Mere Exposure

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In E.T., director Steven Spielberg planned a scene where the alien creature was coaxed out of hiding using sweets.

Keen not to miss a profitable opportunity, Spielberg approached Mars to use M&M’s for a small fee.

Mars turned Spielberg down.

Undeterred, Spielberg asked Hershey’s for product placement. Hershey’s had just launched Reese’s Pieces, so they jumped at the chance to feature the new chocolates on screen.

After the film premiered in 1982, sales of Reese’s Pieces rose by 65%.

Placing a product on screen directly drove sales.

Or did it?

Perhaps there were other reasons the sales rose. Hershey’s had spent a lot of money on other forms of advertising. Could analysts really link the product success to the blockbuster movie?

Do Product Placements Work?

In 2009, researchers Wiles and Danielova reviewed 126 product placements in dozens of films¹. They measured share prices of the companies producing the product immediately after the film aired.

Turns out, share prices rose by an average of 1% on the day of the film’s premiere.

But why?

E.T. was hardly urging the audience to buy Reece’s Pieces. The characters weren’t commenting on how tasty the peanut snack was. In fact, some buyers would surely be put off by a sweet desired by an alien creature.

Why does seeing the product on screen increase the product's desirability?

Mere Exposure

In 1968, Robert Zajonc published one of the most cited papers in social psychology.² For his study, 72 students were exposed to 12 made-up Turkish words. Zajonc invented words like Jandara, Civadra, and Lokanta to ensure no participant could know their meaning.

Each participant sat with the experimenter, who flashed a card containing one of these made-up words in front of the participant for two seconds.

The experimenter then pronounced the word out loud and asked the participant to verbally repeat it. Some participants saw the same word repeatedly (up to 25 times); others saw the same word only once or twice.

Then, Zajonc told a small lie to each participant. He said the Turkish words were real and that they either meant something good or bad. Participants were asked to rate the words’ ‘goodness’ on a 7-point scale.

Turns out, the ratings of goodness rose in line with the number of exposures. Participants who reviewed the made-up word Jandara rated it roughly 48% higher if they’d been exposed to it 25 times, compared to those who had seen the word just once before.

The more we’re exposed to something, the more we like it.

Seeing a chocolate snack on screen will make you want it more. Even if you don’t remember seeing it.

Cheers,

​Phill​

P.S. I've just finished Alex Edmans' brilliant book The Madness of Markets, which is where I got the idea for this newsletter. Check out his book here.