Persuasive Advertising - J. Scott Armstrong [202]
Properly used, efficiency will be higher with MAAD than with traditional meetings (or with DA) because time is not wasted in defending the original campaign. Instead, the group effort goes into improving it. Under MAAD, groups are more likely to accept changes because they are the ones proposing the changes.
The need for anonymity in dissent is often critical to survival in an organization. This calls for contributions by everyone on the project, as well as a summary that is done in a way that will protect the identities of individuals.
Research
The advertising principles can only take you so far. Research is often needed to assess consumer responses to advertising. It can be applied prior to, during, or after a campaign, or—as is frequently the case—during all three phases.
Experiments and quasi-experiments are the proper ways to assess advertising. Non-experimental analyses are seldom of much value because advertising problems are so complex that even massive sample sizes can be misleading.
As in medicine, there are no absolutes. You must compare alternative advertisements. Think of it like a medical experiment. Compare treatments A, B and C, preferably where one treatment is the control (e.g., no exposure to advertising).
Focus on persuasiveness. Ideally, use actual behavior, such as when testing alternative versions of direct response ads. Lacking behavioral measures, focus on intentions to purchase—or on other actions requested by an ad. Liking is not an objective, so do not ask customers, clients, or managers which ads they like.
All analyses should be done by individuals. Use more than one person to analyze the same problem and compare their written solutions—a procedure known as parallel processing. While one person might make a mistake in conducting an analysis, it is unlikely that another person will make exactly the same mistake if the analyses were conducted independently.
Those who fail to do formal analyses often suffer. For example, in 1992, Maytag’s Hoover unit in the United Kingdom advertised that it would provide a free air ticket to anyone who spent over £119 for a Hoover vacuum cleaner. Although Hoover did not analyze the costs of the program correctly, over 200,000 customers did; they realized that some flights cost more than £119 at the time. Therefore, they were happy to buy a spare vacuum cleaner. This promotion proved to be a disaster for Hoover; its president and other top executives were subsequently fired.
Using the principles to evaluate ads
advertising needs principles … not opinions.
Rosser Reeves, 1961
I have discussed the use of principles for creating ads. They can also be used to evaluate ads. By identifying relevant principles that are overlooked or misused, an advertiser can take steps to improve an ad. Persuasive Advertising provides structured checklists at the end of each chapter. Checklists typically improve decision-making in complex situations such as flying airplanes (e.g., Arkes, Shaffer, and Dawes 2006).
Would you want a surgical team to operate on you if they had no checklist? For example, a 2008 study evaluated the effects of the implementation of a 19-item checklist for hospital procedures. A before/after experimental design was used for thousands of patients in eight hospitals in eight cities around the world. In the month after the operations, the checklist led to a reduction in deaths from 1.5 percent to 0.8 percent, and in complications from 11 percent to 7 percent (Haynes et al. 2009).
The principles checklists can help improve nearly any ad. For example, an advertising campaign in Scotland sought to increase the number of people available for organ donations after their deaths. This campaign, based on guilt, had modest success; about 100,000 people signed up and six transplants were anticipated as a result. The campaign won an IPA award for effectiveness (Storey 2008). As noted in this book, guilt is indeed a powerful persuasion principle. However, by using the advertising principles checklists, I was able to find relevant