Memoryandum

by Jason Rivera, Director, Consumer Insights

You ever get a random song stuck in your head? Like one that you haven’t heard since a junior high dance? Well, that’s been happening to me a lot lately, so I thought I would investigate further. I started doing research on how human memory works. To turn my thesis into a blog entry, I’ll just give you the gist. It turns out that we really have two ways for storing factual information – semantic and episodic. Semantic memory is in charge of things like people’s names, word definitions and other truly “factual” things. The other category, episodic, deals with remembering things like your last birthday or last week’s baseball game. These episodic memories tend to be a combination of more complex emotions and facts blended together. Often wonder why you can remember what your wife was wearing the night you met her, but have trouble remembering her birthday? Well, those episodic events get stored on their own whereas semantic memories are blended in with all the other singular bits of information we pick up. Now I know what you’re thinking – who cares – well, you should. Think about advertising – can you recall more than one print ad from the latest magazine you read? Can you recall the last sponsored event you went to? Chances are you can’t remember the intricacies of the print ads but that event is clearer. These are the exact principles behind experiential marketing. To make an impact with consumers, you need to leave that indelible mark on their conscious. Think about these principles the next time you go into a brainstorm – what can you do to spark clearer memories for you brand? Well, if you can remember this article by then, maybe you’ll come up with something grand.
Source: Georgia Tech College of Computing, April 2009