Persuasive Advertising - J. Scott Armstrong [93]
Children frequently suffer from headaches. Headaches cause wakefulness. Next time your youngster is afflicted with wakefulness, bathe his feet in hot water, using Ivory Soap. By no possible chance will harm follow; it is almost a certainty that good will. But please remember one thing. It is the hot water that soothes the child’s nerves. Ivory Soap adds no medicinal value. No soap does.
Use of witty innuendoes implies competence in your audience and can gain involvement. Example: “Chivas Regal is always twelve years old. Rarely 13.”
Positive innuendoes generally provide a safe way to make claims. However, it is important to have a basis for the implied claim. Consider the widely examined Listerine case. In one ad, two mothers were talking and first one said that her children had colds. The other asked, “What do you do?” The first replied that she made sure they got lots of rest and had a good diet. Then she had them gargle twice a day with Listerine. An announcer said that for fewer colds and milder colds, “more people gargle with Listerine than any other oral antiseptic.” Although there were no false statements in this ad, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission ruled that it was deceptive. Warner-Lambert had to run corrective advertising from 1962 to 1972, explaining that Listerine is not effective against colds. It was difficult to see the benefit of this expensive solution. It might even reduce the placebo effect and that is hardly in the consumers’ interest.2
While the legal standard of proof for innuendoes is not as high as for statements, advertisers that are interested in developing long-term relationships with customers should avoid innuendoes that are likely to lead to incorrect inferences, as this 1960 Volvo ad illustrates: “How long can you expect a Volvo to last? We’re not sure yet how long a Volvo will last in the U.S. In Sweden, Volvos are driven an average of eleven years.” This created a perception that Volvos were dependable. However, this life span was about the same as for American cars. U.S. governmental pressure led Volvo to stop running these ads (Advertising Age, Oct. 23, 1978, p. 66).
Advertisers have long used innuendoes. In a famous 1893 poster ad for the Divan Japonais nightclub in Paris, Toulouse-Lautrec showed the black gloves of an unidentified person. The gloves were the trademark of a famous singer, Yvette Guilbert. She no longer sang there, but that is not what people would infer from the ad.
Innuendoes are still widely used. For example, our WAPB analysis found that of the 480 full-page print ads by leading U.S. firms, 80 percent used positive innuendos.
Evidence on positive innuendos
The following lab experiments show that innuendos affect opinions:
Implied claims were almost as believable as direct claims. Four lab experiments were conducted. In the first, 49 subjects heard ads for 20 familiar products, including ten ads with implied claims and ten with direct claims. For example, both ads started with: “If that lively social life isn’t quite as lively as it used to be, maybe it’s your mouthwash.” The direct claim added: “If you use Scope, the truly different mouthwash, it will keep your friends from avoiding you.” The indirect claim added: “If even your best friends are avoiding you, use Scope, the truly different mouthwash.” Subjects rated the implied claims as being almost as true as the direct claims, 3.8 vs. 4.0 on a 1 to 5 scale. The other three studies used different subjects, different ads, and different media (TV and radio). While the superiority of direct claims persisted across studies, the differences were small (Harris et al. 1980).
Our analysis of quasi-experimental data showed that positive innuendos had a modest effect on persuasion:
Print ads using positive innuendoes had better recall. In our WAPB analysis, we found 45 pairs of print ads in which one ad used positive innuendoes