? Or is he even less kowledgable about fixations than I am? My feeling is it is the latter; we've seen what happened in previous posts when he pretended to be a market researcher. Why should he be any more successful when trying to be a neuroscientist?

Movement

Then there is the whole issue of movement; there will be movement in the ads. Even if there was agreement about the use of fixations to measure attention, could this be done when the eye was following moving and changing images?

I don't know. I'm not an expert. But I asked one. I asked one who does feel that these very small eye movements carry some information about attention. His view was that visual features of the stimuli on the screen would affect the results, "so fixational eye movements do not give you pure measure of covert attention" and that somehow the visual features would need to be filtered out. It is a pity Heath did not talk to him before he set out on his work, because there is no indication that Heath attempted to filter out the effects of the visual features.

The Equipment

Finally, there is the question of how Heath measured these fixations. He is clear about this in his paper. He says he used "a discreet lightweight head-mounted eye-tracking camera that allows participants to sit at whatever distance they like from the TV screen and to freely move their head and body if they wish. "

Well, then Heath probably missed a paper in the Journal of Vision in 2008 called "The significance of microsaccades for vision and oculomotor control" by Han Collewijn and Eileen Kowler from the Department of Neuroscience, Erasmus University Medical Center, Rotterdam, which discussed how there is a difference in using systems where the head is fixed, and systems, such as Heath's, where the head is free to move: " One of the notable consequences of freeing the head was that the microsaccade, the hallmark of steady fixation performance, appeared suddenly to be irrelevant. Although some microsaccades still occurred during fixation with the head free, saccades of any size were infrequent during active oscillations of the head."

So, then, in summary, what Heath used, was a measurement system inapproaprate to measuring fixations, which in themselves are a poor measure of attention to TV ads.

Why on earth did Heath think that he, with his background in planning, was able to read a few papers and consider himself competent in this highly specialised field? What would Heath say if Han Collewijn and Eileen Kowler from the Department of Neuroscience at Erasmus University Medical Centre published a paper expressing a new model for ad planners, without having consulted any experienced ad planners?

Maybe he was reliant on the skills of his fellow writers; but, looking at their profiles, Paul Bottomly lists his interests as focusing on new product forecasting and decision making, while Agnes Nairn specialises in issues relating to marketing and chilldren. None of them claims any knowledge of measuring microsaccades.

Would it be rude of me to say "it shows"?

I'm left with the image of Heath completely out of his depth, but somehow ashamed to call for the help of a lifeguard.

His lack of comfort is revealed in the title of his paper; he limits himself to claiming that creativity does not increase attention. While his actual results show something far stranger: "Ads higher in emotive content received about 20 percent less attention than ads lower in emotive content" In other words, creativity in advertising decreases attention. How does he explain the counter-intuitive results he was seeing? I don't know if this next sentence came to him in a dreamy state in the middle of the night, or in desperation at the last minute before submitting the paper. But the only way he could explain his results was by suggesting that “ads that lack any emotive content will probably be perceived by the brain to be trying to communicate some sort of rational message, and relatively more attention will be deployed.”

Read it again slowly. I leave it to you whether you cry or laugh.

Affect and Cognition

When Robert Heath writes: "Damasio and others have confirmed that, when it comes to decisionmaking, Affect (i.e. feelings and emotions) always dominate Cognition (i.e. thinking)" is is worth remembering what Damasio actually wrote: " never wished to set emotion against reason, but rather to see emotion as at least assisting reason...nor did I ever oppose emotion to cognition since I view emotion as delivering cognitive information." and "I suggest only that certain aspects of the process of emotion and feelings are indispensable for rationality." Descarte's Error

von Daniken

Erich von Däniken is a controversial Swiss author best known for his books which present claims of evidence for extraterrestrial influences on early human culture, most prominently Chariots of the Gods?, published in 1968.

His work misused archaeological evidence, studies of religion, and of art to make his case. Evidence which countered his arguments was ignored.

Most in the scientific community have ignored or dismissed von Däniken's hypotheses.

For some reason, he reminds me of Robert Heath.

By 1982 he could not find an English or American publisher for his tenth book.

