The March 14, 1983 issue of ADVERTISING AGE carried an article of huge significance to radio advertisers and the radio advertising professionals who serve them. "The eye vs. the ear" by authors Al Ries and Jack Trout offered compelling evidence that the human mind works by ear more than by eye, and that consumers tend to prefer ear-oriented communication over eye-oriented communication.
"Written language," they said, "is recoded by the mind into an internal form of oral language. It seems that your mind must translate printed words into their spoken equivalents before it can understand them."
Furthermore,
When people communicate with one another, the ear is the preferred avenue of entry, either in person or over the phone.
When people turn to one of the senses for pure pleasure, the sense they generally turn to is the ear. Compare, for example, the time spent listening to music with the time spent looking at art or photography. There's no comparison. The ear wins by a huge margin.
What are the implications where advertising is concerned?
Clearly there is a striking inconsistency between advertisers and the target of their advertising, the prospects.
Prospects spend 85 percent of their overall media time immersed in ear-oriented media...and only 15 percent of their time with eye-oriented media such as newspapers and magazines.
Advertisers, on the other hand, spend 55 percent of their dollars on eye media (print), and only 45 percent of their dollars on ear media (broadcast).
The emergence of the Internet and new media over the past 20 years has added some new variables to the equation, but the central fact remains: the mind works by ear.
Speech is mankind's primary form of communication. Print is an imitation of speech.
And we represent the only pure-speech medium: radio.
Rod -- Thank you for posting. What insight. Thanks to Al Ries and Jack Trout for their kindness as well. We'll use this at Radio Newark / WIZU to educate our new sponsors and underwriters. Thanks again, Rod.
Please, tell me which book is this article from?
You can find it in Jack Trout's "The New Positioning" - as well as in that 3/14/83 issue of Ad Age.
The article may be 32 years old, but it's just as pertinent today as it was back then. The Internet is essentially an updated version of print; while we can receive all kinds of video and audio content through it, most online communication is handled through the written word.
This is still extremely meaningful; I'll definitely keep this in my back pocket for later use.
