Chapter II Literature Review
2.6 Literature Review Conclusions
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audience members than on high-anxiety audience members. Mongeau (1998) explains that this is due to high-anxiety audience members’ inability to cognitively process the solutions recommended by the fear appeal. In addition, fear has a stronger persuasive appeal on older audiences than on younger audiences. Mongeau explains that this may be because many fear appeals, such as those concerning health issues, are more relevant to older audiences.
Mongeau (1998) reaffirms support for the critical components of a fear appeal.
First, the fear appeal must develop the noxiousness or severity of the threat. The audience must feel that the threat, if it occurred, would be harmful. Second, the appeal must prove the probability of the threat’s occurring. Third, the appeal must show efficacy of the recommended coping response and that the audience member can enact a solution.
2.6 Literature Review Conclusions
Advertisers frequently use animals to attract the consumer’s attention, to increase favorable attitude and response toward an ad. Among other issues animals rights protection advertising uses animals to deliver its message to viewers by motivating them. In PETA’s print ads, animals’ images serve as a proof for a persuader’s message.
Unfortunately, Spears and Germain, in their research on green sentiments (2007), didn’t suggest any categorization of print ads via different advertising appeal, and didn’t disuss the creativity and extraordinary ideas in animal protection print ads that are important factors for investigating the effectiveness of said ad and audience attitudes toward the ad.
Two components underlie the attitude of the viewer in PETA’s print PSA ads:
cognition (perceived utility of the advertisement message) and affect (feelings evoked by the advertisement image). This study intends to find out what kind of specific message and image characteristics can have a positive impact on PETA’s print persuasiveness and effectiveness.
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Cognitive models assume rational information processing by the receiver, whereas affect models assume that attitudes can be developed through emotional responses. In the context of social marketing, cognition is particularly important because of the serious nature of the message and the intractability of the beliefs and behaviors being addressed. Assessing the utility of animal protection messages is therefore vital, and evaluations should seek to establish how understandable and worthwhile the campaign is. Message comprehension is a necessary prerequisite, and hence an antecedent to responsible thinking. Similarly, attitude toward the campaign would be expected to facilitate or hinder the mental engagement with the message, and as such would also serve as an antecedent to responsible thinking.
The cognitive response approach also postulates that the learning of one’s own mental responses interacts with other variables, such as one’s personality and the nature of the situation, to produce persuasion. Public service advertising uses some different message presentation images, which make a difference for persuasion in those kinds of ads. There is no personal benefit to the viewer in PSA. Therefore the audience’s attention must be carefully held, too annoying or too sententious persuasion could be perceived as being melodramatic on the part of the advertiser, which may result in misapprhension by viewers. Thus, the goal of PETA’s print PSA is to create an intimate, ongoing relationship with their audience in order to communicate the value of the idea to protect animal rights.
In the viewpoint of William E. Baker and Richard. J. Lutz (1988), the Relevance-Accessibility Model (RAM) for public service advertising is mostly concerned with whether the public accesses the information presented in the ad, whether the information influences public opinion and choices considering the type of information that the public is most likely to use, and the explanation of the way people use this information to facilitate their opinion and judgments.
This PSA study intended discussion of successful information processing, suggestes that nonverbal elements may have their impact in two different ways: they may provide information and great data access (collected during the interviews’
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interpersonal communications), and they may also result in different ways that information is perceived by respondents from the coded images of PETA print advertisements.
Public service advertisements such as animal protection advertisements also seek to create unique, unexpected images for use in their effort to gain the public’s attention.
Thus, author agrees with Kahle and Homer who believe that social adaptation theory provides a useful framework for understanding the influence of surrealistic techniques in advertisements. Social adaptation theory predicts that employing surrealistic techniques should draw attention to the inadequacy of existing schemas, because the information will be perceived as novel and unexpected. This is one of the most important elements in a creativity theory of advertising. The same applies for PETA’s print ads creative approach – in order to get attention, PETA’s ads may appear shocking, surprising, surrealistic, and inadequate of existing schemas. The author suggests these qualities could have an impact on PETA’s PSA effectiveness, although the public interest for animal protection actions is not as high as it could be for any other market product.
