This is an advert for Proactiv, a company which sells a
range of creams and scrubs to combat acne in males and females. This advert is
targeted at people who have never used/tried their products, in order to
encourage them to do so. Proactiv tends to employ celebrities to endorse their
products (e.g. Katy Perry and Jessica Simpson). Conversely, here they employed
a range of average people. The important distinction is that these people are not selling Proactiv through their words as celebrity spokespeople do, but rather through actions as they give us insight into their personal experiences with the products. The
advertisement captures their individual transformations from feeling insecure
about their looks to emerging as confident people, directly a result of using
Proactiv.
the communicator and subjectivity of
the issue. Bulletin of Psychonomic Society, 2, 35-36.
The persuasive technique used is the similarity altercast. The people in the
advert closely resemble the average viewers who may be battling with
acne: they feel that their acne is impeding on their self-image and are
motivated to do something about this problem. However, they have never used
Proactiv and feel "nervous" about it. Considering the potential
similarities between the person in the advert and the viewer (on this specific
issue), this promotes a bond to be established between them (Pratkanis, 2007).
Consequently, this feeds into the similarity hypothesis which claims that we
trust, like and are influenced by people who are similar to us (Stiff &
Mongeau, 2003). This concept is empirically supported by Mills and Kimble's
(1973) experiment. In the experiment participants had to subjectively rank
poetry in order of preference, but before they did this each participant was shown rankings made by
another person. The participant was lead to believe that he or she had similar
or dissimilar background characteristics to that person. The results showed
that the participant’s subjective poetry rankings agreed more with the similar
than dissimilar people’s rankings.
References
Mills, J., & Kimble, C.E. (1973). Opinion change as a
function of perceived similarity of
Pratkanis, A. R. (2007). The Science of Social Influence:
Advances and Future Progress. New York, NY: Psychology Press.
Stiff, J. B., & Mongeau, P. A. (2003). Persuasive
communication. (2nd Ed.). New York: Guilford.
This advert is so powerful I actually feel like buying it and try it out now!
ReplyDeleteNicely done and good description of Mills and Kimble.
ReplyDelete