"LED There Be Light" - A Quantitative Study of LED Perimeter Advertising Recall

Sammanfattning: The market for sponsorship and sports marketing is growing steadily. At the same time new technology and new display solutions in perimeter advertising have increased the price and opportunities of exposure. Literature review on research concerning perimeter advertising has shown a knowledge gap between the technological development and academic studies. Though the use of LED perimeter advertising is widely practiced, no current studies exists on its effectiveness. This thesis combines existing theories regarding perimeter advertising and theories regarding the new attributes of LED perimeter advertising in order to bridge that gap. The thesis sets out to investigate which factors affect cognitive impact of LED perimeter advertising. Cognitive impact is measured on advertising recall, on both aided recall and unaided recall. Three studies were performed that respectively investigate target characteristics through a field experiment, exposure characteristics through the use of an expert panel and effects of repetition on recall through a laboratory experiment. The field study was performed on two separate games on the qualification tournament for the FIFA World Cup. Results indicate that the importance of being able to interrupt first-hand tasks (the game) was of great importance in order to achieve cognitive impact. The exposure characteristics in Study 2 revealed that brands with high brand relatedness and animation effects was best adapted to break through the first-hand task. The importance of interruption made it further relevant to examine repetition and its effects on recall and attitude. Study 3 showed that increased repetition potentially could increase recall. Partial effects on attitude showed that repetition might induce a lower liking of the medium. This was also conclusive with findings in Study 1. Overall conclusions of the study stated that recall of LED perimeter advertising could be increased by the use of attributes such as brand relatedness, movement and use of repetition in order to interrupt first-hand tasks. Further studies regarding the potential negative effects on advertisers when LED perimeter advertising becomes too interruptive are suggested. A medium level of intrusiveness is thus recommended. Overall low results of recollection does however suggest that current LED perimeter advertisers would benefit from being more intrusive, which would result in higher cognitive impact.