Sneaky critters…

This inventive advert for Frontline flea and tick spray has utilised the creativity template ‘dimensionality alteration’ by placing their large image on the floor inside a tall building (Goldenberg, 199). When viewed from above, the oblivious people below give the advert a completely new dimension. Those walking across the image at ground level are transformed into huge fleas that have infested the dog. The unsuspecting busy-bodies’ interaction with this advert creates extremely powerful imagery, evoking some rather unpleasant feelings in the viewer, especially if they are a pet owner! This creative dimension shift and people involvement emphasises the problem that this product is designed to solve and really brings to life the effects of not using this product.

The sight of real creatures ‘crawling’ over the dog is enough to make a viewer’s skin crawl; this could result in fear for their own safety or feelings of guilt that your own pet may be suffering. It has been demonstrated that taking advantage of people’s emotions is an effective form of persuasion and influence. The use of inducing fear in a target has proven successful in altering behaviour when the profiteer can provide a means of reducing it (Maddux & Rogers, 1983). Feelings of guilt have also been shown to be a powerful predictor of compliance. Research by Carlsmith and Gross (1969) found that student who were made to feel guilty about giving electric shocks to another participant were significantly more likely to comply, or be influenced by requests of others.

References

Carlsmith, J. M., & Gross, A. E. (1969). Some effects of guilt on compliance.Journal of personality and social psychology, 11(3), 232.

Maddux, J. E., & Rogers, R. W. (1983). Protection motivation and self-efficacy: A revised theory of fear appeals and attitude change. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 19(5), 469-479.

Ella Mould

Listen to me, I am beautiful and famous!

This is the first advertisement created by Coco Chanel in 1937 to present to the world her first perfume “Chanel nº5”. Her image became the icon of the perfume until 1954, when Marilyn Monroe said that she used every day a few drops of Chanel nº5 before going to bed. Her image suddenly became the new reference of the perfume, so everyone wanted to buy it just because they wanted to be as glamorous and elegant as Marilyn was.

The principle of compliance that is used in this ad is the one related to liking. This principle says that we tend to comply with the requests of someone we like. One of the ways we get to like someone it is by its physical attractiveness and there are numerous research that prove this.

In 2005, Olsen and Marshuetz said that it seems to be an automatic reaction to attractive people. On the other hand, the Halo effect suggests that physical attractiveness dominates the way the person is viewed by others. This means, if we view someone attractive, we tend to confer him favourable traits such as good person, trustable, etc.

Chaiken (1979) also found that attractive people are more persuasive in changing the opinions of others. If we comply with people we like, and we like people who are attractive, profiteers use this to exploit us and that is way normally we see celebrities in much of the advertisements.

The celebrities give to the advertised product a prestigious position that will make people to want to buy it in order to resemble to the famous character. This desire to identify with the beautiful and attractive figure leads to a very positive persuasive effect.

Marilyn Monroe, worldwide known, is used here in order to people to buy the product with the purpose of trying to be like her. Using famous people in advert is a fact present in our everyday life.

In a study conducted by Suzanne R. Pallak (1983), they wanted to test the hypothesis that the salience of a communicator’s attractiveness influences whether a persuasive communication is processed heuristically or systematically. Female undergraduates read a strong or weak version of a persuasive communication that was accompanied by a vivid colour picture of an attractive male communicator (high-salience condition) or by a degraded copy of the picture (low-salience condition).

The results obtained showed that the strong version elicited greater agreement than the weak version when the communicator’s attractiveness was not salient but that message quality had no effect on agreement when the communicator’s attractiveness was highly salient. This was consistent with the argument that the communication was processed systematically in the low-salience condition and heuristically in the high-salience condition.

References

Olson, Ingrid R., and Christy Marshuetz. "Facial Attractiveness Is Appraised In A Glance.." Emotion 5.4 (2005): 498-502.

Chaiken, Shelly. "Communicator Physical Attractiveness And Persuasion.." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 37.8 (1979): 1387-1397.