Thus, the adapted significance of the celebrity’s image relative to the function of the advertised object would be crucial in determining the effectiveness of the advertisement.
Millions of dollars are spent annually on celebrity endorsement contracts on the premise that source effects play an important role in persuasive communications. PETA hasn’t spent any money on encouraging celebrities to participate in its PSA campaigns.
A source feature is effective only if matched with relevant products (Lynch and Schuler, 1994). So long as consumers have different beliefs regarding social issues and different attitudes toward each celebrity, the same sources of information may have different effects.
Credible sources and sources associated with high levels of expertise are more likely to achieve higher likelihood of elaboration, and consequently, greater attitudinal and behavioral changes. From a social marketing perspective, source attribution raises the issue of whether advertising is an effective tool to increase consumer well-being. If messages are attributed to low-credence sources, they are less likely to affect behavioral
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change, hence failing to achieve the social marketing goals. The individual-centered, hedonistic nature of general commercial advertisements make them incompatible with the values of PSA. State-sponsored social messages are often perceived as propaganda, and hence, are not taken as credible or relevant, which might cause difficulty in the credibility of the Ad message.
The use of affective advertising appeal in order to awake publicity such as sexual, humor and fear appeal, is another risky step taken by PETA’s PSA. Use of sex in types of advertising appeals can have a boomerang effect if it is not used carefully. It can interfere with the actual message of the advertisement and purpose of the product and can also cause lower brand recall. If this is used then it should be an integral part of the product and should not seem vulgar.
Advertisers frequently use humor to communicate with their audience, PETA PSA is not an exclusion. Although findings regarding humor effects are largely inconclusive.
As Alden, Mukherjee, and Hoyer (2000) explained, the quality of humor depends on the degree to which humor differs from viewers’ expected beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors.
Both, humor and fear appeals have a long history of debates between different scholars. This latter point suggests that advertising themes and contents should be chosen for their capacity to create favorable cognitive-based attitudes, and raises doubts about the efficacy of the hard-hitting and fear-inducing approaches often used in PSA campaigns. Thus, the study also intends to find out what level of humor and fear appeals are acceptable by audience and at the same time work well for PETA’s print PSA persuasiveness and effectiveness.
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Chapter III Methodology
In order to examine the viewers insights and thoughts regarding animal protection advertising closely, this study suggests a qualitative research technique into the use of selected PETA’s print ads.
3.1 Qualitative Method
To figure out social media requires a special approach, particularly how to measure it. In the measurement of social advertising, it can be conceived of in terms of engagement, awareness, and intelligence (data collection) instead of as a direct-response play, as when someone does a search for a brand name, a lot of work goes into promoting the brand before someone ever searches for it. Case studies, and a deep understanding of the background and position of the company and whether its offering is appropriate can prepare and convince the advertiser to test public service advertising. Creative and engaging challenges originate from advertisers trying to repurpose existing creative spots, and reuse it for social advertising.
The main reason for using qualitative research in the current study is its exploratory nature that often elicits subjective responses that are not measurable in hard numbers.
Researchers seek qualitative data to form an impression rather than a definition of a market or population group. The intent of qualitative research is to gain insights concerning consumer attitudes, beliefs, motivations and behaviors.
An additional reason for using qualitative research is an idea generation effect that could improve the persuasion power, quality and effectiveness of animal protection advertisements. The current study can also be used as an aid in the development of probable quantitative research.
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The most frequently used qualitative methods in this study are projective techniques that enable people to inject their feelings into otherwise ambiguous stimuli, to talk about their emotions rather than use a rational basis to discuss topics. Projective techniques have their roots in clinical psychology and are based on the projective hypothesis, which proposes that when people attempt to understand an ambiguous or vague stimulus, their interpretation and response to that stimulus reflects a projection of their needs, feelings, attitudes, and experiences.
The chosen technique for the present study is the picture projection technique that involves a series of pictures (PETA’s print advertisements) with coded content, from which respondents are interviewed.
