Popcorn Can Make One Immune to Advertising, Researchers Say

A study by researchers at the University of Cologne has shown that popcorn can help get that popular ad jingle or brand name out of your mind.

Advertisers get us hooked to a particular brand by showing us frequent commercials. Our brains begin to record brand names and their taglines on repeated exposure to ads. Apparently, the mouth and the tongue automatically albeit subconsciously simulate a familiar product or brand title after a certain period of time. This is called "inner speech".

Now, researchers have found a way to curb the inner speech. Sascha Topolinski and Fritz Strack at the University of Cologne say that disturbing this covert oral function can help us overcome the power of advertising.

For their study, researchers invited 96 participants to watch a movie. Half of the participants were asked to munch popcorn during the adverts as well as the movie while the other half were given a sugar cube at the beginning of the movie. Researchers made sure that all the adverts presented at the start were novel.

They found that people who ate popcorn during the movie showed no response to the adverts while people who got the sugar cube displayed psychological response to the advertisements.

"The mundane activity of eating popcorn made participants immune to the pervasive effects of advertising," said Sascha Topolinski, one of the researchers, according to a news release.

Researchers added that, in the future, advertisers may prevent popcorn sale just before the main movie.

"This finding suggests that selling candy in movie theaters actually undermines advertising effects, which contradicts present marketing strategies. In the future, when promoting a novel brand, advertising clients might consider trying to prevent candy being sold before the main movie to ensure the positive outcome of their marketing. But of course much more research and larger field surveys are necessary to justify such big changes in marketing policies," researchers said.

Popcorn and movies might seem inseparable now, but their histories are vastly different. The humble variant of corn kept travelling to and from South America for several years without gaining much attention. It was only during the Great Depression that popcorn actually managed to achieve popularity by salvaging the movie business.