Suzanne R. Pallak (1983). Salience of a Communicator's Physical Attractiveness and Persuasion: A Heuristic Versus Systematic Processing Interpretation. Social Cognition: Vol. 2, No. 2, pp. 158-170.

Think.

This is an advert created by the UK government to encourage people to quite simply wear a seatbelt.

The short clip pursues a “Consequences Template” (Goldenberg et al, 1999), specifically an inverted consequences version which highlights what could happen if the advice from the advert is not followed. By ignoring the message of the film and not wearing a seatbelt, you could die. These consequences are shown in quite graphic detail and in slow-motion so the viewer has time to process exactly what is on the screen. It is not a surprising finding that the longer a person is exposed to a stimulus, the better their ability to recall it is (e.g. Laughery et al, 1971), and so using slow-motion gives a greater chance the audience will remember the horrible details of how this person died and that it was because they did not wear a seatbelt.

In addition to the display of these scenes a clear, monotonous voiceover tells the story of what happened to Richard. This contributes to the central route of persuasion in Petty and Cacioppo’s (1986) Elaboration-Likelihood Model. The lack of strong peripheral cues, for example an attractive person on the screen or hearing a person who uses varying pitch and volume in speech, leaves the viewer to consider the content of what they are being shown and told. Yes, a person was in a car collision and the results were tragic, however the important information is that this was because he was not wearing a seatbelt. Indeed, the campaign is blunt about telling people to “think”.

Research has shown that using the central route to persuasion is more likely to result in a lasting attitude change (e.g. Petty & Wegener, 1998). This is particularly important given the nature of this topic, as it is obviously important for people to retain the value of wearing a seatbelt as opposed to perhaps falling back into old habits after they have forgotten about the advert and its message.

The clip begins with the voiceover “Richard didn’t want to die, but he couldn’t stop himself”. After his story is told, the viewer is brought into the situation and is asked “what’s stopping you?”. This commands the whole attention of the audience as it is the only thing on screen and is accompanied by silence. Burnkrant and Howard (1984) found that rhetorical questions such as this are useful in encouraging more processing and elaboration of message content. Therefore, this and the culmination of persuasive techniques used in the clip lead to one inevitable conclusion. What’s stopping you? Nothing.  

References

Burnkrant, R. E., & Howard, D. J. (1984). Effects of the use of introductory rhetorical questions versus statements on information processing. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 47, 1218-1230.

Goldenberg, J., Mazursky, D., & Solomon, S. (1999). The fundamental templates of quality ads. Marketing Science, 18, 333-351.

Laughery, K. R., Alexander, J. F., & Lane, A. B. (1971). Recognition of human faces: Effects of target exposure time, target position, pose position, and type of photograph. Journal of Applied Psychology, 55, 477-483.

Petty, R. E., & Cacioppo, J. T. (1986). The elaboration likelihood model of persuasion. In Communication and Persuasion (pp. 1-24). Springer New York.

Petty, R. E., & Wegener, D. T. (1998). Attitude change: Multiple roles for persuasion variables. The Handbook of Social Psychology, 1, 227-240.

Emma Barry

The Greatest Anti-Smoking Ad

Within ten days of its publication, this advert hit over five million views on YouTube and stimulated over twenty thousand global comments about the hazards of smoking.

But what makes this advert so poignant?

I believe the success of this advert lies in the induction of emotional tactics to drive home an important message, along with the use of children to create a belief system with which adults wish to act in consistency with. We’ll delve deeper into how these factors power the social influence of this anti-smoking advert and look closer into how it makes people think and act in accordance.

There is no denying the emotional significance that this advert has. The use of children in a specifically adult targeted market allows the audience to immediately label themselves as part of an ‘anti-smoking’ stance (regardless of whether they do or do not smoke) – adults know that smoking is wrong and bad for human health from credible sources of their own authority (Bickman, 1974), and this is further strengthened by an adults obligation to act in authority to a child and to almost ‘teach them the message’. This ultimately involves tact altercasting.

