Abstract

In 2001, BWM produced a series of films as branded entertainment that were distributed predominantly in the Internet. In the present study, subjects viewed one of the films in the series and were surveyed to determine their level of involvement in the narrative (measured as transportation) and their attitude toward the BMW brand. Based on the Elaboration Likelihood Model and transportation literature, the present study predicted that subjects who experienced more transportation into the narrative would have a more positive attitude toward the BMW brand. This hypothesis was supported. These findings have implications with modern advertising, as more and more consumers shift their media consumption from traditional to new media.

Introduction

A car speeds down a twisting mountain road. In the sky above, a helicopter rains down gunfire in its wake. The car's passenger clutches a steel briefcase tightly to his chest. The driver, focused on the road, skids the car to a stop in the middle of a tall bridge. “What's in the briefcase?” he demands. Reluctantly, the passenger answers, “Salvation. Now drive!”

This is the expository scene for a short film titled “Ticker,” written and directed by Joe Carnahan. It stars Clive Owen and Don Cheadle, and features F. Murray Abraham and Ray Liotta, among other notable actors. On the surface, it appears to be a standard big-budget Hollywood production, which it is; however, this film was financed by BMW as branded entertainment. It is one in a series of eight short films collectively titled “The Hire” that were made available on BMW's web site. The series won numerous awards, including the Los Angeles International Film Festival's “Best Action Short” for 2001 and 2002, and was nominated for permanent exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. Although it is no longer available on the web site, the series generated considerable buzz for the company, having more than 100 million views (BMW Films). In addition to its success as a buzz marketing tool, the series was a relatively inexpensive venture for the company, with distribution almost solely on its web site.

But this begs a question: as such a non-traditional form of advertising, did the series affect consumer attitudes toward the brand, or was it simply entertainment? To answer this, I examine the literature on the psychological effects of narratives and attitude formation. A number of recent studies have explored the persuasive impact of narratives (and especially fictional narratives) on people's beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors. From the cultivation perspective, skewed depictions of society in television programming builds in viewers' minds so that, eventually, they view the television “reality” as representative of the real world. This effect has been observed for news as well as fiction; however, the psychological literature would suggest that fictional presentations tend to have a greater impact. While cultivation describes an effect that occurs over time, narratives can also have immediate effects. Since the BMW series consists of only eight films, it is unlikely that an attitude toward the brand will be cultivated. Rather, the immediate attitudinal effects are of concern to the present study.

In answering the question posed previously, it seems that entertainment and attitudinal effects go hand-in-hand; the greater the entertainment, the greater the persuasion. This relationship has been demonstrated as a correlation between narrative involvement (defined and measured as transportation into the narrative) and attitude change (Green & Brock, 2000). However, no study has explored the impact of transportation on brand attitude for branded entertainment, in which a persuasive claim is implied, as opposed to the explicit product statements of standard advertising.

In the present study, subjects viewed the BMW short film “Hostage.” I measured the extent to which subjects were transported into the narrative, and correlated it with their attitude toward the car featured in the film. Findings support my hypothesis that positive brand attitude increases with transportation into the narrative; and I argue that causally, transportation must precede attitude formation.

Literature Review

Narrative fiction is a powerful source of persuasion. Oatley (1999) writes that fiction “may be twice as true as fact” (p. 101). This suggestion may seem counter-intuitive (fact should be more convincing than fiction!); however, there are a number of reasons it is representative of how people interact cognitively with fiction.

Perhaps the simplest explanation of this phenomenon is that people tend to accept fictional propositions as truth automatically, even if the proposition is absurd. For example, Prentice, Gerrig, and Bailis (1997) found that subjects were likely to accept such assertions as “chocolate helps you lose weight” and “mental illness is contagious” when they were communicated via fictional narratives. The authors concluded that people must actively construct disbelief of fictional content, which runs contrary to the notion of “suspending one's disbelief.” That is, while engaged with narratives, people are in a constant state of belief; disbelief bust be effortful.

Dual Processing Model of Persuasion

To understand further why this might be the case, it is helpful to to explore narrative effects in terms of the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM), developed by Petty and Cacioppo (1981, 1986) as an explanation of attitudinal effects of persuasive messages. The model is based on the assumption that message processing is divided into two types: systematic and heuristic. Systematic processing is controlled, where thought processes are directed carefully by the thinker. Conversely, heuristic processing is automatic, where thought processes occur without effortful direction. In processing a persuasive message, these modes of processing have significantly different end states. When a person processes a message systematically, s/he will examine the message details and form arguments about the quality of the assertion. If the assertion contains flaws or inconsistencies, the person will be more likely to notice them. On the other hand, if s/he processes the message heuristically, the intricate details of the message (which require considerable processing) will be skimmed, and simple cues will guide his/her assessment of the message. Such cues include source attractiveness and good feelings associated with the message. In the ELM, systematic processing of a message is called the central route to persuasion, and heuristic processing of a message is called the peripheral route to persuasion.

