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<\/a>As mentioned above, Michael Bubl\u00e9 is pretty much the Christmas music representative of this generation (and every generation) and he has become a fairly popular household name. So, naturally, he would have to be in a Super Bowl commercial for one company or another. Big brands using famous celebrities in their ads demonstrates what is called the halo effect: brands like to use attractive, well-known people in their ads because when we see someone we have positive thoughts about, we will associate those positive attributes with the product they are advertising. Everyone loves Michael Bubl\u00e9, or can at least feel favorably about him after seeing his charismatic personality in the commercial, so everyone will want to love Bubly seltzer, the product he is advertising. I mean, look at the picture of him sitting on the floor changing Bubly to Bubl\u00e9. Who wouldn\u2019t love that face?<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Let\u2019s look at another Super Bowl commercial. In 2012, the band One Direction did a Pepsi commercial with football legend Drew Brees. The commercial begins with Harry Styles, a member of the band, and Drew Brees both reaching for a Pepsi, and the two begin arguing over who gets to drink it, which is shown in the photo below. They first compare their achievements (One Direction\u2019s platinum album versus Drew\u2019s Super Bowl Rings), then their fan bases (One Direction\u2019s screaming teenage girls versus Drew\u2019s equally loud middle-aged football fans). Finally, Niall Horan of One Direction tells Drew that he can be in the band if he gives Harry the Pepsi. The commercial ends with the six of them performing on stage, with Drew as the band\u2019s new frontman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/a>One Direction is not popular with everyone, but parents of any teenage girl in 2012 would definitely have heard the name. Similarly, most teenage girls would not know Drew Brees, but anyone remotely familiar with football would. All of them present their achievements in the commercial, and the whole ad has an upbeat and funny attitude. So, even if one is not familiar with One Direction or Drew Brees, they will associate them with the overall positivity of the commercial, and will thus associate Pepsi with that same positivity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
One study by Joseph Forgas supports this. The study found that initial positive attitudes lead to positive impressions of an author, while an initial negative attitude would lead to negative impressions of an author. This helps demonstrate how positive attitudes lead to positive impressions of other people, which can be applied to Super Bowl commercials. It also shows us the effects of top-down processing, which is when we use our preexisting knowledge to make judgements about people and situations. Using the same Pepsi commercial example, if you are a One Direction superfan in 2012 and you see Harry Styles drinking Pepsi, you are going to want to drink Pepsi as well. This is because you have a positive attitude towards Harry so you will associate anything that Harry does with positive outcomes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Pepsi is such a successful brand that people watching their ads will most likely know that they are a big name soda brand. But what happens when there is a brand you are not familiar with that comes up in a Super Bowl ad? In another study by Park et al., researchers looked at how familiarity with a brand would impact consumers\u2019 impressions of it. They found that when consumer familiarity with a product was low, the halo effect was very common. In other words, when we do not know much about a product, we rely heavily on the brand\u2019s image. Relying on the brand\u2019s image is an example of top down processing because we are using our own knowledge about other things and applying it to new information we are learning about a brand or product (take a look at this post about how top down processing works with our ability to recognize faces and other features!<\/a>). Let\u2019s look at Idris Elba\u2019s commercial with booking.com, which includes him wearing a big fuzzy winter hat on a tropical beach, which is shown in the photo below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While Idris Elba has become more of a household name over the years, most people may not be familiar with the company he is advertising, booking.com, which is a website that helps travelers find good deals on flights and hotels. The commercial is essentially Idris Elba strolling through various vacation destinations while telling the audience how simple booking.com tries to be in comparison to super trendy or \u201clit\u201d websites they compete with. Even if you do not know who Idris Elba is, from the moment he starts talking you realize he has the most soothing voice. Hughes and Miller found that people have a tendency to associate attractive voices with attractive faces. So, we will pay attention to the perceptual cue of his voice instead of the meaningful cue of how easy it is to use booking.com because we find his voice attractive, so we will find his face to be more attractive as well. Then, if we do not remember part of the commercial, we will simply fill in the gaps with positive aspects we believe to have been in the commercial that we base off the attractiveness of his voice and his face (this post does a great job explaining more about attention and what we miss when we direct our attention to a specific thing<\/a>). Also, such a soothing, attractive voice will lead to positive thoughts and feelings, so we can\u2019t not associate whatever Idris Elba is advertising with the same peacefulness and positivity that we get from listening to him talk. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Filling in the gaps like this is part of a process called reconstructive memory. In one study, researchers looked at how attributions, or assumptions about others\u2019 behavior and personality, that we make act as retrieval cues when we try to remember things. They found that when people focus more on their opinions of the person presenting the information, they are less likely to recall the information and more likely to recall their thoughts on the person. This is also more likely to happen when the information is not of major importance. This phenomenon occurs when we watch Super Bowl commercials because, as with Idris Elba in booking.com, we focus on what we liked about the person presenting the information rather than the information itself. Same with One Direction and Drew Brees in their Pepsi commercial: we make inferences about the people in the commercial, and when we are looking back on the information presented, we base it off of the inferences we made about the members of One Direction and Drew Brees. Even in Micheal Bubl\u00e9\u2019s Bubly commercial, we associate Bubly with the attributes we believe Michael Bubl\u00e9 to have. (For more information on reconstructive memory and “rosy retrospection,” check out this blog post!<\/a>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/a>