Further evidence to support this comes from work by Pratkanis and Gliner (2004) who had a child argue in favour for nuclear disarmament. Traditional theories of source credibility (Hovland et al, 1953; Petty and Cacioppo, 1986) would predict that the expert in the field (in this advert, the adult), should always be more effective than the child in terms of holding the correct belief. They found that the child was effective in arguing for nuclear disarmament as the child places the message recipient in the role of ‘protector’ and thus gains an advantage when arguing for protection-themed messages, such as smoking.

The adult has both the desire (in the interests of the child from an authoritative point of view) and the ability (from credible sources of authoritative knowledge) to analyse the situation carefully and act in compliance and influence a specific behaviour (Chaiken & Stangor, 1987). 

This action of compliance stems from the adult’s initial commitment in taking a role of responsibility. Similar work by Pratkanis and Gliner (2004) describes dependency-responsibility altercasting, which involves placing the audience in the role of the responsible adult. Social pressure and individual social proof mean that the audience will want to be consistent with the commitment they have chosen to make, in this case denying the child a lighter. As the advert goes on to explain, individuals impacted directly by the advert went on to throw away their cigarette. This commitment made to themselves is strengthened by individual self-concept – the adults don’t want to be seen as those who would support child smoking, and by following through the action of this commitment, they are more likely to comply.

Ultimately this advert works by inducing a state of authority and responsibility in the adult and by creating a sense of commitment in this responsibility they wish to act consistently with.

Lakhita Uppal

References

Bickman, L. (1974). The social power of a uniform, Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 4,  47-61.

Chaiken, S., & Stangor, C. (1987). Attitudes and Attitude Change. In M. R. Rozenzweig & L. W. Porter (Eds.), Annual Review of Psychology (Vol. 38, 575-630). Palo Alto, CA: Annual Reviews.

Hovland, C. I., Janis, I. L., & Kelly, H. H. (1953). Communication and Persuasion. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Petty, R. E., & Cacioppo, J. T. (1986). Communication and Persuasion: Central and Peripheral routes to attitude change. New York: Springer-Verlag.

Pratkanis, A. R., & Gliner, M. D. (2004). And when shall a little child lead then? Evidence for an altercasting theory of source credibility.  Current Psychology, 23, 279-304.

Audience Blind to Paddy Power Persuasion

Audience Blind to Paddy Power Persuasion

In the 2010 controversial advert involving a cat being kicked across a football pitch by blind players, the outrageousness of the ad cleverly covers the real persuasive intentions of the advert.

While most naïve observers naturally point towards the advert promoting ‘cruelty to animals’ and ‘offensiveness to blind people’, the underlying promotion of gambling behaviours is somewhat overlooked, whilst viewers are still affected by the message.

The advert is pretty funny

As with a large number of adverts currently on TV, on face value the ad uses slapstick comedy as its main way of sticking in the viewer’s mind. Whilst humour is by no means a guarantee of a better TV ad, Paddy use it to good affect and studies suggest it is a useful way of promoting a brand message¹. It should be noted that not all viewers found this advert funny, with over 1000 members of the public submitting complaints².

‘We can’t get your cat back… but we can get you your money back’

It may appear unlikely that such an absurd advert is underpinned with persuasive mechanisms aimed to reach out to customers; but it is.

Paddy aim to come across as a generous company that are ‘happy’ to give the customer their money back, even if for example your bet on David Moyes’ Man United to win the league doesn’t quite go to plan… Thus the uninvited favour offered by Paddy to the customer in the form of a money-back guarantee places the audience in a position where they feel obliged to repay the favour with their custom³.

Contrasting a Cat with Money

The audience are further enticed by the offer of getting their money back; as the offer of money is contrasted with a cat which cannot be retrieved. The value of money-back offer is increased by the high sentimental value of the cat that preceded it⁴.

