What Makes Advertising Effective - Essay Example

?What Makes Advertising Effective? Advertisements were created mainly with the intention of attracting the s, so as to make them buy or utilize products, services, etc. Although the general thing is customers may buy the products or utilize the service through their hands and other physical parts, only if the mind of the customer is enticed by the particular product or services, the buying as well as the utilizing process will be initiated. To make the mind of the customer orient towards the product and importantly entice, push them or even ‘seduce’ them to make the buying decision, advertising plays a key role. To achieve that for an organization, the entire marketing department in association with other departments will initiate various marketing strategies. Among the many marketing strategies, advertising occupies a prominent role. “Advertising plays a very important role in the marketing process. It increases the consumption of a particular product or service and reinforces the image of the brands, by continuously raising awareness” (Blurt It). For a successful marketing strategies and importantly to come up with effective advertising campaigns, it is of great importance to first find out and focus on the mental state and the resultant behaviors that will be shown by the prospective customers before they makes the crucial buying decision. So, one of the key aspects of coming up with an effective advertising campaign is understanding these mindsets of the customers. Then, the other key aspects will be the creativity, shock factors and other enticing factors featured in the advertisements. Among these factors, one of the key factors that make advertising not only a roaring success and also makes an in-depth impact on the customers is the emotion aspects featured in the advertisements. So, this paper will discuss the aspects that makes advertising an effective at the same time a successful one, particularly how the incorporation of emotional elements can make the advertisements optimally effective. Advertising is a way of attempting to persuade the audience in order to purchase a certain product or service. It is a way of communicating in order to encourage the audience to continue using or buy a new product or service. It can be a way of informing or reassuring the employees or shareholders of a certain company that it is still feasible and thriving. Advertisers use the mass media including newspapers, television, radio, magazines, or posters in order to reach the intended audience. New ways of advertising include the use of mails, websites, and text messages. “Advertisements appear in many various forms and across all media (new and traditional). They are, basically, short messages inserted into the flow of a broadcast programme, or in a magazine or newspaper.” (MacRury 2009). The pattern of the advertisements will differ according to the purposes and the product or service, which has to be advertised. However, there is a common pattern. This was also pointed out by MacRury (2009) who state Advertisements “invite the audience to consider the advertising proposition (for 30 seconds during the 'break', or as their eyes drift over a story feature towards a half-page photograph) — a commercial 'interlude' to the main media communication — and against the flow of other advertising communications”. One of the basic aspects which will make the advertisements effective is, understanding the targeted customers’ background, particularly the cultural aspects and come up with in ad campaign. Studies “have prioritised the psychological, social and cultural contexts within which consumers relate to commercial information and the roles that marketing media play in their lives” (Aitken, Gray and Lawson 2008). As per these studies, people get influenced by marketing strategies based on their cultural background and hence the consumer is actually the focal point of an advertisement and not the advertisement itself per se. Effective advertising will also include providing all the good product or service details without revealing all the things. Whereas for a new brand the user will have to go through the entire package details relating to rate or usage content and so on. Another significant finding of the research in this field is – “when product usage requires brand-specific skills, the costs of developing such skills inhibit switching between otherwise equivalent brands” (Alba and Hutchinson 1987). The building of brand image and the resultant brand association through advertisements is a multi layered process. In that multilayer, emotion forms a prominent layer helping in the building up and association of brands. That is, all mentally aware humans express emotions in different situations of their lives, because of which they will exhibit or experience various nice feelings from comfortableness to nostalgia. When these nice feelings flow in the mind anything associated with it, including the catalyst of those feelings will get ingrained into the individual’s mind. If these emotions related aspects are incorporated into the advertisements, it can be very effective. Some of the key