3 BAD TASTE OR BRILLIANT MARKETING?

BOX 4.3 BAD TASTE OR BRILLIANT MARKETING?

A Nike ad that ran during the 2000 Summer Olympics became very controversial. The ad showed a horrified 1500-meter Olympian Suzy Hamilton running from a masked pursuer wielding a chainsaw. She escapes him due to her superior running shoes and her own athletic ability. Nike defended the ad as one that empowered women and celebrated their strength. Critics assailed it as insensitive “glorified rape fantasy” making light of violence toward women. NBC dropped the ad in response to complaints (Fussell, 2000).

Some other ads that have been pulled after consumer complaints include a pair of Bungee jumpers where one survives because he is wearing Reeboks, a Just for Feet ad where a barefoot African runner is tackled by White westerners who put shoes on his feet, and various Calvin Klein ads with apparent preadolescents in sexual positions that appeared to many to be uncomfortably close to child pornography

What do you think? Are these creative artistic endeavors or tasteless insensitive marketing? One thing that is not in dispute, however, is that all these ads were noticed.

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Achievement, Success, and Power Appeals

Another popular theme in ads is striving to win, whether the prize be money, status, power, or simply having something before the neighbors do. A candy

ad may blatantly say “Winning is everything,” picturing a chocolate Olympic-style medal, or it may more subtly suggest that only the people who use the particular product have really arrived, The idea that using some product enables us to be a winner is a powerful appeal, whatever the prize. Even an appeal to pure altruism in a PSA can use such an appeal, by calling on us to achieve a “moral victory.”

Humorous Appeals

Humor is often used as an effective selling tool in ads. The audiovisual possibilities of television offer a particularly rich set of possibilities for humor, although there is much humor in print and radio advertising as well. Indeed, some humorous ad campaigns have become classics of popular culture (e.g., Alka-Seltzer’s “I can’t believe I ate the whole thing” campaign of the 1960s, the Wendy’s “Where’s the beef?” of the 1980s, or the Budweiser frogs of the 1990s). Radio’s “see it on the radio” campaign drew on people’s ability to use visual imagery to imagine a humorous situation described only through sound (Bolls & Lang, 2003).

One caution regarding the use of humor concerns its distractibility potential. Some humor clearly attracts attention and increases motivation and general positive feeling about the product or service. Sometimes humor in ads may lead to improved memory for the content (Furnham, Gunter, & Walsh, 1998). However, sometimes a very funny spot may be so entertaining that it detracts from the advertiser’s message. Viewers may remember the gimmick but forget what product it was selling (Gelb & Zinkhan, 1985).

A related concern in regard to humorous ads is the wear-out factor. Any

ad campaign depends on repeated presentations to reinforce its message. However, if an ad appears too often in too short a time, its effect may wear out and even become counterproductive by turning people off due to overexposure. Humorous ads have a shorter wear-out time. They become older, more tired, and more annoying faster than other ads (Pechmann & Stewart, 1988).

Testimonials (Product Endorsements)

In the testimonial ad, some identified person, such as a well-known entertainer or athlete, offers a personal pitch for some product or service. This person may clearly be an expert in the particular field or no more informed than the average person. Social psychological research on

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and respected figure, even if that person has no particular expertise in the area of the product being sold (Hass, 1981; T.B.Heath, Mothersbaugh, & McCarthy, 1993; Kahle & Homer, 1985). We tend to trust that person more due to our parasocial relationship (Alperstein, 1991; Giles, 2002), and the positive associations and feelings we have about him or her may be transferred in part to the product, thus transforming that product’s image (Walker, Langemeyer, & Langemeyer, 1992). When 1996 Presidential candidate Bob Dole later became a pitchman for Viagra, the trust we felt for Dole and his long years of public service in the U.S. Senate transferred to the anti-impotence medication.

One advantage of testimonials is that it often allows fairly precise age targeting. Bob Dole and Eminem clearly reach a different age demographic. Sometimes a product can be identified so strongly with a particular age group that others might be less interested. For example, Daimler Chrysler originally tried to market its 1930s-retro look PT Cruiser to young adults. However, their baby boomer parents bought the car in droves and it later became identified with that generation. Similarly, the small, economical Toyota Echo appealed not to young buyers but to their parents. The same was true for the Saturn Vue SUV and the boxy Honda Element. In spite of these cars being pitched to them, the young adults instead preferred sportier cars like the powerful Dodge Stratus, Mitsubishi Lancer, and Hyundai Tiburon (Fonda, 2003). An age-connected image can be hard to crack. High median ages of buyers for Buick (63) and Cadillac (55) make a strong youth appeal in marketing difficult. General Motors once tried to market against this image by advertising a certain model was “not your father’s Oldsmobile,” Apparently its success was limited; GM stopped making Oldsmobiles altogether shortly afterwards.

Can Appeals Be Unethical?

Just because an ad appeals to genuine human emotions does not mean that it is necessarily appropriate in a broader ethical sense. One of the most controversial international media campaigns centered around the selling of infant formula as an alternative to breast milk in poor countries. Although it was sold as being healthier than mother’s milk, the fact that it was often mixed with unsafe water and/or in dirty containers actually led to a far greater danger of disease than using breast milk, to say nothing of the added expense to already desperately poor families. Concern over the alleged social irresponsibility of such media campaigns led to a worldwide boycott of Nestlé products (Fore, 1987).

The nearly ubiquitous presence of television around the world has led to numerous advertising campaigns whose appeals have come under fire on grounds of social responsibility. Poor children often spend what little money

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they have on expensive junk food and soft drinks rather than on wholesome school lunches, thanks in part to the influence of advertising. Even though 40% of Mexico’s population has no access to milk, poor people are increasingly starting the day with a soft drink and a Ganso (a sort of Mexican Twinkie), in part due to massive TV ad campaigns of Coca-Cola and Pepsico, who sell more products in Mexico than in any other country outside of the United States (Ross, 1992). American tobacco companies are increasingly turning to developing countries as markets, finding less knowledge of health risks, fewer limits on smoking, and less stringent advertising restrictions. The percentage of smokers in China, for example, has skyrocketed in recent years. How the commercial demands of television and other media confront the real world of desperate poverty leads to many questions about media transmission of values. Is it the media’s responsibility to promulgate a more culturally sensitive set of values?

A Theoretical Model

Although advertising may be studied from a variety of theoretical perspectives (see chapter 2), one of the most useful in recent years has been the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) (see Petty, Priester, & Briñol, 2002, for a recent formulation). The ELM was initially developed to account for situations where full attention to processing was lacking but yet some influence might still be occurring, i.e., exactly the situation with the typical exposure to advertising.

The central distinction in ELM is the postulation of two distinct routes to persuasion, the central and the peripheral. The central route involves effortful cognitive processing, where we bring to bear our conscious thought processing and relevant information retrieved from long-term memory Arguments of the persuader are thoughtfully evaluated to determine their merits, and a conclusion is arrived at.

In contrast to the central route is the peripheral route, which does not have to involve conscious effortful processing. In fact, in the real world of responding to ads, it is neither possible nor desirable to bring the cognitive resources to perform central processing on every TV commercial or billboard. Peripheral processing tends to make an initial, often affective, response to one aspect of the message. For example, we like a commercial because of the familiar rock music sound track, or we dislike one because it features our most hated comedian. When the likelihood of active cognitive elaboration is high, the central route predominates; when it is low, the peripheral route does. When our involvement with a product is low, the peripheral route tends to dominate.

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BOX 4.4