TYPES OF ADS

TYPES OF ADS

Advertising is the one type of communication most clearly designed to persuade (i.e., have some effect on the hearer or reader). This effect may be behavioral (buy the product), attitudinal (like the product), and/or cognitive (recognize or learn something about the product). Ads may be for particular brands of products but also for services, such as banks, plumbers, or Internet providers.

Frequently, the most direct purpose of an ad is not selling as such but rather image building or good will. For example, when a multinational corporation spends 30 seconds on TV telling us how it provides fellowships for foreign study, it is trying to encourage viewers to think of it as a fine, upstanding corporate citizen. This is done by associating the company with very positive images and dissociating it from negative ones. Image-building advertising is especially prevalent after a corporation or industry has received a public relations black eye, such as the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska. It also is common when a corporation tries to become involved in consciousness-raising on some issue of importance and public interest, such as when a distillery runs an ad encouraging people not to drive drunk. They believe that the good will they achieve by being perceived as taking a

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responsible public position will more than offset any decline in sales arising from people buying less of their product due to concern about driving under the influence.

A different kind of persuasive media message is the Public Service Announcement (PSA), usually sponsored by some government agency, non- profit organization, or the Advertising Council Ads by the American Cancer Society or the United Way are examples of PSAs. Historically, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has mandated that stations must offer a certain amount of time free for PSAs but does not usually specify when that time must be aired; thus PSAs frequently air heavily at off-peak hours like late night or weekdays. With the deregulation and weakening of U.S. regulatory agencies in the 1980s, PSAs suffered even more.

A final kind of advertising is political advertising, usually designed to persuade the viewers to support some candidate, party, or issue. In many ways political advertising is very similar to commercial advertising, although there are some important differences. Political advertising is considered in chapter 8 and thus is not further discussed here.

All types of ads try to affect the reality perceived by the consumer (i.e., give us a new image of a product, candidate, or company or make us feel we have a need or desire for some product that we may not have been particularly wanting before). Such processes involve attempts to change our attitudes . Our attitudes about products or anything else actually have three components. The belief or cognition is the informational content of the attitude. For example, Jim prefers Toyota cars because of certain features they have. The affective (emotional) content of the attitude is the feeling toward that product. Jim prefers Toyotas because he trusts them, likes them, and feels safe with them. Finally, the action is the attitude’s translation into behavior. In the case of ads, the advertiser typically hopes the final step in the chain to be a purchase. Some ads are designed primarily to influence our beliefs, and others are designed to influence our affect. See Pratkanis and Aronson (1992) for a review of psychological research on attitude change and persuasion. Next, we examine how advertising shapes our attitudes to help us construct a reality.

PSYCHOLOGICAL APPEALS IN ADVERTISING Any type of media advertising, whether print or broadcast, uses a variety of

psychological appeals to reach the viewer. In one way or another, ads attempt to tie the product or service to our deepest and most basic psychological needs. Implicitly, then, the message is that buying the product

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will do more than give us something useful or pleasant; it can help us be better people as well.

Informational Appeals

Although not the most common type, some ads primarily provide information in an attempt to influence the belief component of our attitudes.

A good example of this type would be an ad for a new product; such an ad may explain what that product does and what its features are. As a medium, newspapers are particularly well suited to conveying information in ads (Abernethy, 1992).

Some of the most common belief appeals are exhortations to save money or receive a superior product or service. The feeling that we are getting a good bargain is a powerful motivator in deciding to purchase something. It is so powerful that often the official list prices are set artificially high so that products may be advertised as costing considerably less, when in fact they may have never been intended to sell at the full list price, Framing is also very important. For example, advertising a discount or offering a coupon for some amount off the price is more appealing than saying the price goes up after some time, even if the cost you actually pay is the same.

How to word advertising slogans and other information in the ad is an important consideration. In a strongly informational appeal, the advertiser wants to convey as much information as possible in a very short time but not overload or confuse the consumer. Research suggests the optimal answer may not be simple. Although simpler syntactic structures, such as active rather than passive voice, are generally recognized better than complex ones, there are some cases where moderate syntactic complexity might be more effective than either very simple or complex (Bradley & Meeds, 2002).

Emotional Appeals

Very often ads appeal to the affective (emotional) component of our attitudes. Influencing emotions is often the best first step to influencing beliefs and, ultimately, behavior. For example, there are many ads that appeal to our love of friends, family, and good times and the good feelings that they bring us. We are asked to call people long distance to affirm our love, buy diamonds and flowers to show how much we care, and drink beer or pop with friends as part of sharing a good time. Such classic slogans as “Reach out and touch someone” or “Friends are worth Smirnoff” illustrate such appeals. Products are an integral part of showing our love and caring for others. The more closely the advertiser can link the product with those natural and positive emotions, the more successful the ad. A baby food company once advertised that it helps babies learn to chew. Such an appeal

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links the product with a very basic developmental event in the baby’s life, thus giving it a much more central role in the child’s growth than any mere product, even an excellent product, would have. A car advertises itself as “part of the family” not merely offering something to the family but actually being part of it.

Closely related to family and love appeals is the linking of the product with fun. This is especially clear in ads for soft drinks and beer and anything marketed directly to children. Photography and copy that link images of a product with those of people having a good time at the beach or the ski lodge, or just relaxing at home with friends, encourage people to think about that product whenever they have or anticipate such times. The product becomes an integral part of that activity, and, more importantly, the feelings associated with that activity. Watching a sports event on TV with friends may naturally cause us to seek such a product, which has become part of the event.

Certain cultural symbols have come to evoke warm feelings in viewers, which advertisers hope will transfer to warm feelings about the product. A boy and his dog, grandma baking an apple pie, the national flag, or a family homecoming are examples. Such symbols appear frequently in advertising of all sorts. Connecting one’s product with the positive feelings that people have for such symbols can associate a lot of positive affect with that product. Even the name of the product can evoke certain feelings, perhaps connected with a particular culture or country (see Box 4.1).

Perhaps the most effective selling pitch focuses on how the product will affect one’s individual psychological well-being and deep-seated personal needs. For example, a camera ad may say, “Look how good you can be” with their product, not simply “Look what good pictures you can take.” The product goes beyond providing you with a good product; it actually makes you a better person. When the U.S. Army recruited with the slogan “Be all you can be,” it suggested the psychological appeal of self-actualization, whereby somebody is motivated to develop their fullest potential.

Sometimes the emotion elicited may change over time. For example, State Farm Insurance recently announced it was retiring its “like a good neighbor” campaign, first introduced by its ad agency DDB Worldwide in 1971. Although the company had an amazing 98% brand name recognition and nearly 70% of Americans could fill in the blank “Like a good neighbor, is there,” younger and more urban consumers increasingly saw a “good neighbor” in different terms. To many of today’s young adults, a good neighbor is one who stays on their side of the fence and leaves you alone, not one who gets involved in your life, as State Farm was trying to suggest (Elliott, 2002).

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BOX 4.1