Refreshing Brand Memories After A Gap

I haven’t seen a Life Savers ad in ages, most probably because they haven’t been advertising – a lot of brands go “off air” for long periods.

Yet when I saw the ad (see below) the jingle bounced back into my consciousness – thankfully they are still using the slogan.

Advertising exposures that follow a long gap can be particularly powerful memory refreshers.

Unfortunately this is another factor that tempts marketers to go off-air for periods, when the real lesson is don’t bunch your exposures together (burst).

Think how much better effect Life Savers would get if instead of bursts followed by long gaps they just kept on advertising at very low levels. If they did Most of us wouldn’t see a Life Saver ad very often, but we would see them regularly if infrequently and each time they would have a tremendous refreshing effect.

With the burst and silence pattern we seldom ever see Life Saver advertising but when we do we see it several times close together when the 2nd, 3rd and 4th exposures don’t have anywhere near the refreshing effect as the first. That’s wasted advertising money that could have been used to reduce the long silence between bursts.

Get a hole lot more out of your advertising, don’t burst, don’t go off-air. Spend less, for longer.