Fairy: Humouring your daily needs.
Dish-washing liquid: possibly one of the
most unrelatable and uninspiring product I could have chosen to analyse an ad
on. Yet, I dare say that this ad is not only relatable and relevant, it’s actually quite amusing!
This ad uses the persuasive technique of
humour by creatively composing an ironic visual metaphor between their
audiences’ daily plight and their product. The ad displays the word ‘work’ obscured by
the word ‘facebook’ juxtaposing the
audiences’ struggle to separate their work from their pleasure(facebook) and
the effectiveness of their product. The ad leaves the audience with an image of
their product and the words “some things are hard to separate” harshly implying
while the audience may not be efficient at separation, their product is.
The use of humour not only has a
memorable impact on the viewer but transforms the product (dish-washing liquid)
from mundane and boring, into captivating and unique, differentiating their
product from the rest of their competitors. Madden and Weinberger (1984) found
that advertising agencies regarded humour as highly effective as it positively
affects attention, awareness for new products, name registration, the
communication of a simple point, retention, mood and brand switching. These
beliefs reflect years of daily experience and research in the field of
advertising. Supporting these beliefs. Speck (1987) found that humour has a
positive effect on audiences’ initial
attention, sustained attention, projected attention and overall attention
whereby it was much higher in humorous compared to non-humorous ads. Moreover,
Speck’s study highlighted the persuasive power of humour whereby it increased
the intent to use the product as well as the perceived quality of the product. Stewart
& Furse (1986) also found that humour can increase comprehension of an ad.
While Strenthal and Craig(1973) found that humour can lead to increase liking
of the source.
The current ad also actively engages the
audience as they have to disentangle the underlying connection between the
product and the message. The successful interpretation of the ad is pleasurable
for the audience as it makes them feel intelligent for solving it (Durgee,1988).
Thus through the use of humour and
active engagement-positive affect is aroused in the audience which is then
associated with the product. Rimoldi (2008) showed that positive feelings aroused
in an advert are often associated with the product of that ad.
As you can see, although this ad may be
simple, it is packed with persuasive techniques. So next time, you’re buying your
routine household products- ask yourself, why are you buying this brand? Were
you influenced by some sneaky persuasive advert?
REFERENCES
Madden, T.J., & Weinberger, M.G.
(1984). Humour in advertising: A practitioner view, Journal of advertising research24, I23-29.
Speck, P. S. (1987). On humour and
humour in advertising. Disstertation, Texas Tech University.
Stewart, D. W., & Furse, D. H.
(1985). The effects of television advertising execution on recall,
comprehension and persuasion. Psychology and Marketing, 2, 135-160.
Strenthal, B. C., & Craig, S. (1973). Humour in
advertising. Journal of Marketing, 37, 12-18.
Durgee, J. F. (1988). Interpreting
consumer mythology: Literary criticism approach to odyssey informant stories. Advances in Consumer Research,15,
531-536.
Rimoldi, A. (2008). The impact of
‘likeability’ on advertising effectiveness: To what extent does liking ad
advert have a persuasive influence of consumer behaviour? (Unpublished doctoral
dissertation) University of Nottingham: Nottingham
Tashya De Silva
Nicely written.
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