When we talk about the influence in communication, there is no doubt that it is the unusual, the unknown and different, perhaps nerve-wracking, and dangerous that creates attention. We cannot really place some signals. It does not comply with our codes, our visual regulations. But they grab our attention and often get it completely unreservedly. And we are affected. This applies in real life as well as in graphic communication.
Strong experiences influence.
1. our way of dealing with everything about the Tsunami and the catastrophe that struck Southeast Asia at the end of 2004. At that time, this was something completely new to most people in Northern Europe, something we could never foresee, and neither could think it would affect us.
The media bombarded us with facts, and we wanted more, and we were very strongly influenced (some with personal relationships with victims) so that it created manifestations and fundraisers around the world.
2. When the pain killer tablet Ipren was introduced to the market it was done with a completely new marketing strategy that had a strong impact on the market. Never before had people in suburbs been visited by a guitar playing mega sized pill singing a song of how Intelligent this particular brand of medication was.
This way of communication struck all instances on what was allowed for big drug companies to say in marketing. Can a tablet and drug be "intelligent". The recipients of the commercial were charmed by the whole set-up of the commercials with the guitar-playing pill look alike character that came to the rescue, while being in pain. Previously, most of the advertising of this type of product had looked the same, they were predictable commercials with a water glass and an effervescent tablet that would give us information about the benefits of the product. The all looked the same and customers could not see the different in between them. Who was the actual sender, and why did receptor’s not notice them. In a short time, Ipren has built up a strong brand with the guitarplaying pill given the name “the Ipren man” and the commercial was voted by Sweden's consumers as the best advertising ever. Ipren haven’t been able to continue cater to consumers with equally rewarding advertising since then, but today they are a given brand in Sweden.
3. The third example is one of the leading grocery retailers in Sweden, ICA an example of a company that has been able to cater their receivers for a period of 20 years (starting in 2001) with its loved marketing designed as a Soap opera with a today very loved and devoted fan group.
The commercial has succeeded with its influence via TV and online commercials, “ICA Stig” the ICA retailer (now in 2020 on his third actor) with his employees and the difficulties that exist in the daily life of the store. Surveys have shown that a large proportion of consumers in the target group long for the "next" part of advertising to see how it goes and consumers see advertising as a serial they do not want to miss an episode of even though it is advertising.
For us to be able to see the impact in its proper context, there are also several concepts and questions of interpretation that we need to examine in more depth.
Redundancy and entropy
The concept of redundancy is closely related to "information".
Redundancy is what is predictable or conventional in a message and perhaps it is the type of information that is part of our daily lives and that we no longer perceive.
The opposite of redundancy is entropy, which means low predictability and completely new information for us. A message with low predictability can thus be entropic and rich in information, in contrast it is a message with high predictability redundant and poor in information.
Despite this, it is not possible to reject all information that has a remarkably high degree of predictability, because then it would be difficult in most contexts to initiate a dialogue and we want the dialogue if we are to be able to communicate.
Theoretically, communication without redundancy can take place, but in practical terms it is next to impossible.
Some redundancy is thus necessary for practical communication. We need some of our habitual patterns and our redundancy because too much entropy can be so new that we experience it as chaotic and frightening. According to the Swedish Academy's Glossary, entropy is described as: “the tendency of a system to change in the direction of its most probable distribution” (SAO, 1997). It gives a summary picture.
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Fair amount and in between levels win.
For those of us who study communication, entropy as a concept is of less value. Instead, it is important to know how advertising should succeed in balancing between the trivial and what we perceive as hostile, ie in the middle between redundancy and entropy.
If there is too much redundancy, the message can be perceived as far too trivial, which means that we absolutely do not want to know about it, it is based on the triviality barrier.
In the same way, it is for the too strong entropic, chaotic, and hostile message. It becomes too strong in the opposite direction and the frightening factors mean that we do not want to absorb the information, the hostility barrier.
Here we have two extremes that the communicator constantly must work with, they constitute obstacles to communication if they pull too much in one direction or the other. Messages that are in the middle of these extremes have the greatest opportunity to reach out, even if you must never forget to create a message that tickles the recipient and spins on man's built-in curiosity.
How does impact work?
How should you work when you want to influence your surroundings and create impact?
