We presented our neuroscience research into the effects of multi-screening on brand recall at Cannes Lions Innovation Festival 2015.

1. @danmachen
Digital Revolution vs. Human Evolution

2. At HeyHuman we obsess about the relationships people really have with brands and
the difference between what they say, and actually do
As part of ongoing behavioural research, we found it gets really interesting when you
look at relationships with tech brands and brands empowered through technology
People say it helps them multi-task and dominate their lives – and say (and really mean
it) that they ‘can’t live without it’
The question arises though – what is this obsessive relationship doing to our heads?
And from a marketing perspective what does it mean for attention and memory around
our branded messages
Working with neuroscientists, we leant into the hard questions about multi-screening
and attention

3. vs. Human Evolution
Time
Digital Revolution
Rate of Change

4. Before we dive into the brain let’s take a macro view
Digital technology still conforms with ‘Moore’s Law’, which suggests the number of
transistors (memory and performance) will double every 2 years
This has continued for 50 years (even to the surprise of the inventor of Moore’s Law)
By comparison our brain is flat-lining, even decreasing. Over 20,000 years we have lost
10% of grey matter - about the size of a tennis ball.
Good news is this is not an ‘idiocracy’, brains have become faster and more energy
efficient for less physically demanding lives. Given brains use 20% of daily energy this
is critical!

5. the economy
of attention

6. But what’s this flatline mean for attention and memory?
Harvard Business calculated that the ‘dollar value’ of attention increased by 20% in last
4 years (based on rising demand vs. our finite supply of brain power)
In economic terms, the demands of digital messaging are outstripping cerebral supply
The value of attention is only likely to increase
Because we have an abundance of messaging, but a poverty of attention

8. The danger is as playwright Richard Foreman described it is that we become like
“pancake people spread wide and thin.”
By its very nature, digital is designed to disrupt
Our minds are so disposed to be distracted, they sometimes create the distraction
This is reflected by how we feel a buzz in our pocket when our phone has not received
a message – this is called ‘Phantom Vibration Syndrome’

10. When asked what tech does for them, people generally say it helps them multi-task
We do it a lot. We look at phones 150 times a day, switch channel 21 times per hour,
and spend nearly a day a week on Facebook.
But the phrase ‘multi-tasking’ is a misnomer - dating back to the early days of
computing, it describes how machines can execute multiple processes simultaneously
We haven’t adapted to allow for real multi-tasking. Instead, what we’re doing is
something completely different called task-switching
Task-switching describes swopping our attention rapidly between tasks
Every time you switch focus, there’s a cost to comprehension and mental energy

11. maxing our
cognitive load

12. The lynchpin of attention is ‘cognitive load’
This describes the number of bits of information that we can consciously think about
simultaneously
All conscious learning needs to pass through this gate, and it’s becoming increasingly
competitive to do so – digital demand is maxing out our head space
As people increase their cognitive load their emotional engagement and their focused
attention decreases
We can’t wait for the brain to evolve. We have to give it a helping hand by making our
messages easy to process

13. dorsolateral
pre-frontal cortex
cognitive workload

14. The area of the brain that’s most active in a stimuli rich environment is the dorsolateral
prefrontal cortex – this is involved in executive and memory functions
With so much coming in and out of the brain, the challenge is that we don’t give
ourselves
time to encode information to longer term memory - goes into striatum and not back to
hippocampus
Every ping of a message erodes the process of forming longer term memories
An unread email can reduce your working memory by 10 points – this is a more
significant effect than smoking cannabis
This is naturally a challenge for brands who are trying to create memory webs of
positive associations

16. Objective: to understand what happens to attention, emotion and cognitive load in an
increasingly multi-screen, high stimuli environment
Phase 1: TV only
Phase 2: TV and laptop
Phase 3: TV, laptop and mobile

17. tv only
tv + pc tv + pc + smartphone
disengaged

18. As we layer on technology, various things happen
Cognitive load and distraction increases with greater device use
Attention drops as device use builds – 92% ad recall drops to 32%
Emotional engagement decreases as the number of devices increases
When stimuli reaches its peak we witness ‘cognitive collapse’ as people zone out from
being overloaded…

20. As people multi-task more, it becomes increasingly difficult for us to communicate to
them.
Their cognitive load increases and it becomes harder for them to take on new
information.
So what’s the solution? Unless we put chips in our heads our brains aren’t going to
evolve quick enough, so we need to give people a helping hand.
There are some things we can do to communicate using other open channels into
people’s brains, and the right strategy for brands moving forward is to place an
increased focus on what we’re calling ‘Brain-friendly Creative’.
Since cognitive load is like the brain’s equivalent to RAM, we need to do the same thing
you’d do if your computer was overloaded – overclock it. We need to find new ways to
get more out of the limited capability we have.

22. #1

23. We can over-clock cognition, by making good use of other channels of people’s
working memory
Audio is a primal sense that is often underplayed – it is most powerful when it is very
tightly synchronised with visuals as we will see in the following ad from Honda
Cleverly synchronises sound and makes use of a speed reading app – up to 1,000
words a minute
There is increasing interest and sophistication in multi-sensory marketing, particularly
‘neurosonic’ design

25. #2

26. Storytelling is a tricky mistress – dominant narrative can actually come at the cost of of
brand memorability
That is why Magicians place such a focus on storytelling as they don’t want you to
know what the other hand is doing
In our context this is a challenge: because the narrative story can become the main
take-out at the cost of remembering what the brand message is
We are seeing an increased practice based on Byron Sharp’s work ‘How Brands Grow’
By understanding the brand’s strongest visual cues, (key brand assets), we can make it
simpler for people to connect with brands by unconsciously priming them towards our
brand

29. When you’re at a party and the room is full of noise, you always manage to hear if
someone says your name on the other side of the room
This is called the ‘cocktail party effect’ – it explains how people are able to focus in on
one specific piece of stimuli if they detect saliency
Brands can capitalise on this to help grab people’s attention by creating contextually
relevant content and experiences
Content should be personalised wherever possible - we should use multiple APIs to
bring in contextual data where valuable – name, location, understanding the time of day
people receive your messages, mindset, proximity, weather
This equally relevant to social, as POS – we need to know what triggers attention in
context most strongly

32. In the videos you saw what tech is doing to our heads
In terms of attention, brands and agencies must consider the real-world context our
messages are received in
We need to reframe the ‘disruptive’ model of advertising – we are communicating
amidst constant partial attention
Agencies and brands need to make campaigns easy to process for audiences that are
already overloaded with messaging
Understand brain friendly techniques - multi-sensory marketing, simplicity over
storytelling, conquering context
If we really want to get beyond what people say about brands, and into what they
actually do this neuroscience is one small step towards a giant leap in creative insight

33. dan.machen@heyhuman.com neil.davidson@heyhuman.com
@HeyHumanAgency