Advertisers spend millions of pounds every year on television
adverts designed to enhance recognition of and preference for a
target brand. Various studies have explored the powerful ability
that adverts have to change one’s autobiographical memory for a
past event. Braun, Ellis, and Loftus (2002) demonstrated that when
participants watched an advert for Disney in which it was suggested
that they had shaken hands with a non-Disney character
(Bugs Bunny) or a Disney character who post-dated their childhood
(Ariel, The Little Mermaid), this increased their confidence that
these impossible events had indeed happened to them as children.
More recently, Rajagopal and Montgomery (2011) demonstrated
the ‘false experience effect’, whereby being exposed to a high
imagery advert for a fictitious product variant of a real brand (e.g.,
Dial Natural soap) increases the likelihood that participants will
falsely believe they have tried the non-existent product and that
this is accompanied by a similar increase in favourable ratings as