Persuasive Advertising - J. Scott Armstrong [57]
When the signs of the relationships are multiplied and the result is positive—as above—people will feel comfortable. But when the product of the signs is negative, people will feel uncomfortable and seek to bring things into balance. This notion, sometimes referred to as “balance theory,” dates back at least to the early 1900s.
Consider an advertiser who is introducing a new car, the Cheetah, to the market. Perhaps it shares a desirable feature with a well-respected competitive product, such as BMW: “The Cheetah uses the same braking system as a BMW.” Assuming that the target market already has a positive view toward BMW, the ad introduces a positive link between the Cheetah and BMW. To keep things in harmony, the target market would be more likely to have a positive impression of the Cheetah.
People tend to hold on to prior viewpoints when they encounter something new. In 1928, students in a German school were put into two groups, one containing those who were uniformly liked by the classmates, and one with students who were uniformly disliked. The experimenter trained the liked group to make deliberate mistakes, and drilled the disliked students so that they performed perfectly. The students then performed in front of their other classmates. Classmates viewed the liked group as performing well and the disliked group as making mistakes (Krech, Crutchfield, and Ballachey 1962, pp. 27–8).
2.5.1. Associate products with things that are favorable and relevant to the product.
In pleasure our minds expand. We become extremely suggestible
and are likely to see everything in a favorable light.
Walter Dill Scott, 1908
A 2003 Kodak commercial featured a young boy in a store where a friendly Kodak representative is helping him to use Kodak’s imaging technology to enlarge a picture. He enhances the picture, enlarges it to the size he wants, and prints it. We do not see the picture until the end of the ad, when the boy gives his grandmother a photo of her as a young girl playing baseball.
Consider associating the product with favorable things. This principle is expected to be most applicable for low-involvement products.
Advertisers should be cautious lest irrelevant favorable things overwhelm the message. That is, pets, babies, attractive models, beautiful scenery and so on—if not relevant—might distract customers from strong arguments.
Taster’s Choice coffee ran a series of 13 commercials from 1990 to 1997. They started with a woman borrowing Taster’s Choice from her male neighbor. Romance gradually blossomed, based on a shared interest in the product. While each ad had a beginning, middle, and end, the series assumed that the viewer had followed the previous ads. This led people who missed an ad to ask others what happened. Each commercial showed a new situation and ended leaving the viewer waiting for the next event. The campaign was said to have increased sales of Taster’s Choice by 10 percent.
In June 2000, sales were poor at Sainsbury’s supermarket chain in the United Kingdom. Research showed that its image was, “too elitist, too up-market, and a little too arrogant.” To counteract this, Sainsbury’s ran a series of TV commercials featuring Jamie Oliver, a likable 24-year-old chef who was passionate about food. After 41 commercials featuring Jamie, people felt a closer link with Sainsbury’s. The Jamie campaign led to a substantial increase in sales for Sainsbury’s and it won an IPA Effectiveness Award (Rimini 2003).
A 1983 study in the United Kingdom showed that everyone knew about the Yellow Pages, but many associated it with unpleasant aspects of life (e.g., the need to fix a leaking roof). To address this, Yellow Pages produced a TV commercial that opened in a secondhand bookstore as an elderly man asks for a copy of Fly Fishing by J. R. Hartley. The book is not available so he goes to another store, but the result is the same. He returns home and his daughter brings him