Are you sick of banner ads, commercials, and brand names depicted everywhere? You might think this way of advertising is pointless since it will not influence you anyway. However, psychological research has identified how branding hacks into your mind and how you can prevent this.

Think of the last time you interacted with a person wearing brand-name clothes. For instance talking with those “cool” people with the RayBan pilot-glasses, where you do not see their eyes but only this little logo. Do you think perceiving this little logo influences you? Say, prompts you to chose a RayBan product yourself? Or do you think you are immune to this kind of influence? In this article, you will learn that such brand name placement very well has an influence on you, even if you just see it out of the corner of your eyes. And most importantly, derived from recent psychological research that identified how branding influences our minds, you will learn how to really get immune against it.

According to embodiment theory (e.g., Barsalou, 1999; Semin & Smith, 2008), the objects that we encounter in everyday life trigger the responses that we usually do with them, even if no response is necessary (e.g., Topolinski, 2010, 2011). For instance, when we see a glass of water, our brain automatically simulates the bodily response of grasping that glass (Tucker & Ellis, 1998), even if we simply watch it. The same is true when we even only see the name of an object or behavior (Glenberg & Kaschak, 2002). For words, the common response is reading, and our brain automacially reads a word even if we do not want to. This effect is called the Stroop-effect (Stroop, 1935) and is well established in modern psychology: even if our task is not to read a word but -for instance- to name the color in which the word is printed, we cannot help reading the word. So during talking to a RayBan wearer, you also automatically read the logo.

This is true for any name or word, even if we do not attend to it, like banner ads on the internet, the name AISHWARYA RAI in a movie credit, or the place-name signs that fly by when you are driving the car. Of course, this reading is a covert response, which means that we do not actually read the word out aloud, but rather that the musculuar system in our mouth subtly simulates the pronunciation of a word, without visible actual mouth movements. We call this pronunciation simulations, or subvocal articulation, like an inner speech.

The fluency of the tongue tango

The funny twist now is what happens when we encounter the names of brands or persons repeatedly. The first time, novel names are hard to pronounce, even with the inner speech. But like during learning a new dance –say a tango– it gets easier with repetition. Each time you encounter a name your tongue and lips will secretly train to articulate that name, and this tongue tango gets more fluent over time. This efficiency of mental processing is called fluency in psychological research (e.g., Topolinski & Reber, 2010; Topolinski & Strack, 2009a), and it has been shown for many tasks that fluency in perception, thinking, or motor exercises feels good (e.g., Topolinski, Likowski, Weyers, & Strack, 2009; for a review, see Reber, Schwarz, & Winkielman, 2004). You can easily assess this within yourself: Think of the first time you had to handle a smart phone, an espresso machine, or a computer keyboard. It felt complicated and inconvient. But over time it became easier and more pleasant – and now most of us cannot keep the hands off the smartphone anymore.

This also applies to the silent reading of words. In a classical experiment, Bob Zajonc (1968) has shown the following, which is called the mere exposure effect. Participants received nonsense words that had no meaning themselves (e.g., ENANWAL) and were asked to report how much they like these words. Nonsense words were used to avoid the influence of personal preferences for certain meaningful words. Crucially, while half of these words were presented only one time, the other half was presented several times. It was found that participants preferred repeated over novel words (for reviews, see Bornstein, 1989; Moreland & Topolinski, 2010). Apparently, repetition increased the easiness with which these initially novel words could be read, and thereby triggered a pleasant feeling (cf., Song & Schwarz, 2009). Mind again that this was silent reading. For reading out aloud, these effects might have been even stronger, because for loud reading the initial difficulty of pronunciation might be felt even stronger. And that this was due to the fluency of the tongue tango was shown recently.