Ultimately adverts like this face the tough challenge of standing out in what is a highly competitive and saturated consumer-gambling market. Bearing that in mind, the use of humour, a supposed favour and the comparison of a cat with money help Paddy Power to do this.

References

¹ Weinberger, M. G., & Gulas, C. S. (1992). The impact of humor in advertising: A review. Journal of Advertising, 21(4), 35-59.
² http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-10709417 (23.01.2014).
³ Strohmetz, D. B., Rind, B., Fisher, R., & Lynn, M. (2002). Sweetening the Till: The Use of Candy to Increase Restaurant Tipping1. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 32(2), 300-309.
⁵ Tormala, Z. L., & Petty, R. E. (2007). Contextual contrast and perceived knowledge: Exploring the implications for persuasion. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 43(1), 17-30.

Alex Lee

Sinking About Learning a Language?

I'm sure we've all been there, (and if you haven’t it’s probably time to stop spending all your parents’ money) your first day at a new job. You’re terrified, you have no idea what you’re doing and you really wish you hadn't lied about that thing on your CV. Nevertheless, you’re determined to impress everyone you meet by being overly friendly and learning everything at the speed of light. But then a nightmare occurs: before you even have a chance to ask someone how long your lunch break is, the boss gabbles a load of instructions at you then leaves you to complete the task…COMPLETELY ALONE.

Even the thought of this situation is enough to strike fear into the hearts of even the most capable of new employees, and it is this empathy which drives the success of this advertisement. The commercial shows a young German coastguard, seemingly at his first day on the job. It displays him briefly being shown how to operate the technology by a senior colleague and then being left to his own devices. However, soon afterwards, a “mayday” signal comes through from a ship with the English captain proclaiming, “We are sinking!”.  The coastguard’s English doesn't quite hit the mark and he replies with “What are you thinking about?!”.

The commercial comes from Berlitz, a company offering language courses. It plays on the familiarity that viewers feel towards the naïve coastguard himself and also for the situation, as research has shown that we are more likely to comply with people and situations which are familiar to us (Monahan et al, 2000). Furthermore, we tend to like those who are similar to us (Burger et al, 2004), and in empathising with the poor coastguard’s situation, we make an association between liking the coastguard and liking who he represents: Berlitz.

By ending the advert with a respected Beethoven symphony and Berlitz’s company logo, the advertisers are, in a sense, warning their audience that this awful situation could happen to them if they don’t enrol on one of their language courses. They are effectively using guilt to sell their products (Pratkanis, 2007) by playing on the audience’s ability to envision the regret they would feel that they hadn't perfected their language skills, if they were in a similar situation (Tochkov, 2009).

However, I believe that the key to the advert’s success is that it is funny. Although the situation shown in the advert could have serious consequences, the language mistake which the coastguard makes is very humorous and it is this humour which makes the advertisement memorable to its’ viewers (Hansen, et al 2009). This is great for Berlitz, who are a relatively unknown provider of language courses compared to their rivals such as Rosetta Stone. So 10/10 for the marketing department for creating a commercial which went viral on YouTube and catapulted Berlitz to the forefront of consumers’ attention.

References

Burger, J. M. 2009. Replicating Milgram: Would people still obey today?. American Psychologist, 64 (1).

Hansen, J., Strick, M., Van Baaren, R. B., Hooghuis, M. and Wigboldus, D. H. 2009. Exploring memory for product names advertised with humour. Journal of Consumer Behaviour, 8 (2-3).

Monahan, J. L., Murphy, S. T. and Zajonc, R. B. 2000. Subliminal mere exposure: Specific, general, and diffuse effects. Psychological Science, 11 (6).

Pratkanis, A. 2007. Social influence analysis: An index of tactics. The science of social influence: Advances and future progress.

Tochkov, K. 2009. The effects of anticipated regret on risk preferences of social and problem gamblers. Judgment and Decision Making, 4 (3).