Differences in processing factual and fictional information can be explained by the ELM. Garst, Green, and Brock (2000, cited in Green, Garst, & Brock, 2004) found that labeling the same message as factual or fictional resulted in different levels of persuasion. When the message source was identified as a local news station (factual condition), subjects were more likely to employ central route processing. When the source was identified as the American Television Writers' Guild (fictional condition), subjects were more likely to employ peripheral route processing. This effect was observed only in subjects with a low need for cognition (need for cognition is a predisposition toward maintaining mental activity); however, it explains why, with some people, fictional is more persuasive than fact. By this logic, if a fictional narrative is particularly enjoyable, a person should respond favorably to imbeded messages. Next, I will explore narrative enjoyment from the transportation perspective.

Transportation

After viewing “Ticker” or any other intense action film, it would be normal for a person to comment, “Wow! I was really scared they wouldn't make it.” People tend to be drawn into narratives and experience the story as if they were part of it; most people have had the experience of being “lost in a book” (Nell, 1988). Researchers call this phenomenon transportation into a narrative world (see Gerrig, 1993; Green and Brock, 2000). This form of narrative engagement differs from what the ELM would suggest. Rather than being passive recipients and heuristic processors of messages, the transported individual is cognitively involved in the story (Green et al., 2004). Rosenthal (2006) found that memory for story detail was moderately correlated with transportation. In his study, subjects in the experimental condition were given a secondary task designed to limit the encoding of episodic story information. Compared with subjects in the control condition, these subjects reported fewer correct story details and lower transportation indexes. Superficially, transportation seems to contradict the predictions of the ELM; however, it does not. Green and Brock (2000) predicted and found that the more a person is transported into a narrative, the less likely the are to find false notes in the story.

There are at least two explanations of why this occurs. The first explanation incorporates the Limited Capacity Model (LCM; Lang, 2000). The LCM uses the term “resources” to describe cognitive processing capacity. These resources are limited and shared among the separate processes of encoding, storage, and retrieval. For example, if a person is engaged with a strong retrieval task, fewer resources will be available for encoding or storage. This is often apparent when a person is engaged in a memory task, such as an exam. When s/he is fully involved with the exam, most if not all of his/her cognitive resources will be dedicated to information retrieval. If there is an environmental change, s/he might not notice it, because that would require resource reallocation to encoding processes. A number of scale items on a transportation scale developed by Green and Brock (2000) concern attention to the physical environment. These items are coded such that less attention to the physical environment is an indication of greater transportation. Green and Brock's (2002) Transportation-Imagery Model explains why cognitive resources are allocated away from encoding information external to the narrative. The model argues that transportation is highly imageably. In other words, a person experiencing transportation will be using all of his/her cognitive resources to process story information and generate mental images; no cognitive resources will remain for assessing the veracity of the presentation. The moment a person removes him/herself from the narrative to ask, “why do the bad guys always miss?” s/he is no longer experiencing transportation.

The second explanation for why transportation facilitates persuasion is that it makes the narrative experience seem more real; transportation can enhance the sensation of direct experience. Fazio and Zanna (1981, cited in Green et al., 2004) found that direct experience with attitude objects leads to sustained attitudes. For example, “Ticker” features a BMW Z4 quite heroically. It is portrayed as fast, maneuverable, tough, and stylish. If a person is highly transported, s/he will have a more direct experience with the car, and will be more likely to modify his/her attitude of the car to reflect its presentation.

While both explanations require the transported individual to be highly engaged with the narrative, they are not discordant with the ELM. The key factor mitigating the seeming discrepancy is that transportation leads to enjoyment through escaping the self, transformation, and connections with characters (Green, Brock, & Kaufman, 2004). Since transportation requires a lack of systematic processing of information, the transported individual must rely on peripheral cues for attitude formation. If an effect of transportation is enjoyment, it makes sense that enjoyment would serve as a cue for positive attitude formation of the narrated message. For BMW's “The Hire” series, transportation should translate into positive attitudes toward BMW cars. Thus, I arrive at my hypothesis:

H1: For branded narrative entertainment, higher transportation into the narrative should result in a more positive attitude toward the brand.

Method

Subjects (N = 80) were a convenience sample of undergraduates in an introductory advertising course at a large university in the South. Females (N = 59) outnumbered males (N = 21), and the median age was 20 years.

The short film “Hostage” was selected as the stimulus material. It was directed by John Woo. In the film, Clive Owen's character (a police-contracted driver) attempts to negotiate the release of a female hostage whose whereabouts are unknown. When her captor commits suicide yet to disclose her location, Owen's character contacts her on a cell phone and must race around town in his BMW Z4 to locate the source of her signal. This scene involves a number of favorable shots of the car as it easily outperforms and outmaneuvers police who mistakenly believe the car is stolen. Owen's character arrives just in time to save the woman from the flooded trunk of her captor's car, which has been sunk in a river. Runtime (excluding credit roll) is eight minutes and thirty-eight seconds.