The respondent is handed a set of prints and asked to “read” the images, sharing their impressions, thoughts, or feelings and answering open-ended questions. The respondent is shown pictures (in sequence) with a short introduction. This technique can result in valuable qualitative information on an advertisement’s image and performance.
In order to eliminate the respondents’ interaction with each other, interchange among a group, and group dynamics, the interviews use the depth method, which is natural course. For a better understanding of the respondent’s impression, voice recording is also used. Then participants are debriefed, paid, and dismissed.
In order to achieve the research goals discussed earlier, respondents are instructed to examine subjects in PETA’s prints advertising message and images. According to the research questions, manipulation is used to achieve the results. Manipulation is the introduction of a positive and negative sponsor (or amusing-soft sell, or hard sell) such as humor and fear appeal print ads separated in two sets. The study believes that
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participant’s meaning perspective, but otherwise respects how the participants frame and structure the responses. In-depth interview relies on purposeful conversation with an allowance for immediate follow-up questions and clarifications. Thus, combined with observation, the transcript and interpretation of data allow the author to answer the research questions against facts.3.2.1 Research Framework
Figure 3-1: Research Framework
While conducting the study, the viewers are taken as dependent variable and their
Independent
Content Stimulus: Positive or Negative Sponsor Recall Information
Evaluation
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attitude and preferences outcomes as independent variable. Intervening variables present process effects and stimulus that affect relationship between observed variables.
The viewer variables may include: different cultural environments, different beliefs, knowledge, personal experiences and social settings, different levels of involvement to either the fashion industry, or animal care, non-profit organizations and related issues.
With the exposure of PETA’s print PSA, the attention to advertisement was allocated as the function of viewers motivation, the manipulation of stimulus variables, positive and negative print sponsors, was recorded. In the technical lexicon of advertising, a positive sponsor means soft-selling ads, or in PETA’s study case an ad with a dominant humor appeal combined with lesser sexual appeal. A negative sponsor refers to an ad containing a dominant fear appeal combined with more or less explicit sexual appeal (or the “hard sell”).
The audience ability to recall the information, evaluation of the ad, expressed emotions result in observation of viewers’ favorable or unfavorable attitude toward the ad and the presence or absence of responsible thinking as a part of cognitive response toward the advertised subject.
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3.3 Participants Sampling Procedure
The purposive form of non-probability sampling is chosen to achieve a specific objective to make certain that among the cultural differences there are sufficient numbers of elements were interviewed. Thus the total number of the non-probability public sample consisted of 20 respondents, including 10 Westerners (Americans and Europeans) and 10 Taiwanese of both sexes, and of different ages, and educational backgrounds. According to the age and education background, each respondents’
personal data, which could have an impact on the study results caused by personal experience, involvement and cultural environment, have been noted (refer to Appendix 2). The only other manipulation that has been made is that all respondents were able to speak, listen and read in the English language.
A total of 20 NCCU graduate students and working stuff participated in the interview procedure. Each respondent was granted with 100NTD pay.
Table 3-1: Public Sample
Gender Taiwanese National Foreign National Total
%
Men 25 25 50
Women 25 25 50
Total % 50 50 100
3.4 PETA Print Advertisements Sampling
In the past 20 years (1991-2010), PETA has launched 128 print advertisements presented by a female spokesperson speaking out for animals used in the fashion and clothing industry (the biggest part of fair clothing print ads, the total amount of which includes 169 prints presented by both sexes). For the past 4 years (2007-2010), PETA
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has increased the efforts in fighting the cruel fashion industry by using its own weapon – celebrity female models. Thus, for the years of 2007-2010, the research observes the widest use of celebrity endorsement and sexual appeal in 109 print advertisements printed during that time period, which is a large fraction of the total amount of 128, those were included in the analysis.
Author’s choice of the Skins case study investigation is caused by following reasons. “Skins” involve greater number celebrity endorsements rather than other PETA’s campaign (vegetarianism, animals in entertainment, animals companion). In addition, the author finds it a very effective way to advertise while using celebrities who are actually fashion workers to stand up against cruel fashion.