Lauren Grainger 

Tested on real curves

The above is an advertisement created for Dove in 2004 in order to promote their new range of firming lotions. The advert shows a group of women in their underwear reading “As tested on real curves”. 

A persuasive weapon that this advert uses is social proofing.  This is the idea that we decide what is correct based on what other people think is correct.  A study by Milgram, Bickman and Berkowitz (1969) found that when they placed a few confederates to stand in the street and look up at a building, passerbys copied the looking up response just because they saw others doing it.  In another study, Nosanchuk and Lightstone (1974) asked participants to judge the quality of some anecdotes.  They found that in the presence of canned laughter, participants laughed out loud even though their private ratings indicated they did not find it funny.  So the more it appears that everyone is doing ‘it’, the more people are likely to join in!  The women in the advert are using Dove firming products so therefore it is clearly good and all women should use it. As a result Dove do not need to tell us how good their product is because the women in the advert show it is with their happy appearances. 

Additionally, this advert uses the technique of similarity in order to sell the firming products.  This is because they use ‘real women’ in the advert and not the usual stick thin catwalk models that normally appear in advertisements for beauty products.  The use of similarity is when social proofing works the best.  If we see that people like us using a product then we are more likely to buy it ourselves.  For example, Aune and Basil (1994) found that when the requester claimed to be similar to the buyer (e.g. both being students), donations to a charity more than doubled compared to when the requester was talking to a faculty member.

So the question is, will you be trying Dove on your real curves?

Aune, R. K., & Basil, M. D. (1994). A Relational Obligations Approach to the Foot-In-The-Mouth Effect. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 24, 546-556.

Milgram, S., Bickman, L., & Berkowitz, L. (1969). Note of the drawing power of crowds of different size. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 13, 79-82.

Nosanchuk, T. A., & Lightstone, J. (1974). Canned laughter and public and private conformity. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 29, 153-156.

Amy Bennoson

Oh Dear Brad.

So Brad Pitt is stood in the world’s worst nightclub prattling on like a bad extra from Dead Poets Society. Wooed we are not Mr. Pitt.

So let’s break it down.

Last year Miss. Drayton pointed out that the advert used the High Status / Admirer Altercast technique as well as noting the effect of the mysterious (i.e. baffling) nature of the advert. Here’s the link for her accreditation; 

http://persuasion-and-influence.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/chanel-no-5.html

Both observations are correct and I would like to identify and explain some more techniques at play here in Brad’s own version of fortune-cookie wisdom corner. Firstly though I’d like to make an observation of the use of the High Status / Admirer Altercast technique (Weick, Gilfillan, & Keith, 1973). Bushman (1984) found that people were more compliant to the request of someone dressed in a business suit as opposed to someone who… well… looks like Brad Pitt in a Chanel No.5 advert. However, I guess when you’re Brad Pitt you can look however disheveled you like and still sell classy smelly-water. This is perhaps the ultimate affirmation of the High Status / Admirer Altercast and borders into the Association technique; that anything linked to Brad Pitt will have his ‘goodness’ rubbed all over it (Staats and Staats, 1985).

So it’s odd, we can all accept that. Odd on purpose though may be a little harder to understand but it got you thinking about it at least, right? Better than sitting through that awful Double Discount DFS rubbish again for the eighteenth time this hour. It piqued your interest through its peculiarity which makes you focus on (and therefore potentially buy) the product (Santos, Leve and Pratkanis, 1994). Doubling up on this though is the fact that Brad Pitt is the first ever male spokesperson for Chanel No.5 following on from a hyper-glamorous female line-up. It’s more piqued interest technique with a tiny little splash of Defector-Confident Altercast (Walster et al., 1966) thrown in to produce something I’m going to coin the ‘Unusual Messenger’ technique; women like seeing Brad Pitt advertise their girly scents and men want to think Brad’s giving them a subtle wink about what the missus might want for Christmas this year.

