Communicators wonder if their messages resonate. You hope great content will impress, but human memory can be fickle. Memory also is not infinite, as the top chart from the 16th Annual Most Memorable New Product Launch survey from Schneider Associates shows.
Note that every time there’s a presidential election (2008, 2012 and 2016) the percentage of people who can recall product launches declines significantly.
What about the younger members of the public, whose brains often are compared to sponges? The bottom chart seems to indicate that age plays a smaller role in recall than one might expect. The low total for iGens, those born after 1995, is attributed to a lack of spending power, resulting in the group’s relative indifference to product launches.
As CES 2018 plays out this week, it’s notable that tech provided the 3 most memorable product launches for 2017, according to the survey of 998 people. The top 10: Apple’s iPhone 8 (#1), Samsung’s Galaxy Note 8 (#2), Nintendo’s Switch (#3), Starbucks’ Unicorn Frappuccino (#4), Google’s Home (#5) Dominos’ Bread Twists (#6), Google’s Pixel (#7), Taco Bell’s Double Stacked Tacos (#8), Taco Bell’s Naked Chicken Chalupa (#9) and Microsoft’s Surface Laptop (#10).
What makes a product memorable? Large-scale marketing and emotion. “The heightened attention to polarized political news” has raised the importance of emotional marketing, says Aaron Reid, chief behavioral scientist at Sentient,a Schneider partner.“Emotions focus attention and make memories.” Sentient found a significant correlation between emotional connection to products and their ability to be remembered. The lure of Starbucks’ Unicorn Frappuccino? It begged to be photographed and shared socially.
Despite significant increases in the use of social media, TV commercials did not see a corresponding drop in use, Schneider says. They continue to be the top-cited source of information about new products.