emotions related aspects will be discussed in the below paragraphs Casting and performance of actor or model An advertisement even though will promote ‘non-living’ products or services; it needs ‘living’ actor or actors to make that emotional connection with the ‘living’ customer. Products or services world over are marketed to reach certain customers or convey certain messages to them. In that case, a person who can do that should be chosen to star, for example David Beckham featuring in Adidas ads with the full Adidas sport gear and wear and playing football convey an emotional message to all the football fans as well as football players that Adidas are a perfect choice for sports wear and gear. However, a person with a science background cannot be the main star for Adidas sport wear in that ad. Even a person’s physical attribute or mental attitude may fit the product aptly and thus make the emotional connection. That is, the individuals will have certain inborn or cultivated physical ability or mental setup, which can be tapped to convey the emotional message. This can be illustrated by a South African commercial that featured a black actor. The advertisement for Men’s clothing store featured a black actor wearing excellent suits. The emotional element in this commercial is that, it came close to the fall of the anti-black apartheid rule in South Africa. Casting a black actor for a commonly used product gave a kind of importance to the majority black population of South Africa, which ingrained a sense of national pride among them. As the voiceover accompanying the commercial spoke about personal and national pride, “Never underestimate me and doubt my pride because I am a man of Africa”, the advertisement instantly made an emotional connection with the customers (Anter 2000). Actors or models are not needed every time to make that emotional connection, real people, animals or even natural elements can be utilized. Actually the emotions of real people in realistic situations in advertisements could also bring out a range of emotions in the customers as well. The MasterCard UK advertisement is the perfect example because it captured the genuine emotion of real people, not actors, reuniting with their loved ones at the arrivals gate of Heathrow and Gatwick airports, to celebrate Christmas holidays (Duncan’s TV Ad land 2006). So, this showed capturing real person is also one of the important cues that can produce an emotion rich, perfect advertisement. A short and crisp emotional story Any advertisement which just conveys information or features about the product without any story connecting them will be an unappealing or boring exercise. A good story is like a bridge which will help the product to ‘enter’ the customer’s mind and also take the needed message or information… with it. Importantly, if the story in the advertisement has an emotional tinge attached to it, it will excite the right areas of the brain and attach the advertisement as well as the product or service to it. An advertisement is said to contain a good emotional story, if it can be explained enthusiastically in a couple of sentences. For example a Cadbury’s Cricket Ad that was telecasted in Indian Television Channels. The Advertisement features a lady who intrudes into the cricket field when her boyfriend hits a sixer to score a century in a cricket match. She jumps onto the field with the chocolate in her hand. A wonderful mix of emotion. (Nirajul 2005). So, a story with emotional elements is important for an advertisement to make that effective emotional connection. Visual Images As mentioned above, advertisements are normally created in various media forms like visual images or videos or audible messages, to ‘attack’ the eye and hears of the customer. Of them, Visual imagery has potentially powerful effects on human psychology and physiology, affecting ideas, perceptions, beliefs, feelings, behaviour and health (Branthwaite 2002). In the visual imagery, the use of apt colours will mainly decide the emotional component of an advertisement. That is, if the right colours are used, the advertisement will connect the product’s main or associated colour to customer’s mindset. “Colours induce moods and emotions, influences consumers’ perceptions and behaviour and help companies position or differentiate from the competition” (Aslam 2006). Also, certain colours in certain countries get stereotyped to give certain meanings. This can been seen in UK as well, “where white is perceived as ‘crap’ and below average, while neutral or beige is perceived as ‘boring and dull’ but expensive and ‘for a mature person’, whereas pink, perceived as ‘look young’ and red, perceived as ‘garish and tacky’”(Kerfoot et al. 2003). Certain colours also tend to get emotionally attached to certain products, due to which sighting or recollecting that colours in advertising context, will set in an emotional outflow, which makes the brand association stronger. For example, when one sights or recollects… the colour red in advertising context, the emotional part of the mind will normally recall Coke and Vodafone, likewise, in the case of blue, Pepsi and IBM will come into the