Finally, we have good old fashioned flattery; “My luck, my fate, my fortune”. That’s you, you lucky girl! And he’s saying these nice things about you because you doused yourself in Chanel No.5. We like people who flatter us and when they do we’re more likely to do what they say and buy what they’re touting (Hendrick et al., 1972).

This advert uses the combination of a good looking man talking obscurely (albeit nicely) to sell you a pretentious lifestyle in a bottle.

This is what $7m buys you in the advertising world apparently. Hope you kept the receipt.

James Ulke

High Status – Admirer Altercast

Weick, K.E., Gilfillan, D.P., & Keith, T.A. (1973). The effect of composer credibility on orchestra   performance. Sociometry, 36, 435-465.

Clothing Compliance

Bushman, B. J. (1984). Perceived symbols of authority and their influence on compliance. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 14, 501-508

Association

Staats, A. W. & Staats, C. K. (1958) Attitudes established by classical conditioning. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 57, 37-40.

Piqued Interest

Santos, M. D., Leve, C., & Pratkanis, A. R. (1994). Hey Buddy, Can You Spare Seventeen Cents? Mindful Persuasion and the Pique Technique.  Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 24(9), 755-764.

Defector-Confidant

Walster, E., Aronson, E., & Abrahams, D. (1966). On increasing the persuasiveness of a low prestige communicator. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 2(4), 325-342.

Flattery

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

Fear No Susan Glenn

If we only knew twenty years ago what we know today, we would “Fear No Susan Glenn.” Axe Body Spray’s new television advert introduces viewers to Susan Glenn, not just “a” girl, but “the” girl who narrator Keifer Sutherland remembers with a mix of longing and regret. The commercial ends with an older, wiser Sutherland professing that if he could go back in time, he would do things differently. He would use Axe.

The premise of the campaign is based on the persuasive technique of similarity. Although Keifer Sutherland is a far cry from the average guy (I mean he’s Jack Bauer!), men who have been in a similar situation with their own versions of “Susan Glenn” can easily relate to what the actor is experiencing. Like Sutherland, the girl of their dreams is not only out of reach, but the very thought of approaching Susan Glenn puts fear in their hearts. In Sutherland’s mind, he was “the peasant before the queen,” meaning that not only was he unworthy, but that Susan Glenn was out of his league. Hence, “Susan Glenn and I were never a thing.”

As research shows, this technique of association and similarity has proven to be extremely persuasive in advertising. According to Aune and Basil (1994), donations made to a charity more than doubled when the person making the request appeared to be similar to the donor. The Axe advert does a good job of aligning Sutherland with the product’s consumers, who consist primarily of young, libidinous males. The time and place are also settings in which most people can relate – in this case, high school. Everyone has memories, good and bad, of their high school days. Sutherland’s reminiscence takes us back to a time in our lives when we were unsure of ourselves and were easily influenced – and frequently intimidated – by others. This uncovers another strategy used by Axe in persuading sales: the actions of others often dictate how we behave. The slogan “Fear no Susan Glenn” illustrates this very clearly by suggesting that consumers who don’t heed Sutherland’s advice will suffer the same outcome as he.

Susan Glenn possesses every desirable quality to man, and it is certainly no surprise that one of those qualities is supermodel good looks. In the words of Sutherland, “she made everything beautiful.” According to Joseph (1982), attractive individuals have an increased persuasive effect on others. Also, a study by Chaiken in 1979 demonstrated that attractive people are more persuasive in altering the opinions of others. Hence, the inference that Susan Glenn might have taken a second look at Keifer Sutherland if he had used Axe Body Spray means that others might experience success with their “Susan Glenns” if they use the product. They don’t have to succumb to Sutherland’s fate. The advert closes on Sutherland’s unhappy face. Life could have been different (read “better”) if he had only made different choices (read “used Axe”).

Axe Body Spray … it’s yours for the Axing.