Attention and Emotion

In a presentation "HOW DO WE PREDICT ATTENTION AND ENGAGEMENT?"
Robert Heath quotes Du Plessis as saying ‘…there is little doubt ad-liking has an effect on the ability of a commercial to get attention…’
And quotes Page: ‘… we pay more attention to emotionally powerful events’
He dismisses these, saying Du Plessis and Page's error was to "Assume SYSTEMATIC & GOAL-DRIVEN TV processing"; while "in real viewing situations processing is AUTOMATIC & STIMULUS-DRIVEN".
Actually, Heath's error is to pretend that Du Plessis and Page were theorising. Instead, both were reporting patterns in different data sets.
Page was reporting on 150 US ads, which were split into three groups based on their ability to generate an emotional response among viewers. This was then related to the average level of involvement these ads generated, as measured on Link.

Du Plessis was reporting on analysis of 11400 South African ads; pre-testing had measured ad likability, while tracking had measured recall of the ads, three weeks after they went on air.

Because it completely contradicts his theries, Heath has to ignore this data, so he can rely on claiming that any assertion that emotional content relates to higher attention is just an untested supposition, hence his quotes:
"a link between emotion and attention is also a popular belief."
"Ray & Batra (1983) speculate that ‘People may pay more attention to affective advertising’
"The main task of creativity is generally believed to be to get people to pay attention"

Recall and Persuasiveness

In 'Measuring the Hidden Power of Emotive Advertising' Heath asserts: "The belief underlying recall-based metrics is that advertising has to be persuasive in order to be effective."
This is another of Heath's errors.
Data from Millward Brown shows that there is no correlation between the persuasiveness of an ad and its Awareness Index (their measure of the ad's memorability).
In other words, ad recall has nothing to do with ad persuasiveness.






A Millward Brown Admap paper "An analysis of how effectively advertising research can predict sales" reports that a higher Awareness Index is related to more enjoyable, more involving advertising, and shows from data (rather than argues from theory) that ads which focus on emotional content have higher Awareness Indices than ads with rational content.

Liking and Attention

This past year Robert Heath has presented, on a number of platforms, research which he claims shows "THE MORE EMOTIVE AN AD …
THE MORE YOU LIKE IT…THE MORE YOU TRUST IT…THE LESS ATTENTION YOU PAY TO IT"
This continues the theme he has plied for nearly ten years now; but the research is new.
He starts with the understanding that eye movements are ideal for measuring attention levels. Tiny totally autonomic rapid reflex movements, known as fixation speed. This is an approach which has been used successfully with static stimulus, such as print, in the past. But he uses it for TV ads. And it is from this work that he concludes that the more you like an ad, the less attention you pay to it, and "High levels of emotional content in advertising were significantly correlated at 99.9% with LOWER levels of attention"
This fits perfectly with his theory, yet flies in the face of all the other research into this topic.
Why should this be?
I don't know. But - I suspect the answer lies in one sentence of his papers (e.g.‘KRUGMAN WAS RIGHT – TV ADVERTISING GETS LITTLE ATTENTION BUT BUILDS BIG BRANDS’) . "A few subjects started by watching the screen carefully and followed the action, but most watched in a ‘lazy’ way, exactly matching Krugman’s description of ‘motionless, passive eye characteristics’."
In other words, the thing he was measuring, eye movements, stopped being measurable a few moments into the ad, because the eyes became motionless. So the only way he could distinguish between the levels of attention paid to different ads was through the responses picked up at the start of each ad.
So, if Heath's sentence is an accurate summary, we have the inference that his assessment of the level of attention paid to the ads was actually a measure of the attention paid to the first few moments of the ad.
Can this be right? Surely if this were the case, he would have highlighted the fact in the papers? But none of them refer to it.
There is one other factor here worth reporting on. In his most recent paper, he refers to the r squared for the relationship. This is a measure of how close the relationship is; an r squared of 0 shows there is no relationship between the measures, an r squared of 1 shows there relationship is perfect. In this work, the r squared is 0.104. It is significant - but tiny. And, arguably, what you might expect if your measure of attention was based on the first few moments of the ad.

Heath and Damasio

Robert Heath has referred extensively to the work of Antonio Damasio to support his theories. Since few marketers have read Damasio, few are in a position to challenge Heath's interpretations.

