By: Mario Fuentes, Noemi Valencia, Angelina Mesina, Carina Cortes
Robert Meeds, LinkedIn Profile
Overview
Robert Meeds, Ph.D., is a professor of Communications at California State University, Fullerton. He currently teaches Communications 317, Digital Foundations. He has previously served on the faculties of Kansas State University, Texas Tech University, and Qatar University. Robert Meeds holds a B.S. in Journalism and an M.A. in English from Ball State University. Additionally, he received his Ph.D. From the University of Missouri. He specializes in advertising and integrated marketing communications. Professor Meeds conducts research that focuses on the impact of advertising copywriting on consumer attention, learning, perceptions, etc. His work has been published in various journals such as the International Journal of Advertising, Journal of Consumer Psychology, Psychology and Marketing, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, Newspaper Research Journal, and Journal of Middle East Media, among others.
Throughout our interview, we focused on his work titled “Surface-structure transformations and advertising slogans: The case for moderate syntactic complexity”. This research focuses on how the structure of language is used in advertising slogans. Specifically, it explores how sentence structures can be transformed and adjusted to create the most effective slogans. The main idea brought from this research is that moderately complex sentences are most effective at catching attention and assuring slogans are memorable for consumers. Being inspired by Noam Chomsky’s work, Meeds explores the surface structure transformations within advertising slogans and the application of psycholinguistic theory.
Q: Based on your research article, “Surface-Structure Transformations and Advertising Slogans”, What inspired you to explore surface-structure transformations in advertising slogans?
Robert Meeds explained that his area of research has been what’s called “Application of Psycholinguistic Theory.” This area of research studies how people process language in advertising. This particular study was an idea conducted by one of his master’s students who was in a psycholinguistics class at the time. They were influenced by Noam Chomsky’s theory of transformational grammar. There was a research that showed that taking the same meaning of a sentence and manipulating the syntax around would cause people to concentrate harder as if to decode the sentence in a way. As a result, Meeds and his student believed this was interesting in terms of how it might apply to advertising slogans.
Q: Can you share examples of slogans that you believe perfectly illustrate your findings?
Meeds uses the “State Farm” insurance slogan as an example to support his findings. The slogan, “Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there”, is a phrase in which the syntax has been manipulated in order to resonate the sound. Otherwise, the default way of structuring that sentence would be, “State Farm is there like a good neighbor.” Manipulating the syntax and putting a specific phrase first creates a different resonate sound to the slogan. Carefully placing and manipulating the syntax in a phrase can aid in memorizing certain brands and slogans such as this one. He explains that we can look at advertising slogans ourselves and analyze if they are phrased in a default “subject-verb-object” structure.
Q: What methodology did you use to measure the effectiveness of different slogans?
Meeds explained that his research within this study was a psychological, within-subject experiment. However, most experiments that we are probably familiar with are between-subjects experiments, which means you randomize an assignment to a treatment condition and each participant is then exposed to one of your treatment conditions. In media work, there are a lot of within-subject designs which means you assign each treatment condition to every subject. In doing this, you can control individual-level variants which can give you stronger results.
Q: Were there any surprising findings during your research that challenged your initial expectations?
During his research, Meeds explains that there really weren’t any surprises throughout his experiment. He explains this as one of those “rare” experiments where they got the results that they expected. Usually when you conduct an experiment, it is not uncommon to encounter surprises that differ from your expected results, however that was not the case for this one.
Q: How does syntactic complexity interact with other elements of communication? Such as visual design or brand tone?
Meeds explains that there may not be enough research within either of these elements to show how they interact with one another. The closest thing to show how these elements interact with one another was when he conducted a study in the Middle East. This study looked at tourism websites that they had created as stimulus materials that were done in Arabic. They were looking at differences in how people responded to it, whether they used a Western design style or a Middle Eastern design style. They received the interactions based on whether people liked the foreign language design style.
Q: How do you think social media and digital communications have changed the roles of effective slogan writing? Ex. Do shorter slogans stick better in an era of fast scrolling?
Meeds states that slogans have always tended to be more memorable and better-liked if they are short. He further explains that the general rule is usually seven words or less. Although the social media era has become more advanced, this general rule hasn’t really changed throughout time. He thinks that with the general speed in which we can scroll through content so quickly, including advertising content, it would seem that the repetition of short, memorable slogans is probably more important now than ever before.
Q: How did you actually measure or determine the impact of the slogans studied?
The impact was measured by taking the hypotheses, which are your pre-predictions of what you think the outcome of the study will be, and then test whether or not your hypotheses are supported by looking at the scores in each condition. In this specific study, Meeds explains that the two main independent variables were changed in order to see how other people would process it. The first independent variable was the voice of the sentences, which was active versus passive voice. The second independent variable was particle movement, which meant taking a phrase and moving it from where it would normally fit. An example in the study was the sentence, “Officials quickly rushed to the fire.” versus “Officials rushed to the fire quickly.” In this case, the word “quickly” would be the particle. In its normal position, the particle would be close to the verb, which is “quickly rushed.” However, if we move that particle to “fire quickly”, this would be considered a dangling modifier. In this experiment, however, it is known as a particle movement. Once they created various slogans that contained those two treatment conditions, they exposed the participants to all of the different slogans by answering a questionnaire. The questionnaire was based on how well they understood the content, how well they recalled certain words they were exposed to, syntactic recognition, and their attitude towards the ad/persuasion. Once they took these four conditions, they took the mean scores for each one of these dependent variables in each one of these treatment cells. Once all of this information is collected, it is then submitted into the analysis of variance statistical tests. If you end up with a significant difference then you end up with a significant result.
To Conclude…
Professor Meeds’ work explores the role of psycholinguistics in enhancing how consumers process advertising slogans. By applying transformational grammar to slogan structure, Meeds demonstrated how syntactic manipulation can influence audience engagement and memory. With a fast paced era of digital scrolling, Meeds’ research highlights the benefits and strengths of shorter, well-crafted slogans. His research contributes valuable insights into the process of advertising which highlights the intricate connection between structure and meaning.
The Society for Communications Research 