Preventing the tongue from training the tango

If the mouth gets trained to subtly pronounce words when those words are repeated, and if this fluency gain is driving repetition effects, then repetition effects should disappear when the mouth is prevented from training pronunciations. This can be done by getting the mouth busy with some other movements, a method psychologists call interference. Recently, Topolinski and Strack (2009b) re-ran the classical experiment by Zajonc by presenting nonsense words to participants and repeating some of these words, while participants should report their liking of these words. Crucially, Topolinski and Strack additionally asked participants to do one of the following tasks. One group of participants should knead a ball with their left hand during reading and rating the words. This task was a control condition that should not actually disturb subvocal articulations. The other group of participants, however, was asked to chew a gum during reading and rating the words (see also Topolinski & Türk-Pereira, 2012). This task, as distracting as kneading a ball, entertained the oral musculature with chewing movements that disturbed the hidden articulation training. The result was that participants kneading a ball still preferred repeated over novel words (which is the basic mere exposure effect), but participants chewing gum showed no particular preference at all, they liked repeated and novel words to a similar degree.

This shows that the fluency of familiar words actually stems from the easiness of subvocal articulations in the mouth (see also Topolinski, 2012). In further experiments, other repetition effects were also blocked, because repetition does not only lead to preference, but also to other positive emotions, such as trust.

Chewing gum undermines fame

The fluency of names can be interpreted as a mere preference. However, depending on the question you ask and the context in which names are presented, this positive gut feeling can be interpreted as being other emotions. For instance, in earlier studies person names were presented to participants –some of the names repeatedly– and participantz they were told that these names were names of actors and were asked how famous they think these actors were (Jacoby, Kelley, Brown, & Jasechko, 1989; Strack & Neumann, 2000). It was found that repeated actor names were rated as being more famous than names that were not repeated during the experiment. For instance, the Bollywood actress Aishwarya Rai might appear to you even more famous just because this name was mentioned earlier in this article. We call this the false-fame effect. Following the logic of the tongue tango, also this effect should depend on the lips and tongue.

Consequently, Topolinski and Strack (2010) re-ran the false-effect paradigm and again asked some of the participants to knead a ball and others to eat popcorn. Eating popcorn is a funny experimental condition for participants, but for basic psychological research, it is just another way of keeping the mouth entertained. The result of these manipulations was again that participants in the ball control condition showed the basic effect, they rated repeated names of actors as being more famous than names that were not repeated. However, the popcorn eating participants did not show this effect.

Chewing in times of the crisis

Another emotion that comes with repetition is trust. You more likely trust someone or something that is familiar to you than something that is unfamiliar. This is particularly true for economic decisions (e.g., Alter & Oppenheimer, 2006; Novemsky, Dhar, Schwarz, & Simonson, 2007), such as trusting brands or investment fonds, where there are too many hidden factors influencing the qualitity of an option to efficiently take this complex background information into account. In these cases, you often reduce this information complexity and go with your gut. But again, oral embodiment predicts that this “gut” is actually in your mouth. Topolinski and Strack (2010) tested this using the financial crisis in 2008 as a cover story. They presented various names of Asian shares taken from the Nikkei index to participants, and asked participants to rate how trustworthy these shares are. Again, some of the names were repeatedly presented. Again, it turned out that participants who kneaded a ball trusted the repeated shares more than the shares presented only one time. In contrast, participants who ate a cereal bar (as another funny way of entertaining the mouth) during this task showed no particular preference for repeated names.

These basic research studies show that your gut for names comes from the mouth. But does this have any real-life impact? Thus far, the reviewed studies asked participants hypothetical questions in rather artificial experimental contexts. However, there are real-life situations that entail both repetition of brand names and oral interference.

Eating popcorn in the cinema eliminates advertising effects

There are two main principles that advertising uses to promote favourable attitudes towards the advertised brands. One of course is connecting a positive feeling with the brand. The other way is simple repetition to make the brand name more fluent in your mind (e.g., Baker, 1999; Grimes & Kitchen, 2007). And this makes sense, since your eventual brand choice is often determined by familiarity (e.g., Baker, 1999; Janiszewski, 1993).

