• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1870 0

accidents in Ireland, in March 2001, the McCann-Erickson Belfast agency ran a “shame” campaign. A TV commercial showed a little boy playing soccer in his front yard. He scored a goal and ran around punching air to celebrate. The ad then showed a young man as he scored a goal in a soccer game with his friends; he also punched air in celebration. Later, he was shown having a pint of beer with his mates. We then saw him driving home. He lost his concentration; his car hit the curb, rolled over into a garden, and crushed the little boy. The voice-over and on-screen print said, “Never drink and drive—could YOU live with the shame?” The ad had the highest recall of any ad at that time in Northern Ireland. Drunk-driving deaths dropped by 44 percent in the year following the start of the campaign. This campaign was an IPA award winner for effectiveness (Rimini 2003).

To enhance identification, the victim should be similar to those in the target market. The key is to try to establish an emotional connection with a victim. Thus, use actual people rather than actors. This advice is consistent with evidence showing that real customer testimonials are more persuasive than are actors playing customers.

The Humane Society of New Zealand faced the problem of finding homes for pets. It posted a billboard labeled “Death Row,” which put dogs at risk in four cages with the text, “They have just 7 days to live. Call 0800-Humane to foster them.” Showing the potential victims seemed an effective approach, rather than using a general appeal to save pets.

Evidence related to the focus on similar victims

In a field experiment, subjects were asked to complete a survey for which they received $5. This was to ensure that they had five one-dollar bills. They were then asked to read an unrelated request for a donation to Habitat for Humanity. It described four families who had applied for help in building and purchasing a home. Half of the instructions said, “The family that Habitat chose …” while the other half said “the family that Habitat will choose …” The donations given to the already-determined family were twice those given to the undetermined family (Small and Loewenstein 2003). Three extensions of this study obtained similar results (Kogut and Ritov 2005a, 2005b).

However, the effect applies only to similar individuals. The importance of similarity was shown in three laboratory experiments conducted with Israeli subjects. For example, in one experiment, 235 subjects were told about efforts to help tsunami victims in Southeast Asia. They were asked to help the victims, who were either Israeli or Indian. Some subjects were given the names of seven victims (either all Israeli or all Indian) while others were given the names of one victim, and still others received no names of individuals. Donations were enormously higher for similar individuals than for dissimilar groups. The focus on an individual was persuasive only when the individual was similar to the person viewing the ad. In fact, the results tended to be opposite for the dissimilar victims (Kogut and Ritov 2007).

A lab experiment found higher intentions to donate to an organization trying to reduce drunk driving when a print ad showed real victims rather than actors playing victims. The use of actors to portray victims must be clearly disclosed in the United States, otherwise the advertiser risks a lawsuit (Shanahan and Hopkins 2007).

3.5. Fear

Warnings and threats have been used for centuries by preachers, teachers, politicians, and advertisers. For example, Doyle, Dane, Bernbach’s 60-second television commercial, “Daisy,” used in the 1964 U.S. presidential election, showed a young girl in a field, plucking petals from a daisy. A voice counted down from ten to zero. The camera zoomed into the girl’s eye. At zero, her pupil showed an image of an exploding mushroom cloud. In a voice-over, President Johnson pleaded: “These are the stakes: to make a world in which all of God’s children can live or to go into the dark. We must either love each other or we must die.” “Vote for President