The Role of the Advertising Agency in the Cultural Message Content of Advertisements: A Comparison of the Middle East and the United States

ABSTRACT

This study compared responses of advertising agencies located in the Middle East and the United States to an email survey examining their approach in designing advertisements. The survey examined whether the advertising agency incorporated area-specific cultural values and advertising appeals in the execution of their advertisements. Results indicate that indeed advertising agencies do use, or at least report to use, different cultural values and advertising appeals. Advertising agencies in the Middle East tend to focus more on filial obedience, customs and traditions, loyalty to one's group, honor, and patience. In addition, agencies in the Middle East reported that they tended to portray women in a more modest fashion than their counterparts in the United States.     

Social Cause versus Profit Oriented Advertisements

Abstract

A common theme in social marketing research has been that for a social cause message to be effective and encourage behavioral change it must be perceived as different from other advertising messages. This article evaluated over 500 magazine print advertisements via content analysis to reveal social cause versus profit oriented advertisements. Upon identification of these two advertisement types, further analysis explored information content and emotional appeal strategies. The results significantly indicate that social cause advertisements elicited more emotional appeals than profit oriented advertisements, while profit oriented advertisements conveyed more information content. Specifically, profit oriented advertisements contained more information regarding price, quality, performance, content, availability, offers, packaging, guarantees, company research, new ideas and taste than social cause advertisements. In comparison, only safety, research, and nutritional information were revealed more frequently with social cause than profit oriented advertisements. Social cause advertisements evoked more fear, anger, sadness, disgust, interest, and surprise. Profit oriented advertisements were deemed more pleasant and happier.     

Processing Anti-smoking Ads among College Students: The Role of Emotional Response and Level of Smoking

ABSTRACT

The protection motivation model has contributed usefully to researchers’ understanding of fear appeals in advertising. However, the empirical evidence reported to date in the literature has been mixed. An overview of literature reveals that the effect of emotional response and personal difference has not been explored as often as fear in health care marketing. The present study focused on this emotion in a context of antismoking advertisements. Based on the protection motivation theory, a modified structural model was proposed including emotional response and personal difference. Model was tested using college students in United States and Korea.     

Observing viewers’ self-reported and neurophysiological responses to message appeal in social media advertisements

PurposeMarketing research mainly uses self-reported method to record respondents' perceptions of creativity, and while self-reported method has its own merits, there exists some critique, particularly in terms of its ability to adequately capture the influence of message appeal on creativity. This paper studies how viewers’ responses to message appeals in social media advertisement compare in terms of self-reported responses versus responses taken through a neurophysiological method of Electroencephalograph (EEG).MethodologyTwo social media advertisements are displayed through a laboratory experiment to 17 subjects observing the subjects' neurophysiological reactions as well as their self-reported responses with regard to the commercials’ emotional, informational, and brand-related content.FindingsResults show that neurophysiological method offers unique details about emotional appeal, which the self-reported method fails to reflect. Furthermore, the neurophysiological measure identifies differences across the two target commercials in the emotional content part, which again are not identified through the self-reported method.OriginalityThis paper advances advertising research in social media literature by comparing content evaluation within advertisement through neurophysiological and self-reported measure. These findings have implications for marketers to use and measure message appeals in advertisement on social media to influence consumer response.     

Promoting Giving Campaigns in University Websites: A Cross-cultural Comparison between the United States and South Korea

ABSTRACT

This study was designed to compare the ways the websites promote giving campaigns between the United States and South Korea. Furthermore, this study explored how the campaign appeals are associated with the distinct cultural values between universities in the United States and Korea. Guided by a content analysis of 200 universities in the United States and South Korea, the findings of this study demonstrated that, compared to the Korean university websites, U.S. university websites more frequently targeted university-affiliated donors, including alumni, students, parents, and so forth, and used multimedia-based exemplars about the giving campaigns.     

