Persuasive Advertising - J. Scott Armstrong [79]
5.2. Perspectives
Monk 1: “I asked the Abbot if I could smoke while I prayed, and he said no.”
Monk 2: “That’s odd. I asked him if I could pray while I smoked, and he said yes.”
Perspective refers to the way in which a product or offer is viewed. It involves considering different ways to say the same thing. A glass of water can be described as being half-empty or half-full. The research literature refers to this concept as “framing.”
Perspectives can be done with words or with illustrations. They are especially effective if tied to people’s common ways of thinking, as shown by the illustration. The background leads you to develop a story, say of a large angry monster with an angry facial expression chasing a small frightened animal. As you can tell from close inspection the size and facial expressions of the two animals are identical in this Monster Chase.1
There are many ways to present a product in a way that enhances it.
5.2.1. Present an offer from a new perspective
A 1964 Volkswagen print ad by Bernbach showed a picture of a car with the headline, “$1.02 a pound.” The copy said: “A new Volkswagen costs $1,595. But that isn’t as cheap as it sounds. Pound for pound, a VW costs more than practically any car you can name.” The copy described all of the steps involved to justify the high cost per pound. It closed with, “It’s something to think about. Particularly if you haven’t bought a Volkswagen because you thought they didn’t cost enough.”
When an offer is presented, it might look similar to an offer that many customers have rejected in the past. So an automatic response takes over. By presenting the offer in a new manner, however, an ad might be able to bypass the automatic rejection. Convincing customers to look at a product from a new perspective can be persuasive.
Ricoh applied a new perspective when it ran a two-page ad for a duplicating machine: The first page read “Would you tolerate an employee who’s anti-social, temperamental, abuses power, wastes office supplies, antagonizes other employees, requires professional help, and makes a habit of taking unscheduled vacations?” The next page read, “Then fire your copy machine.”
In 1996, Kellogg proposed to introduce Nutri-Grain™ as a healthy alternative to candy snacks. Its advertising agency had a better idea, and suggested launching Nutri-Grain as “breakfast on the go.” This strategy avoided associating Nutri-Grain with unhealthy snack foods, while reminding people that it was unhealthy to skip breakfast. This reframing of Nutri-Grain from “snack” to “breakfast” was successful, and Kellogg won an IPA Advertising Effectiveness award (Broadbent 2000).
The Save the Children Fund in the United Kingdom used a new perspective when it developed the “Skip a lunch and save a life” campaign in 1991. By skipping a lunch and donating the money, someone could feed a family in Africa for a week. The investment of $300,000 for the campaign produced donations of almost $10 million, and won an IPA effectiveness award (Baker 1993).
People often become accustomed to paying a certain amount for a product. For example, let’s say people are used to paying about $30 for books. There are many ways to frame this transaction. A customer purchasing a book might state, “I want a book for entertainment,” “for my job,” or “for a gift.” This indicates which features and benefits the customer might use to evaluate the alternatives at the moment. A seller may attempt to draw different features into the customer’s frame of reference. For example, when a buyer searches for a book related to their career, a seller might frame the price of the book as more complete in its coverage or easier to use, and thus more cost-effective in the long run. The book you are reading now, for example, contains 194 advertising principles. The price will appear as a bargain if the customer thinks about the price per principle, each of which can yield substantial returns.
Evidence on the