Persuasive Advertising - J. Scott Armstrong [190]
Evidence on the effects of voices
This principle is based primarily on received wisdom although there is some indirect evidence.
Telephone interviewers with higher pitch, greater variation in pitch, greater loudness, faster rates of speaking, and clearer pronunciation were more persuasive when asking people to participate in surveys. Fortunately, useful subjective judgments of voice qualities can be accurately made by having a few raters listen to short (e.g., ten-second) samples (Oksenberg, Coleman, and Cannell 1986; Harms 1961).
10.2.2. Avoid orally ambiguous words
Care should be taken to ensure clarity in oral scripts. This principle is especially important when the target market includes those who are hard of hearing and when the audience receives only an oral message.
Avoid the use of s, f, m, and n because they difficult for some listeners to distinguish. While it might be difficult to rewrite a script to avoid certain letters, it is certainly possible. The 1969 French book La Disparition , by Georges Perec, was written without the letter “e,” translated to English without an “e,” and then reviewed in English without an “e” (New York Times Book Review, August 4, 2004).
Beware of homonyms as they also are hard to interpret. For example, the following statement is ambiguous when delivered orally: “They raised the new house as soon as the old one was razed.” Find words that are not ambiguous.
When ambiguous words, such as an unusual brand name, are unavoidable, use visuals to reinforce the oral. In its initial advertising in the United States, the Swedish company IKEA (pronounced ee-kay’-ah in Swedish) decided it would be too difficult to educate customers on the proper pronunciation; therefore, it changed the pronunciation for the U.S. market and showed print and billboard ads that included a picture of an eye and a key followed by an “ah.”
10.3. Music and sound
Music has many functions in advertising, such as gaining attention, establishing a mood or emotion, evoking a time period, or identifying a brand. Music has a long history in advertising. In ancient Greece, musicians often accompanied town criers; they attracted attention and entertained people as the criers talked about the latest products.
10.3.1. Consider using music or sounds for low-involvement products, but not for high-involvement products with strong arguments
If you have nothing to say, sing it.
Old adage in advertising
Music and sound are appropriate for well-known, hedonic products that are being advertised by emotional appeals. They are not appropriate for high-involvement products with strong arguments because they may compete with the attention that customers pay to the arguments.
Music is commonly used in television and radio commercials. One estimate was that 40 percent of 2,000 tested TV commercials from leading advertisers included music (Stewart and Furse 1986; Stewart and Koslow 1989). Another estimate provided much different results: Music was used in 87 percent of a sample of 30-second TV commercials tested by Ipsos ASI (Walker 2008).
Unusual sound effects (“out of place, unusual or bizarre use of sound”) were used in fewer than 2 percent of the TV commercials examined by Stewart and Furse (1986).
Evidence on the effects of music or sounds
A lab experiment involving 30-second radio ads for nine product categories found that message recall was better in a control group that heard ads without music than in a group that heard ads with music. This was true although the products were primarily hedonic products for which music might seem relevant, such as restaurants, nightclubs,