Chloe Jadon

Aunel, R.K., & Basil, M. D. (1994) A Relational Obligations Approach to the Foot-In-The-Mouth 

Effect. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 24(6), 546–556.

Chaiken, S. (1979). Communicator Physical Attractiveness and Persuasion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37(8), 1387-1397.

Joseph,W.B. (1982),"The Credibility of Physically Attractive  Communicators: A Review,"Journal of Advertising, 11(3), 15-24.

We all Long to be Super Human

                                                                             
Much of my Christmas was spent watching two little rascals submerge their imagination into the computerised, supersonic world of Marvel. We nearly had complete meltdown in the Atkinson household when the boys realised how difficult it was to obtain Silver Surfer Status!! 
This got me thinking, we all dream about having some sort of super human power. Some of us dream of flying and some of us wish for the ability to become invisible for reasons that shouldn’t be discussed on a Warwick University web site!

This is Sliver Surfer BTW 

And this is what happens when you cannot get enough points on a computer game (that will remain unnamed) to attain his magic surf board!! 

This is what the advertiser of the channel 4 Paralympic games understood so well. No, not the mood swings of 3 year old children but the desire we all have to be super human. 

The advertisers utilised extreme analogy (Goldenberg, Mazursky, & Solomon, 1999) to compare these athletes to modern day super heroes.  The beliefs we hold about super heroes being extraordinary and super strong transfers to the Paralympic athletes and like magic a positive association is made (Staats & Staats, 1958)!! 

This further changes the meaning of the category these people have been placed in (Rothbart, Davis-Stitt & Hill, 1997).  No longer are these individuals placed in the disabled category but very abled and unique heroes that work hard to achieve a desired goal. And not just any goal, but a goal for our country! This summons a surge of patriotic emotion that urges us to support their mission (Han, 1988)

The advert tells the story of these individuals pushing themselves physically through adversity to become athletes. This story telling technique appeals to the viewers self-referencing processes helping them to easily encode the information (Harris, 2008).

Us Brits relished in the success of the 2012 Olympics. This massive cultural fad that we all connected to gave us good memories of fun times and triumph. This is alliterated by the iconic image of the Olympic stadium, which the advertiser have repeatedly presented throughout this advert to raise our excitement of it all happening again (Smith & Engel, 1968).

Further to this the music that accompanies the advert grabs our attention and fits the motivational concept being sold. This technique has been proven to influence the buying habits of individuals (Areni & Kim, 1993).

So did it work?? Well YES!! The channel 4 broadcasters stated record audience figures. Further to this 81% of British adults thought the Paralympics had a positive impact on the way people with impairment were viewed by the public.

Not only did this advert entice the audience to watch a program they wouldn’t usually consider. But through the use of association, story telling and some good music they helped the athletes get the recognition they deserved. Also prompting individuals to question their beliefs and attitudes towards people with impairments.  

Reference:

Areni, C. S., & Kim, D. (1993). The influence of background music on shopping behavior: classical versus top-forty music in a wine store. Advances in Consumer Research, 20, 336-340.

Goldenberg, J., Mazursky, D., & Solomon, S. (1999). The fundamental templates of quality ads. Marketing Science, 18(3), 333-351.

Han, C. M. (1988). The role of consumer patriotism in the choice of domestic versus foreign products. Journal of Advertising Research, 28, 25-32.

Harris, M. A. B. (2008). Getting carried away: Understanding memory and consumer processing of perceived storytelling in advertisements. Dissertation Abstracts International Section A: Humanities and Social Sciences, 68, 3197-3197.

Smith, G. & Engel, R. (1968). Influence of a Female Model on Perceived Characteristics of an Automobile, Proceedings of the 76th Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association, 3, 681-682.

Staats, A.W., & Staats, C.K. (1958). Attitudes established by classical conditioning. Journal of Abnormal Psychology , 57, 37-40

Rothbart, M., Davis-Stitt, C., & Hill, J. (1997). Effects of arbitrarily placed category boundries on similarity judgments. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 33, 122-145