The optimum length of advertising headline

Abstract

Advertising headlines from the Saturday Evening Post were presented to 98 men and 23 women college students by a method of immediate recall and recognition after reading slips of paper drawn from envelopes and by recall after tachistoscope exposure (1.25 seconds). A correlation of -.85 ± .03 was obtained between the number of thought units and percent recall in the tachistoscopic method. The number of words and percent recall in this method correlate -.80 ± .04. The other two methods with no controlled time limit reveal no significant correlations. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)