ADVERTISING

BAITING, CATCHING, AND REELING US IN

CHAPTER 6
 CHAPTER OBJECTIVES

After reading this chapter, you should be able to:

• Understand Psychological Appeals in Advertising
• Identify Types of Ads
• Analyze Advertising with Sex and effects to
children

© 2014 Taylor & Francis

 CONTENTS

I. Historical Background
II. Types of Ads
III. Psychological Appeals in Advertising
IV. A Theoretical Model
V. Deceptive Advertising
VI. Advertising to Children
VII.Advertising in New Places
Q: When did the first TV commercial air?
A: During a 1940 baseball game on WBNT-TV in
New York. The ad was for Bulova watches
(Silvulka, 1998).
Q: How many TV commercials do children see
every year?
A: About 30,000–40,000, a large majority of them
for unhealthy food like candy and sugary cereals
(Fonda, 2004 ; Kaiser Family Foundation, 2007a ).
 I. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

• The earliest known written advertisement, from around 1000

BC in Thebes, Greece
• Offered a “whole gold coin” for the return of a runaway slave.
 II. TYPES OF ADS

• Advertising: the one type of communication most

clearly designed to persuade (have some effect on
the viewer or hearer)
• Effects:
• behavioral (buy the product)
• attitudinal (like the product)
• cognitive(learn something about the product).
 II. TYPES OF ADS (CONT.)

• Direct purpose: Not selling as such but rather

image building or good will.
• A different kind of persuasive media
message is the Public Service Announcement
(PSA
• A final kind is political ads, usually designed to
persuade viewers to support some candidate,
party, or issue.
 III. PSYCHOLOGICAL APPEALS IN ADVERTISING

3.1 Informational Appeals

3.2 Emotional Appeals
3.3 Patriotic Appeals
3.4 Fear Appeals
3.5 Achievement, Success, and Power Appeals
3.6 Humorous Appeals
3.7 Testimonials (Product Endorsements)

*** Can Appeals Be Unethical?

 3.1 INFORMATIONAL APPEALS

• Some ads primarily provide information to influence the

belief
• Advertiser wants to convey as much information as
possible in a very short time but not overload or confuse
the consumer
• Some of the most common belief appeals : exhortations to
save money or receive a superior product or service
• feeling that we are getting a good bargain is a powerful motivator in
deciding to purchase something
 3.2 EMOTIONAL APPEALS

• Influencing emotions: the best first step to influencing

beliefs and, ultimately, behavior.
• Example:
• 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 buy diamonds, flowers, and greeting cards to
show how much we care, and sharing a good time with friends,
family
 3.3 PATRIOTIC APPEALS

• Appeals to consumers’ national pride are

common in ads
• Read & discussion “Advertising to Latino/as “: Close-
Up 5.3, page 132
 3.4 FEAR APPEALS
• Advertising fear appeals involve some kind of threat of
what may happen if one does not buy the product
• Example:
• Selling home computers by asking parents:
• “You don’t want your child to be left behind in math because you
wouldn’t buy him a computer, do you?”
 3.5 ACHIEVEMENT, SUCCESS, AND
POWER APPEALS
• Striving to win, whether the prize is money, status,
power, or simply having something before the neighbors do.
• Example:
• 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
 3.6 HUMOROUS APPEALS

• Funny ads are often among the most popular and best
remembered.
• Humor clearly attracts attention and increases motivation and
general positive feeling about the product or service
 3.7 TESTIMONIALS (PRODUCT
ENDORSEMENTS)

• A well-known entertainer or athlete, offers a personal

pitch for some product or service.
• An expert or be no more informed than the average
person.
• To be persuaded by a prestigious and respected figure,
even if that person has no particular expertise in relation
to the product being sold
 IV. A THEORETICAL MODEL

4.1 Cognition and Advertising: Ads as Information to Be

Processed:
Stages of Processing
4.2 Memory for Ads
 4.1 ADS AS INFORMATION TO BE
PROCESSED
Stages of Processing: There are eight stages of processing be exposed:
1. Must be exposed to be the ads.
2. Choose to attend to it
3. Comprehend the message
4. Evaluate the message in some way
5. Try to encode the information into our long-term memory for future use
6. Sometime later, try to retrieve that information (perhaps when we’re ready to
buy the product).
7. Try to decide among available options, such as which brand or model to
purchase.
8. Take action based on that decision
If any one or more of the stages is disrupted in some way, the overall
comprehension or impact of the ad may suffer.
 4.2 MEMORY FOR ADS:

Violent Media, Ads, and Memory

A Constructionist Framework for Understanding Advertising
VIOLENT MEDIA, ADS, AND MEMORY

• The violent TV shows actually reduces memory for the

commercials in those shows and reduces the chance that
people will intend to by those products. (Bushman, 1998,
2005; Lull & Bushman, 2015).
A CONSTRUCTIONIST FRAMEWORK FOR UNDERSTANDING
ADVERTISING

The cognitive principle known as construction argues that

people do not literally store and retrieve information they
read or hear but rather modify it in accordance with their
beliefs and the environment in which it is perceived.
 V. DECEPTIVE ADVERTISING
• One issue of great concern to the general public is the issue
of deceptive, or misleading, advertising.
• An ad may state a claim that is literally false, but we
comprehend it in some nonliteral way that is consistent with
reality, and thus we are not deceived
• “Our cookies are made by elves in a
tree”;
• “A green giant packs every can of our vegetables”
 5.1 TRUE-BUT-DECEPTIVE ADS

• Potentially the most • Read “The Creative Work of

damaging Food Stylists”, Close-Up
• That is literally true but 5.6, page 142
deceives consumers by
inducing them to
construct a meaning that
is inconsistent with
reality.
 5.2 STUDYING DECEPTION
SCIENTIFICALLY

• People make the inferences as suggested and remember the

inferred information as having been stated in the ad
• Remembering that a toothpaste prevents cavities when the ad only said
it fights cavities.
 5.3 SEX AND SUBLIMINAL
ADVERTISING

The most common

types of appeals in
advertising is sex
 5.3.1 CLASSICAL CONDITIONING

• Classical Conditioning
unconditioned stimulus (UCS)
unconditioned response (UCR)
conditioned stimulus (CS)
conditioned response (CR)

For example, meat (UCS) naturally produces salivation (UCR)

 5.3.2 SUBLIMINAL ADVERTISING

• “Subliminal” means below the threshold of conscious

perception; by definition, if something is subliminal, we are
not aware of it.
• Such stimuli may be a subaudible sound message in a store:
• “Don’t shoplift”
• “Buy popcorn”
• or a visual sexual stimulus airbrushed into an ad photograph (S-E-X
spelled in the lines on crackers or sex organs drawn inside ice cubes).
 VI. ADVERTISING TO CHILDREN

• Children are an enormous and growing market for

advertising
• There are several particular issues of concern:
• Differentiating Ads and Programs
• Disclaimers
• Television, Toymakers, and the Military
• Tobacco Advertising and Role Modeling
 VII. ADVERTISING IN NEWER AND
UNEXPECTED PLACES
• In recent years, advertisers have had to scramble, trying
harder and harder to attract and keep our attention.

• The advertisers have become increasingly clever in placing ads

in places we can’t ignore:

• High-Tech Billboards
• In-Store Advertising
• Product Placements
• Classrooms and Schools
• Advertising on the Internet
• Prescription Drug Advertising