Advertisers Use Principles Of Visual Search And Attention To Increase

Advertisers Use Principles Of Visual Search And Attention To Increase Advertisers Use Principles Of Visual Search And Attention To Increase The Likelihood That People â€" Essay Example > Principles of visual search and attentionIntroductionVisual search refers to the use of one’s sense of perception to carefully look through the visible environment for a certain targeted feature or object among many other objects or features, for example, locating a particular model of a mobile phone on a display shelf. It involves the engagement of an individual’s sense of mental and visual perception to locate an item even without moving the eyes (Trick Enns, 1998). On the other hand selective attention refers to an individual’s ability to remain focused on a particular object even when faced with many other distracting objects while advertising is an art of attracting the attention of a targeted market in order to persuade them to purchase a certain item or service (Wesley McEntarffer, 2010). This paper will look at how advertisers use principles of visual search and attention to increase the chances that people notice their advertisement messages. Attention principles in AdvertisingAccording to Dukas (2002), attention is a cognitive process whereby one factor in the environment receives selective concentration while other factors are ignored. A good example of attention may involve carefully listening to what someone is saying in a room full of people while ignoring the conversation s of other people within the room (Dukas 2002). Advertising principles are mainly based on the psychological processes of attention, cognitive psychology and perception so as to draw consumers to the use of certain brands or products. In order to capture the interests of the viewers advertisers’ first goal is to focus on capturing the attention of consumers. Some of the ways that advertisers use to capture the attention of consumers is by showing strong visuals, bright colors and movements within the visual scenes. This approach is mainly based on the principal of attention control through orienting stimuli. For commercials, most advertisers prefer to use attracti ve models in trendy clothes in order to capture the attention of viewers. Soon as the attention of the viewer is drawn using these orienting stimuli, the advertisers then focuses on retaining the attention of the consumer (Roy, 2009). Visual imagery in advertisingThe art of advertising requires one to study the behaviour and perception of people in order to apply the proper principles that will draw the attention of the intended user on a long term. Therefore for one to win the attention of the targeted audience the message must be presented in a manner that it captures the logical and emotional meanings of the targeted recipient (Zaltaman 1995; Rossiter 1982). It must establish a deeper meaning and interest in the mind of the recipient. In order to achieve this, advertisers use the principles of visual research and attention to captivate the minds of their targeted audience and enhance the visual imagery of the targeted individuals. Visual imagery is a mental activity that enable s an individual to visualize a concept or idea. It triggers the release and processing of information in the working memory (Woodman et al 2001). With visual imagery an individual can be stimulated into responding to a certain event, object or feature without the actual object, event or feature being present at the time (Burns et al 1993). This is the real potential with visual imagery. It triggers the five physical senses that is sight, hear, taste, touch and smell. As a result advertisers use visual imagery to stimulate and attract the attention of consumers. It has the potential to bring into remembrance information that has been kept in the long term memory and present it into the working memory. In addition, images that are inbuilt or stored in the brain are more attached and relevant to an individual as they are being generated from the mental processes of the individual and are not as a result of an external factor. This means that the information is already stored in the l ong term memory of the individual and can therefore be easily brought into the working memory by stimulation, for example, rerunning an advertisement. However, excessive repetition of the advertisement may reduce the attention of the recipient by a considerable degree (Peiter Wedel 1999). Visual imagery has the capacity to generate or stimulate several senses at the same time and this provides an opportunity for the brain to process the information in more ways as more senses are involved. This improves the mental process thus providing a way in which advertisement can be effective by staying in the mind of the viewer even after the mental processing. Because images last longer in the mind of an individual it is safe to argue that such an approach to advertising will produce better results as the processing of the information is being drawn from the individual’s long term memory as compared to an approach that only triggers a limited response and engagement of the brain (Burns e t al 1993).