Because it is something we are exposed to throughout our lives, it is difficult to defend against it. Absolutely this applies to all types of influence, from what our parents teach us during our childhood years, throughout our upbringing in school and society to our funeral, we are influenced by society, politics, religion and even the media. It is difficult to defend oneself and it is difficult to consciously opt out of all information we do not wish to be affected by. The media channels are constantly being broadened and as advertising is no longer only available as a powerful media via the traditional mass media channels in newspapers, Television and Radio but also as an important instrument on the Internet its social media and other interactive and online broadcast media, the way of working with influence has changed to some extent.
Our senses participate
Vision and hearing are two of the greatest channels into our impressionable consciousness, which is what all those who want to influence their surroundings work with.
We must not forget our other senses, which are also used to some extent to exert influence. The smell is used in various marketing contexts and it is a powerful channel to work with because the smell sends strong signals to our brain to react in a different way than only sight and hearing can convey. An example of this could be: If we see the fire burning in front of us and hear how the burning material breaks, we may not feel any immediate danger because we are at a proper distance, but when we feel the smell of gas, we realize that the danger is much greater than what neither sight nor hearing was able to convey.
All influence and every Impact must pass to the brain.
The brain has a massive flood of messages to process during a normal day when we are bombarded by different messages that in different ways desire our attention. Our senses receive and send on to the brain where several different interesting processes take place. What should we react to and what should we sort out? All influence must be processed by the brain and of course our attitude to different messages.
Perception
Something that most people who work with graphic communication and different types of work that include influence will ever learn is Perception.
To succeed with influence, one must succeed in promoting the perception of the recipient groups. It is about all impressions really being perceived and processed by the brain. From the sight we get incredible amounts of information. The retina's 130 million vision cells capture the light rays from the outside world, broken by the eye's lens and send them in the form of nerve impulses through the optic nerve to the brain's visual center. There they are put together for visual impressions.
The interesting thing comes in the knowledge. Because we recognize such a large amount of the information, we see around us, we do not really see them, but we sort them out. They are past experiences, and they form the basis of our interpretations of and our understanding of all incoming sensory impressions. In addition, we add things we do not really see and change things that do not fit with our preconceived notion. This phenomenon is since we receive a steady stream of tiring and all-too-common, non-urgent, recurring visual impressions that do not affect or enrich us significantly. It is a form of sorting we do that takes place in the prioritizing body where all the trivial things are sorted out and while the interesting and urgent things are prioritized and passed on.
Memory is an important component.
For such a function to be possible at all, memory plays an important role. It reminds us, for example, of previous sensory experiences such as a scent, a sound, or an image. If the experience is particularly important (positive or negative has no real significance), the short-term memory is activated and then transferred to the long-term memory. Once the impression of the sensory experience is there, the experience is stored.
Why Americans call the terror attack “September Eleven”.
One of the most horrific memories in history Americans have is the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York City in 2001 when two regular planes were forced by hijackers into the Twin Towers with an unimaginable disaster as a result.
When this event is mentioned in media, it is with the term "September Eleven". Being this particular date, the terrorists and hijackers chose was probably not by chance as the date coincides with the emergency number 911 in the USA. In addition to the real terror that was carried out on this specific day, the telephone number that will protect America was charged with the perception of one of America's most traumatic events of all time. In this way, it becomes impossible to name the date of the terrorist attack in any other way than September eleven. Memory is an important component; you cannot think of the terror attack every time you call 911.
Experience
What, then, is to be done to reach and resurrect that which is stored in the consciousness of the recipient? Yes, it is important for the sender to research what is emotionally stored in the receiver's consciousness. It can be a bright memory, an accident, silence, a dream, a lie, a journey, rain, snow, sun ...
Sometimes the touch should be soft and sometimes a little more powerful. Live out the drama and feel free to touch the humor. Just as we mentioned above, there is a greater chance of influencing by using strong and somewhat unusual sensory impressions. The early subjective experiences have a lingering ability to survive with the recipient. The horrific experience the great mass of the world woke up to on the second day of Christmas 2004 at the catastrophe in Southeast Asia marked our whole approach to the continued interpretation of our collection of information of the event. This applies regardless of whether we were present or if we received information via the media. In the same way that the frightening experience left an imprint on our consciousness, a commercial that touches can also affect the entire TV night.
Interpretation of information
There are remarkably interesting parts in this area that place great demands on the graphic designer. It is something that is extremely individual and is difficult to create a unified image around.
