Made You Listen: The Effects of Production Effects on Automatic Attention to Short Radio Promotional Announcements Robert F. Potter ABSTRACT. This experiment tested an intuitive principle in the radio in- dustry: that production effects (i.e., laser sounds, voice modulation, etc.) in- crease listener attention to messages. Professional voice talent created 5-10 second promotional announcements (promos) for nine fictitious stations. Each contained a slogan considered typical of industry practices (“Channel 97 WRRK–The Classic Rock Station”). Three of the promos were pro- duced as announcer only, three with laser effects, and three with an echo ef- fect. The promos systematically alternated between 2-minute segments of talk show content to resemble typical broadcast programming. Heart rate data were collected, time locked to the media presentation, from 62 partici- pants as they listened to the stimulus. Afterwards, recognition data were collected. Results show cardiac deceleration following production effects, indicative of automatic allocation of attention. Memory data show an ex- pected increase in recognition for information in the promos containing pro- duction effects, although not all memory tests reach statistical significance. [Article copies available for a fee from The Haworth Document Delivery Service: 1-800-HAWORTH. E-mail address: <docdelivery@haworthpress.com> Website: <http://www.HaworthPress.com> © 2006 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.] Robert F. Potter (PhD, Indiana University) is Assistant Professor and Director, In- stitute for Communication Research, Department of Telecommunications, Indiana University, 1229 East 7th Street, Bloomington, IN 47405 (E-mail: rfpotter@indiana. edu). Journal of Promotion Management, Vol. 12(2) 2006 Available online at http://www.haworthpressinc.com/web/JPM  2006 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1300/J057v12n02_04 35 This electronic prepublication version may contain typographical errors and may be miss- ing artwork such as charts, photographs, etc. Pagination in later versions may differ from this copy; citation references to this material may be incorrect when this prepublication edition is replaced at a later date with the finalized version.