مقاله سال ۲۰۱۶

When we are happy, when we rejoice, we move our arms toward the sky: it’s a universal sign when we are experiencing a very positive emotion. Everything which points up in the air seems preferable, metaphorically speaking, to what points downwards. That is why it is difficult to believe that going down does not bring a feeling of depression with it. Look at watch or clock images in advertisements: the hands are always at ten to two, because that projects a subtle smile. What would it seem if they were pointing at six thirty? The same with trajectories: people seem to prefer something positive increasing in an exponential way, rather than with a slower pace because, when we deal with something positive, we want it all and we want it now! Think of an interest rate on one of your investments: would you prefer it increasing in a fast or in a slow way? In this paper we deal with marketing communications and try to apply these concepts to the design of animated company logos. We do this in a mobile marketing environment, where animation and short movements are allowed by the Graphics Interchange Format (GIF), a widespread technology applied to electronic advertising.

Mobile marketing and the role of logo movement directions While the market for Internet-enabled mobile devices such as smartphones, tablets, and new mobile applications continues to expand worldwide, mobile marketing – that is, “the creation, communication, and delivery of customer value through the wireless, mobile medium” (Varnali, Toker, & Yilmaz, 2011, p. 5) remains a discipline at its early stages of development (Persaud & Azhar, 2012). Mobile advertising is one of the fastest-growing advertising formats: in 2013, global spending on mobile advertising was approximately $16.7 billion and it is expected to exceed $62.8 billion by 2017 (Bart, Stephen, & Sarvary, 2014). Currently, the most prevalent type of mobile advertising is mobile display advertising, which functions through banners on mobile web pages and in mobile applications, but mobile marketing practices are likely to change rapidly as mobile technology continues to evolve (Taylor & Lee, 2008). As the online environment becomes more and more competitive in the future, it will be increasingly important for marketers and practitioners to enhance brand distinctiveness and capacity to engage customers. It seems reasonable, in particular, to argue that logos − namely, visual identity elements expressing a company’s values (e.g., Henderson & Cote, 1998) and a prominent part of its brand(s) (Miceli, Scopelliti, Raimondo, & Donato, 2014) – will acquire strategic importance in capturing consumer attention, creating vivid corporate brand identities, and fostering loyalty. In this regard, extant research suggests that animation may have a relevant role in attracting customer attention in online environments (Fasolo, Misuraca, McClelland, & Cordaci, 2006). Recent studies have started to investigate the role of perceived movement of “static logos”, that is, visual signs that convey a sense of movement through their graphic characteristics (cf. Cian, Krishna, & Elder, 2014, 2015; Kohli, Suri, & Thakor, 2002). However research on “animated logos”, that is, those logos that actually move and which consumers can only see through a technological medium (e.g., a computer or a mobile device screen), remains scarce. Brasel and Hagtvedt (2015) analyzed over 400 television commercials aired in U.S. primetime programming and 300 banners of popular US websites, and found, specifically, that 60% of those commercials featured static logos, whereas over 90% of banners featured static logos. According to these authors, the limited diffusion of animated logos may be due to a “lock-in” effect on popular logos that were introduced when the print media was dominant and logo animation was not practicable. As a result, even companies that operate exclusively on the Internet use static logos and animated logos which typically are simple fade-in/fade-out or transition effects. In spite of this, mobile devices and the ubiquity of the Internet provide fertile grounds for the diffusion of animated logos. Hence, for companies interested in using them, it is important to know if they are actually able to engender a favorable attitude toward their brands and products and what specific characteristics determine their efficacy.