Persuasive Advertising - J. Scott Armstrong [3]
[Advertising is] interpreting to the public, or to that part of it which it is desired to reach, the advantages of a product or service.
American Association of Advertising Agencies, 1918
In July 2001, I visited the American Advertising Museum in Portland, Oregon. When visiting museums, I am often excited by the progress they reflect. But after thinking about the exhibits in this museum, I concluded that little progress had been made since the 1960s with respect to persuasive advertising.
Many people share the belief that practice of advertising is stagnant or deteriorating. An examination of 38 public opinion surveys from the 1930s through the 1970s showed that responses to questions such as “how believable (truthful) (informative) are ads?” reflected positive attitudes toward advertising through the mid-1950s, reaching an eight on a nine-point scale. However, by the 1970s, the ratings had plummeted to below three (Zanot 1984). Judging from reviews of consumer surveys, the general sentiments towards advertising have remained unfavorable in recent decades (Gaski & Etzel 2005).
Advertising experts also believe that advertising has worsened. In 1991, David Ogilvy said, “Who is approving this junk called advertising? Have the clients gone crazy?” Graham Phillips, former CEO of Ogilvy and Mather, said in Advertising Age (May 20, 2002, p. 26): “Too much of today’s advertising is irrelevant and a waste of money. Ten years ago, some observers noted that ad agencies seemed ‘more interested in selling their product than the client’s product. Since then, it has gone from bad to worse.” Tellis (2004, p. 29), a marketing professor, concluded, “Much advertising, as preached today, is ineffective.”
Many believe that advertising is an art that changes with the times. As a result, they believe that what was learned in the past has little relevance to advertising today. Fox (1997), an advertising historian, wrote: “Advertising practitioners, in blithe, traditional ignorance of their trade’s history, have continued to rediscover and rename old techniques (and imagine they have thereby come up with something unprecedented).”
A broad view of what constitutes persuasive advertising
Every one is practicing oratory on others thro the whole of his life.
Adam Smith
This book takes a broad view of advertising. It considers actions intended to influence others through all types of media—including TV, radio, direct mail, magazines, billboards, and the Internet.
The principles in the book relate to attempts to persuade in many forms, with or without the motive of financial gain. The principles can be applied to a broad range of activities, including but not limited to selling products, gaining votes, helping to pass legislation, obtaining support for causes, and convincing people to avoid behaviors that are self-destructive or detrimental to others. They extend beyond advertising per se. In sum, the principles apply whenever there is a need to persuade someone to do something.
How big is the persuasion business? One admittedly crude estimate was made in the paper titled “One quarter of GDP is persuasion” (McCloskey and Klamer 1995).
Evidence-based principles
The application of the principles and methods of psychology to advertising was a need which was felt by all [advertising leaders].
Walter Dill Scott, 1912
Prior to about 1940, if you had a disease, it made little difference what doctor treated you. The treatment of diseases is so complex that doctors, who had to rely on experience, were able to learn little about how to treat diseases. Then things changed. Why? – Because the discipline of medicine began to use the findings from experiments to develop principles for treating patients. The change was gradual, but today many medical schools embrace the teaching of evidence-based medical principles. Thanks to the Internet, doctors can find evidence-based treatment principles on sites such as Cochrane.org. Patients can also go to such sites to find out what treatments are relevant given their symptoms. As a result, people’s lives are