'Got milk?' got rude

California brand ‘Got milk?’ created a number of controversial advertisements, insinuating that their milk helps reduce the symptoms of PMS! Although several men may have found these advertisements amusing, women on the other hand probably didn’t. Presumably, more women take charge of the food shopping, so this advertisement is more likely to have persuaded women to avoid this milk, rather than buy it. In fact, it caused such a stir that a petition was created to have them removed, resulting in them being pulled. The creators of this advertisement should not have insulted a large proportion of their consumers, and instead may have wanted to opt for use of flattery.

The effectiveness of flattery was shown by Hendrik, Borden, Giesen, Murray and Seyfried (1972). 400 participants were either asked via mail to complete a small request (one page questionnaire) or a large request (seven page questionnaire). This created the two effort conditions of small and large. A cover letter was given to the participants, which either included adjectives that flattered the respondent and/or the solicitor of the questionnaire, or included no flattering adjectives. Therefore, this created four letter conditions: double ingratiation (both flattered), ingratiation of solicitor, ingratiation respondent, and standard polite (neither flattered). In total this created eight conditions, and for each the number of returned questionnaires was counted and termed to be complying with the request.

The results, as shown in table 1, revealed that ingratiation tactics had little effect on return rate when the task required minimal effort. Conversely, such tactics had a powerful effect in the high-effort conditions. Both the standard polite and double ingratiation letters yielded low return rates of .10 and .08 respectively. However, when ingratiation terms were included, applying to either the solicitor or to the respondent, the return rates increased to .24 and .29 respectively. This highlights the effectiveness flattery can have on compliance, and this link can be extended to persuading consumers to purchase a particular product.

In the case of the ‘Got milk?’ advertisement, choosing to flatter the consumer may increase the likelihood of choosing the product. How much effort is required to pick a particular brand of milk is up for debate, but no doubt flattering over insulting the consumer is the way to go!

Hendrik, C., Borden, R., Giesen, M., Murray, E., & Seyfried, B. (1972). Effectiveness of ingratiation tactics in a cover letter on mail questionnaire response. Psychonomic Science, 26, 349-351.