Easy to Remember, Easy to Forget? The Memorability of Creative Advertisements

Abstract

Previous studies have revealed that creative advertisements are recognized and recalled better than their less creative counterparts. Remembering and forgetting are two sides of the same coin of memory, denoting memory’s storage and elimination functions, respectively, which can both potentially impact advertising effectiveness. To date, there appear to have been no published studies examining the memorability of creative advertisements from the perspective of forgetting. Therefore, this issue was investigated using an intentional forgetting paradigm in which participants were cued either to remember or forget individual advertisements. The results showed that recognition hit rate and recognition latency were better for creative advertisements than for standard advertisements in both the remember and forget conditions. Furthermore, an advertising effectiveness analysis indicated that advertisements rated as more creative were also more easily remembered. There was additionally an effect of creativity category on intentional forgetting, with a higher hit rate and shorter recognition latency for creative advertisements. These results indicate that creative advertisements are easy to remember, but hard to forget, even when an instruction to forget is given. The findings provide further evidence that creative advertisements are more memorable and confirm the value of creativity in advertising.