The questionnaire measured subjects' degree of transportation and their attitude toward the BWM featured in the film. The transportation scale, a seven-point Likert-type scale developed originally by Green and Brock (2002), consisted of fourteen items that asked subjects to indicate their level of agreement with such statements as “when the film ended, I felt like I came back to 'reality' after a journey,” and “the story affected me emotionally.” Four of the items were reverse-coded so that a higher scale score represented more transportation. The attitude scale was a semantic differential consisting of thirteen items. Each item presented a pair of dichotomous adjectives to describe the car (i.e., dependable:unreliable; fun:boring; desirable:unattractive). Six items were reverse-coded so that a higher scale score represented a more positive attitude. In the printed questionnaires, the scales were counterbalanced to diminish any priming effect one might have on the other. Ancillary measurements included demographics (age and sex) and genre ranking scale that asked subjects to rank a list of genres from “10” (their favorite) to “1” (their least favorite). Accompanying the ranking scale was a question that asked subjects to indicate which of the ten genres they felt best describe “Hostage,” which was then matched with the number they assigned to that genre. The purpose of this was to measure subjects' genre-based interest in the film, which might serve as a moderator of the transportation-attitude effect. Finally, subjects were asked to identify the brand of car driven by the main character, as attitude change would only benefit BMW if viewers associated positive attitudes with the BMW brand.

The survey was conducted in three 15-minute sessions. At the beginning of each session, subjects were informed that participation was optional, and at the end of the session, the researcher would explain the purpose of the study and its expected outcome. Each session consisted of two parts. First, subjects viewed the short film, which was projected on a large screen in a darkened room and played with stereo sound so as to mimic a movie theater. After exposure, the room lights were turned on and questionnaires were distributed. Survey completion took approximately five minutes.

Results and Discussion

Testing reliability, the transportation and attitude scales had alphas of .838 and .819, respectively. Statistical analysis reveals a moderate significant two-tail correlation between transportation and attitude (r = .324; p = .003), which explains 10.4 percent of variance (see Table 1). This supports the correlation predicted by H1; however, H1 also predicts the direction of this relationship, which I must argue theoretically, for lack of a better methodology.

My hypothesis predicted that transportation precedes attitude change; and I feel that this must be so necessarily. Green and Brock (2000) write that transportation is a “melding of attention, imagery, and feelings;” whereas no description of transportation includes that it is further facilitated by the presence of a positively-valenced attitude object. For example, had Clive Owen's character driven a Ford Pinto (for which the average presumably has a negative opinion), I do not imagine that viewers would have experienced less transportation (unless the Pinto was performing like a BMW—that might be too unbelievable). It would be absurd to think that Schindler's List would be less transportive simply because it depicts Nazis (which most people undoubtedly view negatively).

On the other hand, research indicates clearly that transportation should facilitate attitude change, and not the other way around. Furthermore, I imagine that a transported individual would have a more favorable attitude toward Ford Pintos if Owen's character had driven one in “Hostage.” It might not be described in the same terms as the BMW, but viewers would probably be more likely to view it as dependable and tough, which goes against the popular image of the car. Since the present study employed an after-only survey with no experimental condition, the direction H1 predicts cannot be assumed; however, there is good reason to believe it.

Table 1

Limitations

My greatest limitation was in the methodology. Ideally, I would have employed a before-and-after two-condition experiment. The before-survey would establish a base-attitude of the BMW car so that attitude change could be demonstrated. The experimental group would engage in a secondary task to limit their engagement with the narrative (Lang and Basil, 1998, demonstrated the effectiveness of such a task at interfering with a primary task). The task would increase between-group variance such that the attitude change of the experimental group would be predicted to be substantially lower than that of the control group.

Another limitation was in the sampling. Subjects were my own students who were unaware of the study until I announced it shortly before administering the survey. Although they were given an opportunity to opt-out of participation, they were already a captive audience, and likely felt an obligation to assist me in my studies. A better sample would consist of students not my own who are recruited in advance of the study. The ideal sample would be a random drawing of the general public; however, for measuring transportation effects, college students suffice.

Conclusion

This study predicted and found that transportation into branded narrative entertainment is correlated with positive attitudes of the brand. This phenomenon can be explained from two perspectives: the ELM and transportation. However, it is possible that ELM and transportation are concomitant processes in attitude change. That is, transportation is, to a degree, dependent on the heuristic processing of narrative propositions.

This finding is important in the current advertising landscape. With the advent of TiVo and the broad availability of entertainment narratives on the Internet, it will become increasingly important for advertisers to integrate their messages into the content. Product placement has long been the method for achieving this; however, branded entertainment has particular potential. Referring again to the success of BMW Film as a buzz marketing tool, it is obvious how branded narrative entertainment could have a lasting and impactful place on the Internet.

References

BMW Films (Oct. 11, 2005). The Hire-the acclaimed film series by BMW-will end a four and a half year Internet run October 21st <http://www.bmwusa.com/bmwexperience/filmspr.htm>. Press Release.

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Nell, V. (1988). Lost in a book: The psychology of reading for pleasure. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

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Petty, R. & Cacioppo, J. (1981). Attitudes and persuasion: Classic and contemporary approaches. Dubuque, Iowa: Wm.C.Brown Company Publishers.

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Rosenthal, S. (2006). The imaginal role of schema instantiation in transportation. Unpublished masters thesis, Washington State University, Pullman, Washington.