mind. So, the colour mainly focuses on the emotional part of the mind and hooks it to the product, thereby making the advertisements featuring particular colours an effective one. Spoken or written Words Most advertisements telecasted or printed world over try to use visual images to bring out emotions. But, in some cases, spoken or written words will be used with those visual images and also separately in radio and other audio broadcasted advertisements. Spoken as well as written words in respective languages will reach the customer’s mind in a different way and sets in motion the brand association process. That is, there will be situations when just the visual images does not ‘wake up’ the customers to the advertisement being telecasted, in that case loud, bold, emotion filled spoken and written words could effectively reach the customer. And there are two types of spoken or written words which will elicit different responses from the customers. They are Causal indicatives and contrary indicatives. Causal indicatives are words or short phrases (eg: because, since and thanks to), which can work as a catalyst to bring out the emotional response from the customer. On the other hand, contrary indicatives constitutes words (like yet, even though and but), which will create an uncomfortable ‘relationship’ between the customer and the product. Heller and Areni (2004) give examples to explain these two types of communication. The example for perfect casual indicatives is when one talk about cars. The spoken or written words in an advertisement can be arranged like this, “it has great acceleration because it contains the most powerful engine in its class”. (Heller and Areni 2004). “Here the proposition that the automobile contains the most powerful engine in its class, if accepted, provides a basis for believing that it also has great acceleration”. On the other hand, in contrary indicatives, the spoken or written words will be arranged in a different manner, “low in fat, yet made with real butter”. “In this case, the proposition that the spread is made with real butter makes it harder to believe that the product is also low in fat and the indicative ‘yet’ signals this relationship”. (Heller and Areni 2004). So, spoken and written words are the key for emotion connection Conclusion In Advertising, if a product gets the visibility and reaches the mind of the customer, enticing him/her to reach for the Product, it can be called a successful advertising. This ‘reaching’ of the product into the customer’s mind can be achieved successfully, if emotional elements are integrated into it. “Appealing to a novice consumer’s emotional responses may be highly desirable in terms of creating a favourable attitude toward a service brand” (Mattila 1999). As discussed before, the logical elements about the product cannot make the first and the fullest impression on the customer, leaving the job to the emotional elements. And when certain international and domestic advertisements are analyzed, they have shown the importance of emotional connections. Importantly, these emotional connections are made due to the presence of certain cues in advertisements. These cues will emotionally optimize the advertisement and help it to reach the customer’s mind, thereby creating an emotional as well as favorable attitude towards the product and the organization. References Aitken, R, Gray, B and Lawson, R., 2008. Advertising effectiveness from a consumer perspective, International Journal of Advertising, vol. 27, no.2, pp 279-297 Alba, JW and Hutchison, JW., 1987. Dimension of Consumer Expertise, Journal of Consumer Research, vol. 13, pp 411-454 Aslam, M., 2006. Are You Selling the Right Colour? A Cross-cultural Review of Colour as a Marketing Cue, Journal of Marketing Communications, vol. 12, no. 1, pp.15–30. Blurt It. What Is The Role Of Advertising In Marketing? [Online] Available at http://advertising.blurtit.com/q973940.html(Accessed on 22 April 2012) Branthwaite, A 2002, ‘Market Research’, Qualitative Market Research, Vol. 5, No. 3, pp 164-171. Brocklehurst, A., 2005. Writing powerful, pulling sales copy, [Online] Available at http://www.ebook-warehouse.co.uk/b1_sales_copy.htm(Accessed on 22 April 2012) Duncan’s TV Ad land., 2006. MasterCard Come Home with Findlay Brown, [Online] Available at http://www.duncans.tv/2006/mastercard-come-home(Accessed on 22 April 2012) Heller, E and Areni, C., 2004. ‘The effects of conditional indicative language on the comprehension and acceptance of advertising claims’, Journal of Marketing Communications, vol. 10, pp. 229–240. Kerfoot, S., Davies, B. and Ward, P., 2003. ‘Visual merchandising and the creation of discernible retail brands’, International Journal of Distribution and Retail Management, vol.31, no.3, pp. 143–152. MacRury, I., 2009. Advertising, Routledge. Mattila, AS., 1999. ‘Do emotional appeals work for services?’ International Journal of Service Industry Management, vol. 10. no. 3 pp. 292-307. Nirajul, B 2005, Reviews on: Ten Best Television Commercials: AD Fest, [Online] Available at http://www.mouthshut.com/product-reviews/Ten_Best_Television_Commercials- 925042912.html(Accessed on 22 April 2012) Read More