Paradoxically, most situations in which we are faced with commercials also entail oral interference, such as watching TV and nibbling snacks, or eating popcorn in the cinema. Given the experimental evidence above, it could be predicted that advertising is futile under such situations, since the mouth does not train subvocal articulation of the advertised brand names and thus no fluency will result. This was tested in recent field experiments. Topolinski, Lindner and Freudenberg (2014) invited German participants into a real movie theatre. Before the actual main movie, commercials were presented featuring products that were foreign for the German participants, such as the Scandinavian butter LURPAK. Crucially, one half of the participants received popcorn that they could eat during the whole cinema session. The other half, the control group, however, received a sole piece of sugar that they should consume right in the beginning of the session. This piece of sugar was dissolved soon, and their mouths were not busy anymore with sucking the sugar at the time the commercials were presented.

One week later, all participants were invited into a lab session. In this session, participants were presented pictures of products. Half of these pictures were of products they had seen the commercial of, and the other half of picture were from products that had not been advertised a week before. Participants were asked to indicate their liking of each of the products. Furthermore, their spontaneous facial responses to these products were assessed. It turned out that the sugar-cube group showed an advertising effect. They preferred advertised products over novel products. In addition, their faces showed subtle immediate smiling responses to advertised compared to novel products. That is, their attitude was more positive due to the advertising exposure. In contrast, the popcorn group did not show any of these preferences for advertised compared to novel products.

In a second study, it was tested whether actual consumer choices could also be affected by oral fluency. The paradigm with eating popcorn vs. eating a sole sugar cube was replicated, but this time commercials for foreign skin lotions and for (ostensible) charity foundations were presented in the cinema session. One week later, participants were invited into a café where they were given money to spent for skin lotions and to donate for charity organizations. They were presented a stand with several skin lotions half of which had been advertised for one week before. They were asked to purchase one of the skin lotions for 1 Euro. On another stand, they were faced with several donation cans for charity foundations, again, half of them having been featured in the session commercial block. It was found that the sugar cube group again showed an advertising effect. They more likely chose the skin lotions and charity foundations that had been advertised for. In constrast, the popcorn group did not show this effect. Advertizing did not work out for them.

These findings clearly show that oral embodiment does indeed shape even ecomonic decisions in real-life, and that a simple mouth movement can undermine the impact of advertising. More generally, this evidence also implies that establishing novel brand names by repeating them excessively in commercials may be futile, since the audience most likely experiences some sort of oral movements.

Preventing verbal contamination

The lines of research presented here show that the logo RayBan on your conversation partner’s sun glasses may actually influence you, but also show you the way how to circumvent this influence. The power of repeated names can be neutralized by keeping your mouth busy with something else. In many contexts this blockade of verbal contamination is advantageous, such as in persuasion and advertizing, you can easily escape the flood of brand names, internet banners, and commercials by simply chewing a gum. However, in other situations, this might be disadvantageous, for instance when you meet new people on a cocktail party and their names will not be familiar to you on later encounters.

On being immune to such branding and name-dropping in marketing, one group of people might have an advantage from their handicap, namely illiterates or patients with aphasia (a disturbance of language comprehension and speaking due to brain dysfunctions). It is quite likely that people who cannot read or are impaired on language more generally are not affected by word repetition, although an empirical test of this speculation is still pending.

More generally, this research shows how important our body is for acquiring memory and make sense of our environment. Our mind is no dry collection of abstract concepts and features, but a rich bulk of sensory and motor representations that constitute knowledge, memory, and feelings. Beyond the current effects on liking of neutral words, psychological research has shown that the body plays a major role in phenomena as diverse as social relations (e.g., IJzerman, & Semin, 2009; Schubert, Schubert, & Topolinski, 2013; Sparenberg, Topolinski, Springer, & Prinz, 2012), interpersonal trust (Lee & Schwarz, 2012), experiencing time (Boroditsky & Ramscar, 2002), or aesthics in arts (Leder, Bär, & Topolinski, 2013).

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Acknowledgments

The original research reviewed here was funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) (Str264/26-1, TO 705/1-1). I thank Fritz Strack for those happy years of joint work.