I think the most helpful thing I can say is - if you are interested in this topic, pick up a copy of Descarte's Error and the Feeling of What Happens and form your own judgement.

However, I'll summarise a few key aspects here.


A good place to start is the relationship between emotions and feelings. Heath often uses the terms interchangably or together, which is understandable, since most of us do, but in understanding Damasio, it is vital to understand that he makes a fundamental distinction between the two. I think this is one of the main causes of Heath's errors.

Damasio is clear: "the definitions of emotion and feeling presented here are not orthodox ." (Descartes Error). So what does he mean by these terms?

He identifies three different things.
"a state of emotion which can be triggered and executed nonconsciously;
a state of feeling, which can be represented nonconsciously;
and a state of feeling made conscious " The Feeling of What Happens


So what does he mean by emotion?

"I see the essence of emotion as the collection of changes in body state that are induced in myriad organs by nerve cell terminals, under the control of a dedicated brain system...many of these changes in body state - those in skin color, body posture, and facial expression, for instance - are actually perceptible to an external observer." Descartes Error

"Human emotion is not just about sexual pleasures or fear of snakes....fine human emotion is even triggered by cheap music and cheap movies" The Feeling of What Happens

He says "emotions and core consciousness tend to go together" the Feeling of What Happens
and makes clear that "the biological machinery underlying emotion is not dependent on consciousness." The Feeling of what Happens
He talks of "the here and now of core consciousness" The Feeling of What Happens
And describes "the ongoing process of core consciousness" as being "condemned to sisyphal transiency."


By contrast, he "reserve[s] the term feeling for the experience of those changes" Descartes Error

"Feeling should be reserved for the private, mental experience of an emotion" The Feeling of what Happens

And makes clear; "all emotions generate feelings if you are awake and alert" Descartes Error

He summarises it neatly when he says "flies have emotions, although I am not suggesting they feel emotions." Looking for Spinoza


But what of that curious middle state; "a state of feeling, which can be represented nonconsciously"? He talks about how you can be distracted, but on reflection realise that you have been feeling an feeling for a while. So that, for a period, you have been feeling a feeling without being aware of it.

However, he emphasises; "the full and lasting impact of feelings requires consciousness" the Feeling of what Happens
and "consciousness must be present if feelings are to influence the subject having them beyond the immediate here and now" The Feeling of what Happens
and "feelings perform their ultimate and longer-lasting effects in the theatre of the conscious mind." The Feeling of what Happens
and “when consciousness is available, feelings have their maximum impact,” The Feeling of What Happens



By contrast with the transient impact of emotions, Feelings can have a lasting effect.

"feeling introduced a mental alert for the good or bad circumstances and prolonged the impact of emotions by affecting attention and memory lastingly " Looking for Spinoza

And so, "the human impact of all the above causes of emotion...depends on the feelings engendered by those emotions " The Feeling of what Happens

This is linked with extended consciousness since "extended consciousness is the consequence of....the ability to learn and thus retain records of myriad experiences" the Feeling of what Happens

So “the conscious component extends the reach and efficacy of the non conscious system.”


My summary, then, is that emotions are about changes in the body state, are related to core conciousness, and are transient. But if you are conscious, awake and alert, these emotions will generate feelings. and when these feelings are felt in the conscious mind, they can have their maximum impact and a lasting effect.


So, whenever Heath discusses Damasio and lumps together emotion and feelings, you can be pretty sure he's gone off the rails.

when Heath writes "The definition adopted in this paper uses emotion to signify any stimulation of the feelings, at any level," you know he is heading for trouble.

and when Heath writes "Damasio is saying that if people don’t pay attention then emotions run riot and rule their subsequent behaviour" it highlights just how fundamentally he has misunderstood Damasio's books. (I'm reminded of that great bit of dialogue in A Fish Called Wanda:
Otto: Apes don't read philosophy. Wanda: Yes they do, Otto, they just don't understand it! )



Does the distinction between emotions and feelings matter?
Yes. Because there is almost always a gap between being exposed to an ad and buying a brand. So for advertising to stimulate an emotion of which we are not conscious, its effect will be limited to the time we are exposed to the ad. It is only when these emotions generate conscious feelings that they stand a chance of influencing us later when we are purchasing.