See It, Feel It, Want It. Neural Correlates of Perspective Taking in Advertising: an EEG Pilot Study

A deep understanding of the cognitive and emotional mechanisms underlying the perception of advertising stimuli is critical to optimizing the effectiveness of brands’ marketing campaigns. Recently, the use of neuroscientific tools such as electroencephalography (EEG), has shown great potential in measuring those processes otherwise inaccessible through traditional methodologies. Although well-established EEG metrics already exist in the literature to measure attention, motivation, cognitive load, and engagement in response to advertising stimuli, the analysis of processes such as mentalization and perspective-taking remains under-explored. This pilot study aims to identify the neural correlates associated with perspective-taking in response to interactions presented in advertisement scenes and to assess whether they can be predictive of commercial effectiveness. Nineteen participants were exposed to a series of commercials while their brain activity was recorded by EEG, then answered questions designed to measure their degree of perspective-taking and their subjective evaluation of the commercial (liking, perceived effectiveness, willingness to pay, and intention to purchase). Results suggest that neural activity in the theta band may be involved in perspective-taking processes related to the characters’ actions in the commercials and highlight the need for more research to extensively explore this topic. This pilot study represents a first step toward integrating new neuroscientific measures to evaluate the effectiveness of advertising campaigns, providing insights for academia and marketing, and helping to create advertisements that can elicit consumers’ emotional and cognitive responses, finally enhancing brand impact.