Latest / Marketing Psychology with Fexingo: Behavioral Triggers, Persuasion, and Consumer Behavior / How the Von Restorff Effect Makes Ads Unforgettable
Transcript
- Lucas: Luna, I want you to picture an email inbox with fifty messages in it. Forty-nine are plain text, grey background, no formatting. One is bold red with a yellow star next to it. Which one gets clicked first? Luna: The red one, obviously. It screams at you. Lucas: Right. And that scream has a name: the Von Restorff effect. Named after Hedwig von Restorff, a German psychiatrist who, back in 1933, ran a simple experiment where she showed people a list of items — most were similar, but one was different. A number among letters, or a colour among greys. People consistently remembered the odd one out. Luna: So it's the isolation effect? I've heard it called that too. Lucas: Exactly. Same thing. And the effect is powerful — some studies show recall for the isolated item can be two to four times higher than for the rest. But here's what I find fascinating: it doesn't even have to be positive. If you put a negative word among neutral ones, people still remember the negative one better. The brain is just wired to flag anything that's different. Luna: Which makes it a double-edged sword for marketers. Use it wrong and you highlight the wrong thing. Lucas: Exactly. And speaking of wrong — if these conversations have sparked something you've actually used in your own work, honestly, if today was worth a coffee to you, that's the link — buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Luna: Yeah, it's a tiny gesture that keeps the show ad-free and lets us keep digging into these studies. No pressure ever. Lucas: So back to the Von Restorff effect. One of the best real-world examples is Cadbury. In the UK, Cadbury's Dairy Milk wrapper is that iconic purple. But when they launched a limited-edition 'Purple Reign' bar, the wrapper was actually silver with a small purple stripe. It stood out on the shelf because it broke the pattern. Sales reportedly jumped forty percent during that campaign. Luna: Because the silver broke the sea of purple. That's textbook isolation. Lucas: Exactly. And the opposite works too. Apple uses minimalism so that any single element — like the click wheel on the original iPod — becomes the standout. The rest of the design is so clean that the one thing you can interact with is impossible to miss. Luna: So is the lesson that you should always make one thing different? Or is there a risk of overdoing it? Lucas: Great question. Overdoing it is a real risk. If everything is different, nothing is. The effect relies on contrast. So if your ad has five different colours, five different fonts, and five animations, the brain just gives up processing. You lose the isolation. The key is to pick one single element to stand out — and make everything else deliberately uniform. Luna: Like those 'ugly' landing pages that convert well. I'm thinking of the old Craigslist design — it's all plain text blue links. Pure uniformity. Then when someone places a red 'URGENT' tag on a listing, it jumps out, you click. Lucas: Perfect example. Craigslist is basically a Von Restorff laboratory. And the same principle works in email subject lines. Research from Mailchimp a few years ago showed that using a single emoji in the subject line — but only if the rest of your emails are plain text — can boost open rates by over fifty percent. But if you use emojis in every email, the effect vanishes. Luna: So the uniformity of the baseline is what makes the deviation powerful. Lucas: Exactly. And this extends to pricing too. A study in the Journal of Consumer Research found that when a product's price is presented in a different font size or colour than the other prices on the page, consumers are more likely to remember that price — and evaluate the product more positively. But there's a catch. Luna: Let me guess — it only works if the price is a good deal. Lucas: You got it. If you highlight a high price, people remember the high price and stay away. So the isolation effect amplifies whatever you isolate. It's a magnifying glass, not a magic wand. Luna: Which is why you see budget airlines like Ryanair or EasyJet using bright yellow or orange for their 'low fare' callouts on an otherwise muted site. Lucas: Right. They isolate the cheap price signal. And it works. But here's an interesting wrinkle: the Von Restorff effect can also work in audio. Think about podcasts. If most of the episode is conversational and then you suddenly hear a dramatic sound effect or a change in music, you perk up. That's why some advertisers pay for a 'sonic logo' — a distinctive sound that cuts through the background noise. Luna: So the isolation doesn't have to be visual. It can be a change in tone, pace, even silence. Lucas: Silence is a powerful one. In a noisy environment, a sudden pause makes everyone look up. That's why great speakers sometimes just stop talking for a few seconds. It's isolating the moment. Luna: So for a marketer today, what's the actionable takeaway? How do you apply this without a big budget? Lucas: Start small. Pick one channel — email, social media, packaging — and create a uniform baseline. For example, if you run Instagram ads, make all your images have the same filter, same layout, same text font. Then, for your key campaign, change exactly one thing. Maybe it's the colour of the CTA button. Maybe it's adding a human face when all your other ads are product shots. Track the click-through rate difference. You'll likely see a lift. Luna: And if you're a startup with a limited budget, you can use the effect in your pitch deck. Make all slides black and white with one slide that's full colour — the slide showing your revenue growth or your team photo. Investors will remember that slide. Lucas: That's a great application. I've seen it work in practice with a startup called Mosaic — they had a pitch deck with sixteen slides, but the one with their user acquisition chart was the only one with a red line. Investors kept referencing that chart in follow-up meetings. Luna: So the effect works even when it's purely functional — not just aesthetic. Lucas: Exactly. And there's a flip side to be aware of: the Von Restorff effect can also work against you if you're not careful. For instance, if your website has a 'Sign Up' button that's a different colour than the rest, but the button is hard to find or looks broken, people remember the broken button — not the offer behind it. Luna: Which is why A/B testing is crucial. You have to make sure the isolated element is actually the one you want people to act on. Lucas: Precisely. And there's another nuance: the effect is stronger when the isolated item is relevant to the task. A random image that's different for no reason just confuses people. But if the different item is a 'limited time' badge or a 'best value' tag, it fits the mental model and the isolation helps guide decision-making. Luna: So the isolation needs to carry meaning. Lucas: Yes. And that meaning should be aligned with the user's goal. If they're looking for a deal, isolate the price. If they're looking for social proof, isolate the review score. If they're looking for speed, isolate the delivery promise. Luna: One more question: does the effect decay over time? If I see the same 'different' element every time I visit a site, does it stop working? Lucas: It does. Familiarity breeds indifference. The isolation effect works best when the deviation is novel. So if you always use a red CTA button, after a while your brain stops flagging it as different. That's why some brands periodically change their hero colour — to recapture the novelty. Luna: So you need to rotate which element you isolate, or change the medium of isolation. Lucas: Exactly. You could shift from colour to shape, or from size to motion. Dynamic isolation keeps the brain guessing. And that's part of a broader principle: the Von Restorff effect is just one flavour of salience bias. The brain is always scanning for what's new, what's different, what might be important. If you can hack that scan — even just one time — you win a moment of attention. Luna: And a moment of attention is all you need to start a relationship with a customer. Lucas: Right. So next time you're putting together an ad, an email, or a product page, ask yourself: what's the one thing I want them to remember? Then make everything else the same — and make that one thing different. It's simple, it's cheap, and it's backed by ninety years of psychology. Luna: And if you want to test it yourself, start with your next email subject line. Make it the only one with a word in all caps, or a single emoji, while keeping your other emails plain. See what happens. Lucas: I'd love to hear what you find. Send us your results — we might feature them in a future episode. And if today's angle was useful, you know where to find the coffee link. Luna: Until next time, keep standing out.