Is sexy better than funny? Disentangling the persuasive effects of pleasure and arousal across sex and humour appeals

Although it is well known that sex and humour can help sell products, hardly any research has examined whether there is something particular about sexual advertisements that makes them more persuasive than other appeals. The present research proposed an empirically robust way to test the persuasiveness of different emotional appeals (sex, humour, control) by matching them on pleasure and arousal levels. Two experiments (N = 162; N = 301) examined the combined persuasive effects of different levels of pleasure (moderate, high) and arousal (moderate, high) for sexual and nonsexual appeals. Study 1 used a 3 (appeal: sexual, humorous, control) × 2 (pleasure level: moderate, high) between-subjects design. Study 2 employed a 2 (appeal: sexual, control) × 2 (arousal level: moderate, high) × 2 (pleasure level: moderate, high) design. The main dependent measures were attitudes towards the ad, attitudes towards the brand, and purchase intentions. The results showed that highly pleasant ads increased persuasion regardless of arousal and content, and that sexual appeals outperformed nonsexual appeals only under conditions of moderate pleasure and high arousal.     

Marketing in an Electronic Age. Buzzell,Robert D. (Ed.). Boston,MA: Harvard Business School Press, 1985. 404 Pp. $32.50

Abstract

American and Japanese print ads were content analyzed to examine how advertising expression and content differed in the two cultures. The degree of emotional appeals, informativeness, and comparativeness of advertising were the dimensions studied. As hypothesized, Japanese ads were evaluated as more emotional and less comparative than American ads. In contrast to a priori notions, Japanese ads were found to contain at least as many information cues as American ads.     

Effects of Consumer Weight Level and Advertising Appeals on Consumer Attitude Toward Food and Advertisements

This study examines the link between consumer weight level, food type, and consumer attitude toward both food and food advertisements. Further, this research explores how food advertisements containing emotional or informational claims influence the attitudes of overweight and normal-weight consumers. Two experiments were conducted to study the interaction between weight levels, food types (meat vs. vegetables), and advertising appeals (emotional vs. informational). The results showed mixed support for the six hypotheses. The findings indicate that consumer weight level interacts with food types, and emotional/information appeals affecting food evaluation and attitudes toward food advertisements. Managerial implications for food manufacturers and advertisers are discussed.     

From elicitation to consumption: assessing the longitudinal effectiveness of negative emotional appeals in social marketing

Abstract

Negative emotional appeals are used frequently in social marketing. Focusing on guilt and fear appeals, existing theories fail to explain emotional appeal effectiveness in changing consumption behaviour over time. To address this limitation, an elicitation–consumption framework is developed for fear and guilt appeal use. An agenda for further research, outlining three research questions and four propositions, is also presented. This framework integrates the study of how emotional appeals are communicated with how they are experienced during decision-making; complementing current theorising by offering a framework for experimental testing of the delayed, longitudinal effects of social marketing campaigns. The elicitation–consumption framework aids practitioners seeking to design effective emotional appeals by encouraging an effects-based communication approach.     

Hope across the seas: the role of emotions and risk propensity in medical tourism advertising

Rising US medical costs as well as more competition in the health care industry have led many Americans to pursue health care in foreign destinations. As a result, leading countries in medical tourism have begun launching international advertising campaigns. A growing trend in much of this advertising is the use of emotional appeals. The purpose of this research is to examine whether the use of emotional appeals by non-domestic health care providers contributes to more favourable evaluations of the target health care provider than rational appeals. Specifically, two experimental studies investigate the efficacy of advertisements that induce the emotion of hope to determine whether these advertisements increase trust perceptions and reduce perceived risk, given an individual's level of risk propensity. Implications for public policy makers and marketing managers who work in health care are discussed.     

A content analysis of television food advertising to children: comparing low and general‐nutrition food

Television food advertisements targeted at children were content analysed. Data were collected on four major children's cable television channels in the United States aired during the hours of 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. over the period of 23 August to 5 September 2012. Based on the Elaboration Likelihood Model of persuasion, the study identified a variety of persuasive appeals with central and peripheral cues in the child‐targeted food commercials. Further, it investigated how the central and peripheral cues in the appeals were differently associated with low‐nutrition and general‐nutrition food commercials. Overall, the findings showed that general‐nutrition food commercials used persuasive appeals with central cues more frequently than low‐nutrition food commercials. Theoretical, practical and regulatory implications are discussed.     

