MRG Conference: TV And The Brain

Manchester University’s professor of psychology, Geoffrey Beattie, told delegates at last week’s MRG Conference in Budapest that TV is the most powerful communications medium because the brain finds audio visual images easier to process than either text or audio alone.

Beattie explained that the TV Matters study, which was commissioned by ITV, exposed 150 participants to messages about three products; a holiday, a car and a mobile phone, via an audio visual message, an audio message and a text message. Throughout the trials, recall and retention of information from the audio visual message were significantly stronger than that from audio or text.

The study found that viewers who had a single exposure to an audio visual message had up to 166% better product recall than when exposed to an audio or text message. The results also showed that the other media would never catch up to the communication advantage delivered by the audio visual message.

Introducing the session, head of broadcast research at Carlton TV, Adrian Ebery, told delegates: “Somewhere along the line the industry has forgotten to remind people of the quality of TV. It has been assumed that glancing at a beer mat or a poster is as effective as looking at a beautifully crafted piece of film in the comfort of your own home.”

Beattie insisted that the study represented an example of “clear blue skies thinking” being brought to bear on the business of media research and called on advertisers to explore the commercial implications of his work.

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