109 print ads were categorized in 4 sets according to the advertised topic (refer to Appendix 3), coded and analyzed (refer Appendix 4) in order to achieve a match for the representative sample.
3.4.1 Coding Scheme
The coding scheme is developed by the identification of the categories of each set, enumerating the specific dimensions of each category, and measuring each category at the nominal level, and then counting the number of occurrences falling into each dimension.
All of the total 109 print ads have been presented by celebrity spokeswomen. The identification of specific dimensions represents a type of characteristic, the amount of characteristic, or the presence or absence of characteristics.
The classification system includes 9 categories partially developed by author according to the presented print PSA content and based on previous research tradition.
The procedure was applied to 4 sets of PETA print ads:
Top Popularity of Celebrity Endorser – this category is meant to define whether the spokeswoman celebrity is popular all over the world, or only has celebrity status in her locality. The category is based on the rating data of independent chart, celebchart.com, which provides the scale of popularity for each celebrity (“who?” (unknown), “average”
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and “star” (top popularity). The author has modified the category of top popularity to the present or absent dimension.
Use of Sexual Appeal – this category is meant to define the nature of the sexual appeal in each ad. Sexual appeal is rated from “explicit” to “latent”. The “explicit” dimension is based on previous research presented in order of typology in Reichert (2003), “What is Sex in Advertising?". The author uses “latent” dimension in order to investigate opposite meaning of the presented category.
Use of Fear Appeal – this category is meant to define the content of fear appeal. A
“minor” dimension (or “minimal fear appeal” from Janis and Feshbach, 1953; Miller, 1963) means an appearance of only non-dominant verbal and visual elements, such as spoken elements of the message that elicit suitably terrifying emotion produced by a spokesperson, or a non-obvious occurrence of blood spots in the print image. The
“unpleasant” dimension of fear appeal (Boster and Mongeau, 1984) signifies a presence of visibly terrifying elements such as a pool of blood (whether around a model or animal), a representation of a death of a human, or the representation of an animal being skinned alive. The “brutal” dimension of fear appeal (“strong fear appeal” from Janis and Feshbach, 1953; Miller, 1963) signifies the use of overly bloody images with both humans and animals covered in blood, and strongly disgusting image elements of dead animal being skinned alive.
Use of Humor Appeal – this category is meant to define the content of humor appeal.
Appeal is rated from “amusing” (Sternthal and Craig, 1973) to “latent” (used by author as an opposite meaning of the presented category).
Message characteristic – this category is meant to define the message characteristics of an ad with both fear and humor appeal by characterizing it as either “educative” (or
“informative” from Ogilvy, 1983) or “amusing” (Sternthal and Craig, 1973). An
“educative” dimension in this category means such facts as the numbers of killed animals, killing methods, the amount of pain the animal senses etc. are presented. An
“amusing” dimension in this category means a joke, or some phrase that has a sense of humor is presented.
Dominant Tone of Non-verbal Communication – this category defines the types of
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different gestures and poses taken by a spokeswomen. The “enticing” (Reichert, 2003) gestures, poses could be defined by arousal or the suggestion of initiating sexual contact.
The “ultimative” gestures, poses taken by a spokesperson present her strong disagreement and show the public her ability to prove her point of view. The author applied dimension of ultimative tone of non-verbal communication by the reason of the PSA content specificity. The “warmth” gestures, poses suggest the dimension of warmth (Aaker and Bruzzone, 1981; Edell and Burke, 1987; Wells, Leavitt and McConville, 1971) by presenting friendliness and caring (such as smiling, hugging an animal or a toy, etc.).
Type of dress – this category defines whether the spokeswoman is not dressed (“nudity”) is wearing revealing clothing designed to increase sexual appeal (“revealing”), or is Bruzzone, 1981; Edell and Burke, 1987; Wells, Leavitt and McConville, 1971) such as cute animals, or fluffy toys etc. or “unpleasant” (Boster and Mongeau, 1984) such as skinned animals, or hung toys, etc.
Spokesperson Skin highlight – this category is meant to define the creative match of the
Spokesperson Skin highlight – this category is meant to define the creative match of the