Informational/Transformational Appeals in Political Advertising: An Analysis of the Advertising Strategies of 2010 U.S. Gubernatorial Campaigns

This study addressed four gaps in political advertising research: (a) a better framework to replace the issue–image dichotomy, (b) differences in advertising strategies between incumbents and challengers, (c) influence of party positioning on candidate positioning in advertising, and (d) political advertising in state elections. Through a content analysis of 210 advertisements from the 2010 U.S. gubernatorial elections, it was revealed that (a) the concept of information/transformation was similar to the notion of issue/image, and the typology of informational/transformational advertising, after modification, adequately captured the complexity of political advertising; (b) the use of advertising appeals did differ between incumbents and challengers—incumbents used more transformational appeals and positive advertisements, whereas challengers used more informational appeals and negative advertisements; and (c) while the informational advertisements of the Republican candidates appeared to be substantially impacted by issues owned by their party, the influence of party positioning on candidate positioning was quite limited.     

The moderating role of construal level on the evaluation of emotional appeal vs. cognitive appeal advertisements

This article proposes that construal level moderates consumer evaluation of different appeals (emotional vs. cognitive appeals) in advertisements. Low-level construal is associated with close psychological distance; this condition implies that people with low-level construal can feel an emotion more intensely than those with high-level construal. Consequently, consumers with low-level construal could positively relate with the emotional appeal ad, and they would evaluate an ad with emotional appeal more favorably than an ad with cognitive appeal. However, this effect does not occur among consumers who construe information at high-level, due to the fact that they are able to focus on the central and positive features of different appeals.     

Taking Advantage of a Vulnerable Group? Emotional Cues in Ads Targeting Parents

Parents of small children regularly face challenges that are new to them, creating uncertainties and stress that complicate their decision‐making processes. In this vulnerable state, parents may be susceptible to emotional appeals in advertisements in ways that influence their knowledge formation, food choices, and perceptions of self. In this study, we use a combination of content analysis and interviews to examine the use of emotional appeals, particularly guilt and fear, in food ads and how parents respond to them. We find that guilt is more frequently used in ads that target parents than has been shown for other audiences, and that parents often express negative self‐images and coping strategies when viewing them.     

Analysis of Information Content in U.S. and Japanese Magazine Advertising

Abstract

The content of Japanese versus U.S. magazine advertisements is assessed to determine relative levels of information content based on the type of magazine, the kind of information, the product represented in the advertisement and the size of the advertisement. It was found that Japanese magazine advertisements were generally more informative than U.S. ads, although the emphasis on specific content varies cross-culturally.     

It's Not Black and White: Advertising and Race in Cultural Context

ABSTRACT

Studies in the United States have found that matching an advertising model's race to the target audience is an effective marketing strategy. However, race is a cultural construct and little research has been conducted on race and advertising effectiveness outside of the United States. This study, conducted with female consumers in Brazil, found that advertisements were not more effective when the subject and the model were of the same race. To better understand the psychological processes triggered by race, this study explored two related but distinct conditions of identification: similarity and liking. It found that in conditions of boundary permeability between groups, liking is more important than similarity in determining advertising effectiveness in the target sample. A general model is proposed.     

William L. Rivers and William T. Slater,Aspen Handbook on the Media,Aspen Institute Program on Communications and Society,Palo Alto,California, 1975, 182 pp.

Abstract

A study of the use of humor in U.S. and U.K. television advertising was developed by surveying ad agency executives in the two countries and then by conducting a content analysis of television commercials. The survey of executives revealed a more accepting attitude toward the use of humor, and a broader view of the potential uses of humor among the British agencies. The content analysis showed a significant increase in the use of humor in the U.S. since the last major benchmark study, but less humor than in the U.K. sample of advertising. An examination of the content analysis data using the Foote, Cone and Belding (FCB) planning matrix revealed a situational use of humor in both countries, with humor most often used with low involvement/ feeling products and least often used with high involvement/feeling and thinking products. For the most part, the views of agency executives reflect the incidence and use of humor in their respective countries.     

Cultural Meaning,Advertising, and National Culture: A Four-Country Study

Cultural meaning transfer theory and GLOBE dimensions were employed in this comparative study to examine the extent to which cultural meaning presented in advertisements reflected national cultures of the target countries. Content analysis was applied to advertisements from four countries to investigate whether the use of advertising appeals presented in these advertisements mirrored variations in cultures as described by GLOBE Society Values. Results revealed that, in line with the hypotheses, there were similarities and differences in the use of appeals, and only some of them mirrored the cultural variations. GLOBE Society Values were more likely to predict the use of appeals than GLOBE Society Practices, but not for all appeals. Advertisers can draw on national cultures for cultural meanings to be used in advertisements only to a limited extent. It may be that advertisements mold rather than mirror societal values, or that only certain cultural traits are important for advertisers.