Persuasive Advertising - J. Scott Armstrong [168]
Experts advise that the models should match the target market and product. In many cases this is obvious, such as by having children model children’s clothes.
This principle is based on typical practice. It is also consistent with research on social proof. The potential customer should think, “That person is like me—or like the person for whom I am purchasing.”
Bakers Petfoods in the United Kingdom used this principle successfully. Rather than using beautiful dogs, as its competitors did in dog-food commercials, it used a range of “real dogs.” The campaign was shown to be effective and was an IPA award winner (Binet 2006).
Alternatively, a model might be used as an aspiration. It is commonly believed that people’s behavior is influenced by those whom they perceive to have higher status. Status can be manipulated by choice of a model, clothing, setting, and descriptions.
Evidence on the effects of matching the model to the target market
The following experiment supports the matching principle:
Product evaluations were higher when the gender of model matched the product. Print advertisements for four products (a two-door car, a medium-priced sofa, a stereo set with two speakers, and a B&W 16-inch TV) were shown to 32 male and 32 female subjects; each was assigned to one of three experimental groups or to a control group. The car was judged to be a masculine product, the sofa feminine, and the stereo and TV mixed. Subjects saw one of each version of the four ads: female, male, both male and female, or no models. Product evaluations were highest when a male model was used for the car and a female model for the sofa. The gender of the model had no effect on the two mixed-gender products (Kanungo and Pang 1973).
Indirect evidence shows that people are influenced by those with higher status. For example, in a field experiment, members of an experimental team wore clothing to represent either a high or low-status person who violated the “Don’t walk” signal at a traffic light. Of the 2,100 pedestrians that they observed, 14 percent violated the signal when the high-status person crossed, while only 4 percent violated it when the low-status person crossed (Lefkowitz, Blake, and Mouton 1955).
Additional indirect evidence comes from Walker’s (2008) analysis of non-experimental data TV commercials that had been tested among adult females. When the commercials included an adult female model (57 percent of these commercials did), recall was 3 percent higher and persuasion was 5 percent higher than for the typical ad in the sample.
Normally, advertisers like to associate their products with attractive people. However, effective use of an attractive model depends on the conditions, as the next principle illustrates.
8.10.2. Use physically attractive models when the product enhances beauty or social competence
It has long been common practice to use beautiful people as models in ads. In the 1850s, ads for patent medicines included wood engravings of beautiful women. Over time however, practice seems to have changed in favor of social proof. Berger (2001) claims that there has been a worldwide trend for advertisers to use models who are more natural and real.
Attractive models improve persuasion for beauty and social competence, and, although with weaker effects, for appeals involving intellectual competence (“impress your friends with your vocabulary”). However, beautiful models do not help for issues calling for integrity (“buy this initial public stock offering”), concern for others (“volunteer for a program to improve literacy”), or utilitarian products (“a better can opener”).
Advertisers can create their own beautiful models for still advertisements. Galton (1879) found that when photographic portraits of people were “averaged”—by superimposing the faces and drawing the typical features—the resulting composite portraits were judged as more beautiful than the vast majority of the individual portraits. This is because the averaged portraits had fewer irregularities. A number