Persuasive Advertising - J. Scott Armstrong [154]
7.6.2. Use words that enhance the purchasing or consuming experience.
7.6.3. Use familiar words and phrases.
7.7. Wordplay
7.7.1. Use wordplay if it is clearly related to the product.
7.8. Metaphors and figures of speech
7.8.1. Consider using novel and concrete metaphors that are related to a benefit.
7.9. Simplicity
7.9.1. Use a single theme—or two in some situations.
7.9.2. Avoid irrelevant information if strong arguments exist.
7.9.3. When using fast-exposure media, keep the message short.
7.10. Informative illustrations
7.10.1. Illustrations should support the basic message.
7.10.2. Show the product
7.10.3. Emphasize desirable features in illustrations.
7.10.4. When believability is an issue, use photographs/videos instead of drawings/cartoons.
7.11. Informative color
7.11.1. Use color to provide information.
7.12. Ad consistency
7.12.1. Make elements of an ad reinforce one another.
7.13. Disclaimers and corrective advertising
7.13.1. Use disclaimers or corrective advertising only if they provide information customers need.
1 According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a jingle is: “The affected repetition of the same sound or of a similar series of sounds, as in alliteration, rhyme, or assonance; any arrangement of words intended to have a pleasing or striking sound …; a catching array of words, whether in prose or verse.” “A short verse or song in … advertising.”
2 Webster’s Dictionary defines a metaphor as “a figure of speech in which a word or phrase literally denoting one kind of object or idea is used in place of another to suggest a likeness or analogy between them (as in drowning in money).”
3 Illustration of two tables from Mind Sights by Roger N. Shepard. Reprinted by arrangement with Henry Holt and Company, LLC.
8. Attention
You can have all the right things in an ad and if nobody
is made to stop and listen to you, you’ve wasted it.
Bill Bernbach, 1960s
In the 1890s, many advertisers created poems and told stories. The characters in these ads, such as Sunny Jim and Phoebe Snow, became among the most recognized names in the country. “It is astonishing,” said Charles Austin Bates, a well-known advertiser at that time, “how some of the things that we think the silliest will stick in our minds for years” (Fox 1997).
In the early 1900s, advertising expert Earnest Calkins said that the first duty of an advertiser was to get the reader’s attention. This focus on attention turned out to be misguided. In contrast, Scott (1912) said, “I believe that there is no proof that … an open attempt to force the attention of the reader is advisable or successful.” At the end of the 20th century, dot.com advertisers demonstrated this as they wasted huge sums of money in their efforts to attract attention. Nevertheless, the practice persists. For example, in 2006, AT&T placed full-page ads that contained no information in the Wall Street Journal.
Attention is especially important when the ad has a persuasive message. How strange then to see a movement toward “low-attention advertising” by some practitioners. This refers to advertising that is so subtle it does not look like advertising. Often, such advertising does not even mention the product or brand name. The idea is that by not obviously seeking attention, the advertiser can sneak the product into the customer’s mind. I was unable to find empirical support for low-attention advertising. On the contrary, the evidence refutes it. One study examined 316 new-product ads that had been tested on 65,000 respondents. Viewers who remembered seeing an ad were seven times more likely to choose the advertised brand than were viewers who were exposed to the ad but could not remember it (Mundell, Hallward, and Walker 2006). A review of studies on unconscious processing yielded a similar conclusion (Pratkanis and Greenwald 1988).
The need for generating attention varies across different types of media. In TV advertising, a customer who views a TV ad is usually not seeking information. In contrast, a customer who searches