Persuasive Advertising - J. Scott Armstrong [67]
In a ten-week field experiment, images of a pair of eyes (a new pair during each of five weeks) nearly tripled the contributions to an honesty box for drinks in a university lounge (Bateson, Nettle, and Roberts 2006). Given the success of this experiment, I encouraged two museums to put eyes near their donation boxes and to keep track of the results. The Cape Cod Museum of Art in Dennis, Massachusetts, ran a test from July 15 through September 8, 2008. The treatments were alternated each week. The control weeks had only the donation box. In the experimental weeks, a Richard Perry “relief sculpture” of a woman was placed above the donation box. It is a remarkable illusion in which the eyes would look at people no matter where they were standing. The tests ran for 48 days. Donations were more than doubled on the Perry sculpture days.
A similar field experiment was run at the Southwest School of Art and Craft in San Antonio, Texas, by the director of exhibitions (my daughter, Kathy Armstrong). A photograph of eyes (my grandson, Peter’s) was placed above the donation box during alternate weeks over a nine-week span. Donations were 13 percent higher with Peter’s eyes.
What type of advertising campaign would lead people to use seat belts in the back seats of automobiles?
3.4.3. Encourage people to anticipate their guilt if they ignore reasonable advice
To raise feelings of “anticipatory guilt,” ask people to think about the consequences that might result if they do not follow advice. For example, get them consider their guilt if their lack of action were to harm others. For example, in the early 1700s, advertisements for the Anodyne Necklace (which promised to ward off diseases) said that a mother would never forgive herself if her infant should perish without the necklace.
Let’s go back to the question posed in the lead-in to this principle. In the late 1990s, only 48 percent of the people in the back seats of cars in the United Kingdom used seat belts. Approximately a hundred people died each year when back-seat passengers were propelled into front-seat passengers during crashes. Prior advertising urging rear-seat passengers to use seat belts had provided evidence on the importance of doing so to save their lives, yet it had little impact. In 1997, a TV ad campaign was developed to show how the failure of back-seat passengers to buckle up might harm others. One ad showed a mother driving her son who was sitting behind her. The voice-over said, “Like most victims, Julie knew her killer … it was her son,” as the car crashed and her son was propelled forward. The words on the screen said, “Belt up in the back. For everyone’s sake.” The campaign, an IPA Advertising Effectiveness Award winner, increased the usage of rear seat belts from 48 percent to 59 percent, and was estimated to have saved 18 lives per year. Based on the injuries and deaths that the ad prevented, estimated savings were almost 100 times the cost of the advertising campaign (Broadbent 2000).
Some advertising tries to reduce guilt rather than encourage it. For example, advertisements for low-fat products might relieve people of their responsibility for their weight problems; they rationalize that they are doing their part by following the advice to eat low-fat foods. Three lab experiments involving the consumption of regular or low-fat M&Ms found that when foods were labeled as low fat, consumers, especially overweight consumers, ate up to 50 percent more (Wansink and Chandon 2006). Thus, advertising for “low fat” foods would be expected to increase obesity.
3.4.4. Focus on victims similar to the target market
To combat drunk-driving