The perception and experience of the individual recipient leads to how the message is interpreted. It is a process that is permeated by the recipient's personal knowledge, experiences and associations and the situation he is in. In the interpretation work, the recipient makes a basic assessment of what he sees and experiences. What is this all about? Meaning? Friend or foe? It is a rough valuation that will soon be replaced by a more nuanced valuation.
Often, however, a misinterpretation of the message takes place, and it does not arrive.
This was especially clear on January 6, 2021, when incumbent US President Donald Trump urged his constituents to act, eventually leading them to reinterpret his call and physically attack the US Congress, the Capitol.
It is in this area that the knowledge of denotative and connotative meaning, code and designation is so important in the transmitter. How should we shape our message so that we reduce the number of recipients who misinterpret our message?
Filter Human
If we were to absorb all the messages that are persistently trying to reach us during the day, we would collapse. That is why we have a defense system that is immensely powerful. The defense consists of different filters. Every human being has different types of filters and they are differently effective, it depends largely on the balance of our psyche. Below we will go through some of the protective filters that are generally available to protect us from all signals. The filter defense includes: Selective exposure, selective perception, credibility filter, storage in long-term memory, attitude filter.
Selective exposure
This is the first and most powerful filter. This means that you do not want to be exposed to commercial messages. The recipient only reads the editorial material in the newspaper, turns off the TV during advertising breaks and has a note on his mailbox that says: Advertising is avoided or No advertising, please.
Selective perception
We see what we want to see and hear what we want to hear. When you are looking for a new home, you pay much more attention to all housing ads than you would otherwise. When the old loyal servant to a car is about to collapse, we are much more attentive to car ads (it may be used as well as the new nice car).
Credibility
A message can very easily get through the third filter, credibility, if we through previous experience have learned to believe in and respect a certain company and its products or services. If we do not believe in them or accept what they stand for, they easily disappear from our consciousness.
Storage
The storage in the long-term memory, means that we remember and maybe even collect and fill with additional information.
Attitudes
The most important filter includes perceptions, values, and attitudes. If we open this filter properly, a company or a certain product can become our favorite for life.
Create attention!
We are bombarded daily with messages. This creates a world of abundance of information but a great poverty of attention. Our attention is, despite the lack, a prerequisite for a message to reach and thus also for influence.
What creates attention?
Some visual arrangements attract attention like a magnet. Crucial are often strong contrasts in size, movement, color, etc. It can be powerful combinations of text and image or interesting, contrasting shapes and colors, often with elements of movement.
The strength can consist of strong contrasts between the different parts of a message or between the message and the environment.
Strength may not always be the most effective, but silence can also have extremely strong effects, as can the transition from all bright colors to black and white.
Create relevance.
It is easy to create attention. Blood and nudity are often enough. The difficulty is called relevance. The recipient must understand that there is a reasonable and sensible reason why she was caught by a visual arrangement.
Context
A visual arrangement has an internal context where all elements are in a relationship to each other and to an external environment, the environment. The inner and outer context can be either harmonious and calm or disharmonious and contrasting. The most effective way to reach a recipient is to stand out, break off.
Emotions and thoughts
Humor can mean something positive for some of the target group but completely bypass others. Irony, to say one thing but mean something else can create shortcomings in communication.
Feeling, thought and action.
These three concepts stand for the recipient's ideal reaction. The feeling for her to think something. Often conveyed visually. The thought makes her find out something. Often conveyed verbally. The action (preferably the one the transmitter intended) is the result of the visual and the verbal.
Feeling
The advertisement, the commercial, the website quickly creates a feeling in the recipient. This feeling, which takes the shortest path to the brain, is created primarily through the visual elements, the arrangement of shapes and colors, the content and execution of the images. Whether they are strictly or playfully arranged, they speak directly to the recipient's right brain. A feeling for the whole has arisen. The message is perceived to a greater or lesser degree.
Thought
Now a thought arises in the recipient, whose intellect makes a kind of assessment of the message. Is this something for me? Is it credible? What is required of me? What can I get out of it all?
A thought before the message has arisen and the text, the verbal message, is especially important in this context. The recipient knows something, maybe it is time.
Action
An action is the goal each sender wants the recipient to perform. Attention, relevance, feeling and thought have influenced the recipient of an active action. She is doing something.
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