Brand mascots from the perspective of neuromarketing: An empirical study on brand mascots's ability to attract attention used in television advertisement

Mascots are one of the creatives that can establish the fastest and most permanent form of bridges between advertisements or brands and consumers. The mascots, which are considered as a basic connotation element of the advertisement or brand, try to catch the consumer under the heavy rain of messages. Brand mascots act as a communication tool that carries the brand's promises or other messages to the consumer and makes the brand friendly with the consumer. Brands, as in all marketing activities to determine the positive or negative contribution of brand mascots, accordingly, they carry out studies to develop new strategies or content. These studies conducted within the scope of determining the effectiveness of advertising, although it has been the traditional research methods based on the consumer's declaration for many years, it has gained a different dimension since the beginning of 2000s with the use of neuroscience techniques. In these years, the concept of neuromarketing based on brain imaging and biometric methods has been proposed. The concept uses the research techniques of neuroscience. Owing to brain imaging and biometric measurement methods, consumers' biological responses to advertising or brand can be recorded and analyzed as objective and numerical values. In this study titled "Brand Mascots from the Perspective of Neuromarketing: An Empirical Study on Brand Mascots's Ability to Attract Attention Used in Television Advertisement" visual attention levels were determined for the brand mascots used by consumers in television advertising. The attention levels of the brand mascots and other visual creatives used in television ads were compared and the attention levels of the brand mascots were determined. In the experimental study the participants saw that the first and longer visual elements in the advertising scenes were people. On the other hand, the visual position of the visual elements on the screen, moving, the formation of color has been found to be effective on visual attention levels. As a result, the positive effects of brand mascots on visual attention levels of consumers vary according to the types of other visual elements.