Persuasive Advertising - J. Scott Armstrong [108]
Customers are skeptical of testimonials because they suspect that the endorsers were given a script. One way to address this problem is to use unrehearsed testimonials in TV commercials. In other words, use no script and only one take. For print ads, use the customer’s wording.
The hidden camera technique can help communicate that the testimonial is unrehearsed. No retakes are allowed because it is unethical to portray a scene using a hidden camera if the person giving the testimonial had been given a script.
There are legal risks for endorsements. According to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, the person who endorses a product must be representative of the target market, use the product before being approached for the ad, and use the product as long as the campaign runs.
Payments of any kind to the endorser must be disclosed. Actors cannot be used to portray consumers unless this is clearly disclosed in the advertisement. False claims cannot be made by presenting them merely as opinions of customers.
Evidence on the effects of endorsements by customers
A review of six published studies concluded that blemishes, such as vocal pauses (“uh”), slips of the tongue, and unnecessary repetition, do not detract from trustworthiness although they do detract from expertise (O’Keefe 2002a, p 185). For example, an experiment using newscasters found that although competency was lower, trustworthiness and recall did not suffer when a speaker stumbled over words occasionally (Engstrom 1994).
To test the value of the hidden-camera approach, 150 subjects were shown scenes from a mock TV commercial for a clock radio. Some saw a spokesperson described as a typical purchaser in the process of buying a clock radio, while others heard a typical purchaser who had been filmed by a hidden camera. Those who viewed the hidden-camera ad gave better ratings to the sound quality, accuracy, and reliability of the clock radio (Hunt, Domzal, and Kernan 1981).
Turning to non-experimental data, TV commercials with typical-person endorsers had better than average recall and comprehension than did the other ads in that sample (Laskey, Fox, and Crask 1994).
Walker (2008) found that TV commercials with real consumers as endorsers had 20 percent better recall and 10 percent higher persuasion, relative to the typical ad in these data. Similar results were obtained by Stanton and Burke (1998).
6.6. Celebrity endorsements
Celebrity endorsements would seem to be most appropriate for hedonic products because they might help consumers to imagine the pleasure of using the same products that celebrities choose to use.
Ogilvy had little regard for the use of celebrities. He stopped using them because, he claimed, people “remembered the celebrity but forgot the product.” He also claimed that celebrity testimonials are below average in their ability to change brand preference. However, as shown below, under certain condition, celebrities can play a role.
6.6.1. When an ad contains strong arguments, avoid the use of celebrities
If you have nothing to say, have a celebrity say it.
Old adage
When an ad has good arguments for a product, a celebrity’s attention-getting power might distract from those arguments. This is consistent with other principles in this book—nothing should distract from a strong argument.
Celebrities can generate attention for unknown products. The issue, however, is whether this attention gets translated into profitability.
Evidence on the effects of celebrities