Advertising Agency-client Attitudes Towards Ethical Issues in Political Advertising

Political advertising has long been a target for criticism regarding unethical behaviour. This study looks at the attitudes of Australian advertising agency executives and politicians towards ethical issues relating to political advertising. A sample of 101 advertising agency executives and 46 federal politicians were compared and some attitudinal differences were found, which could be areas of tension in the agency-client relationship.     

Political Advertising and the Older Electorate

An experimental study involving samples of young and old voters examines whether older people are more susceptible to various types of political advertisements (positive versus negative and ambiguous versus clear) than are their younger counterparts. Our results extend research from cognitive psychology into political advertising and confirm age-related differences that favor younger people. The results are mixed regarding the persuasive impact of political advertisements. Specifically, younger people actually show greater attitudinal vulnerability and the oldest voters show the greatest behavioral vulnerability.     

Political Advertising and the Broadcast Media

Politicians, broadcasters and advertising practitioners have shown concern over problems associated with political advertising. These problems include allocated time to political advertising in the broadcast media, content of political advertising and cost of political advertising through the broadcast media. Previous discussion of these problems has focused on one or two problem areas with limited discussion of proposed solutions. This article integrates positions on these problem areas and provides an overivew of proposed solutions.     

Recall of Information from Political Advertising

Abstract

Televised political commercials have frequently been criticized for stressing idealized image characteristics of the candidates rather than issues. Content analyses of political advertising, however, have shown that these commercials generally contain both image and issue material. Given both types of content are present in political ads, this study was designed to determine what people recall from these ads in a natural environment. A telephone study during the last week of a gubernatorial election revealed that the amount of free recall exhibited was greater for information from a preferred candidate's commercials than from his opponent's. However, one-third of the respondents were unable to recall anything from either candidates' political commercials. Recall was more highly related to attitude variables than most demographic variables or total television exposure.     

Selective Exposure and Retention of Political Advertising

This article examines the relative roles of “selective exposure” to and “selective retention” of political advertising during the 1972 presidential election. Data was gathered in two regionally diverse metropolitan areas, Philadelphia and Atlanta. Philadelphia indicated greater general exposure to mass media political advertising while Atlantans were more inclined to recall specific advertisements. In general, a medium rated high for advertising exposure mentions will be rated low on selective retention of message, and vice versa. The authors conclude that because of selective exposure and retention, political advertising may only be effective in reinforcing political beliefs rather than in the conversion of voters.     

Political Campaign Advertising: Believe It or Not

SUMMARY

The extent that political advertising in elections is believed by voters' is an important issue for public policy, political marketing, and marketing in general. Much effort and funding is devoted to communicating with voters' during elections via advertising. This study examined political advertising believability and three potential antecedents of believability during an election. The data were gathered via a random sample of voters immediately following an election and the results indicate that believability is influenced by a voters' involvement, perceived control and satisfaction and that party preference plays a key role in believability of competing campaigns.     

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.     

Young People's Attitudes Towards British Political Advertising: Nurturing or Impeding Voter Engagement?

SUMMARY

This article presents findings from a national survey of ‘potential’ first time voters at the 2001 British General Election–specifically their attitudes towards the print advertising used by the main political parties during this election. In analysing the data, the authors were particularly interested in examining the claim that political advertising contributes to a sense of malaise–most acutely apparent among young people. While we found high levels of claimed advertising awareness, this was coupled with largely unfavourable attitudes towards most of the print advertising used in the election. Despite these judgements, most young people considered the advertising to be at least as persuasive as its commercial cousins. Not surprisingly the evidence provides a mixed picture in terms of the role political advertising plays in the political dispositions of young people. As a familiar discourse advertising offers the political classes an entry point to establish a dialogue with young sections of the electorate. However, for many young people, political advertising appears to help reinforce their predilection about politics being something one naturally distrusts.     

Advertising Facts and Advertising Illusions

The concept of low involvement has attracted considerable interest, particularly over the last ten years, but its implications f or advertising (strategy, execution and research) are still not clear. This paper reviews the low-involvement literature and attempts to define what is meant by the concept, predict when low involvement is likely to occur and identify its key determinants. The paper then reviews and assesses what the literature has to say about the specific implications for advertising strategy in high- and low-involvement situations and concludes that the potential and power of advertising in low-involvement situations have been misunderstood and underestimated.     

“限广令”后的中国广告业猜想

2011年11月28日,广电总局下发《〈广播电视广告播出管理办法〉的补充规定》,决定自2012年1月1日起,全国各电视台播出电视剧时,每集电视剧中间不得再以任何形式插播广告。本文基于这项规定,探讨今后中国广告的发展趋势,提出了六大变化猜想,并阐述这些变化对不同主体带来的多赢可能性的假设。     

广告需求的变化与广告服务的转型

中国广告业应该如何发展？怎样面对中国自己的问题？中国是后发展的国家，在融入全球化过程当中，有很多问题、很多竞争是在同一个时间出现的。虽然中国广告业不是很成熟，但是最复杂的环境、最复杂的竞争在中国广告业还没有长大的时候已经出现了。在这种背景下会出现共识性迷失。我经常举芙蓉姐姐的例子，     

Offensive Advertising

Abstract

Prior literature regarding offensive advertising relates mainly to western cultures. No work has been done on this area in an Asian context. The research in this article reports on a survey of Singaporean consumers. The survey aimed to identify what types of products and appeals consumers find offensive in advertising, the reasons why they find the advertisements offensive, and how this offensive advertising may affect their purchase intentions. The results found that advertisements relating to chat-line services and sexual diseases were the most offensive, followed by advertisements for dating services. Levels of offensiveness were clearly related to demographic variables such as gender and age. In terms of reasons for offensiveness, consumers were most concerned by advertisements that had a sexual connotation or evoked unnecessary fear.Levels of offensiveness also affected purchase intentions. Based on the results, the article recommends that advertisers and their agencies should think more carefully about the demographic profile of their audiences, how this profile might impact their audiences ?sensitivity“ to potentially offensive advertising, and how this sensitivity should be used as a guide when making media and message decisions     

Advertising Myopia

This article points out a firm's advantages in promoting the generic product rather than the brand. Promoting the generic product—generic advertising—can lengthen the product's life cycle, increase per capita consumption of the product and expand the size of the market for the product. The authors discuss the types of situations in which generic advertising is used, and the reason that it is not used more extensively. They present a viable solution to this dilemma.