The Impact of Visual and Background Music Congruity On Media Commercial's Information Effectiveness

摘要

In this paper, we selected two commercials which were primarily designed for television. The first one was specifically composed with background music cut to the pictures and the second one was designed with a library or generic music without cut to the pictures. We tested the commercials conducting experimental studies recruiting users in terms of message effectiveness dimensions : a) increase of brand recall, product recall and the ad content recall of the commercial; b) building stronger brand attitude (equity) in respect to believability, likeability, trust, stature and brand integrity; and c) facilitating brand choice and brand intentions. The purpose of this paper was to show how consumers' interpret the information effectiveness and knowledge structure embedded in the new media environment. We chose a low interest commercial product for our study and tested a series of hypotheses along three layers of effectiveness, impact and measure the influence of congruent and custom-made music for commercials. Our finding showed that the more congruent and close fit the music and the visuals, the more effective the advertising will be towards brands believability, likeability, brand awareness for consumers.