A Change Will Do You Good: Beneficial Effects of Task Difficulty Switching (TDS) on Recall

Change, it is often said, can do you good. Whether it is the inspiration that comes to an artist after a change of scenery, the emotions evoked from the changing dynamics of a powerful song, or the thrills that come with the changing twists and turns of a rollercoaster, breaking from a monotonous mold certainly has its benefits in a variety of contexts. In spite of the benefits change often brings in a variety of contexts, media strategy often encourages consistency between marketing executions and the media in which they are placed. A comedic advertisement, for example, is likely best placed during a funny sitcom while a serious or dramatic advertisement seems to fit when placed during a dramatic show. While it may not seem wise to vary the tone of an advertisement and its medium, it seems possible that subtler features of an ad or its medium could integrate change to obtain potentially positive outcomes, such as greater recall of message content. In the current paper, we propose and demonstrate a novel advertising strategy - a process we label Task Difficulty Switching (TDS) - that relies on subtle changes in the cognitive complexity of advertisement content and the context in which those ads are placed to improve consumer recall of advertising information. In study 1, we focus on the foundational hypothesis for the present research: that TDS (vs. non-TDS) will increase the amount of information recalled from advertisements. We simultaneously examine the differential consequences of task switching and TDS. The design for study 1 was a 2 (Task difficulty: easy or difficult) x 2 (Advertisement: easy or difficult) between subjects design. The first task in the alternating sequence was either a difficult or easy math question taken from a standardized test. An easy or difficult advertisement followed the math question. We used print advertisements and manipulated difficulty by varying the typeface used in the ad (Song and Schwarz 2008). All other information (i.e., layout, visual images) was held constant. Participants (N=100) proceeded through three sets of alternating math questions and advertisements. After a five-minute distractor task, participants rated their attitudes toward the advertisements and listed any information they recalled from the advertisements. An ANOVA conducted with attitudes toward the advertisements revealed no significant main effects or interactions. However, an ANOVA with recall as the dependent variable revealed the hypothesized