Behaviour Change

PROPAGANDA FOR CHANGE is a project created by the students of Behaviour Change (ps359) and Professor Thomas Hills @thomhills at the Psychology Department of the University of Warwick. This work was supported by funding from Warwick's Institute for Advanced Teaching and Learning.

Wednesday, January 30, 2013

A consumer's trap

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tCtM8UEQv8


Nowadays, consumers have developed some kind of  'resistance' to advertising strategies. However, Strick et al. (2012) have found that funny adverts can lower consumers' guards, leaving them more vulnerable to aggressive marketing. This advertisement has a funny twist at the end. This has an ability to create a more positive brand image.

The experiment consisted of exposing 86 Dutch University students to 12 pictures of foreign peppermint brand, each of which appeared together with one of four type text (funny, positive but unfunny, distracting neutral and non-distracting neutral). However, half of the students were primed to be resistant before they saw the brands and text. They were told that the experiment was conducted in collaboration with a store manager who was planning to bombard students with texts ads. 

The results showed that students who were primed to be resistant tended to perceive the brands as having more negative image, except for the brands that were accompanied by humorous or neutral distracting text. The humorous distracting text has the ability to interfere with the automatic resistance process to aggressive marketing. 



Strick, M., Holland, R. W., van Baaren, R. B., & van Knippenberg, A. (2012). Those who laugh are defenseless: How humor breaks resistance to influence. Journal of Experimental Psychology. Applied, 18 (2), 213-23. 

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