>
> Effectiveness of Media Appeals
>
> The broad question is this: How credible and effective are obvious
> attempts to package and sell products (toothpaste, aspirin,
> presidential candidates) through the mass media? The prima facie
> evidence suggests that they are extremely effective. Why else would
> corporations and political parties spend hundreds of millions of
> dollars a year trumpeting their products? Moreover, as parents, most
> of us have seen our children being seduced by toy commercials that
> artfully depict the most drab toys in an irresistible way. Similarly,
> a child watching cartoons on any Saturday morning is deluged by fast-
> paced ads for cereal, carry-out food, and candy. The aim is to get
> kids to demand that their parents buy them the products they have seen
> in the commercials, and it seems to work. Over 90 percent of preschool
> children asked for toys or food they saw advertised on television,
> according to a survey of their mothers. In fact, almost two-thirds of
> the mothers reported hearing their children sing commercial jingles
> they learned from television, most by the age of three.
>
> Most children do catch on after a time; I've seen my own children,
> after several disappointments, develop a healthy skepticism (alas,
> even a certain degree of cynicism) about the truthfulness of these
> commercials. Indeed, one survey found that only 12 percent of 6th
> graders believed television commercials told the truth all or most of
> the time; by the 10th grade, only 4 percent felt they were truthful
> even most of the time. This kind of skepticism is common among adults
> as well. A public opinion poll showed that the overwhelming majority
> of the adult respondents believed television commercials contain
> untruthful arguments. Moreover, the results indicate that the more
> educated the person, the greater the skepticism, and further, people
> who are skeptical believe their skepticism makes them immune to
> persuasion. This might lead us to conclude that the mere fact of
> knowing that a communicator is biased serves to protect us from being
> influenced by the message. This is not true. Simply because we think
> we are immune to persuasion does not necessarily mean we are immune.
> In the case of many consumer products, the public tends to buy a
> specific brand for no other reason than the fact that it is heavily
> advertised.
>
> Let's look at the headache remedy business. Daryl Bern, a social
> psychologist, provides us with an interesting analysis of our
> susceptibility to television commercials even when we know they are
> biased. According to Bern, a well-known brand of aspirin (which we
> will call "Brand A") advertises itself as 100 percent pure aspirin;
> the commercial goes on to say that government tests have shown that no
> other pain remedy is stronger or more effective than Brand A. What the
> maker didn't bother to mention is that the government test actually
> showed that no brand was any weaker or less effective than any of the
> others. In other words, all tested brands were equal—except in price,
> that is. For the privilege of popping Brand A, consumers must pay
> approximately three times the price of an equally effective but
> unadvertised brand.
>
> Another product proclaims it uses the ingredient "that doctors
> recommend." By reading the label, we discover the "magic" ingredient
> to be good old inexpensive aspirin. Several pharmaceutical companies
> also market "extra strength" varieties of "arthritic pain"
> formulations. You will pay a premium price for these products, but are
> they worth it? Actually, their extra strength comes from extra aspirin
> (or acetaminophen, an aspirin substitute), along with a dose of
> caffeine. Taking additional aspirin would be less expensive, but it
> sounds great in the ads: "Not one, but a combination of medically
> proven ingredients in an extra-strength formula."
>
> Such blatant attempts at mass persuasion seem pitifully obvious. Yet
> the cash registers ring, and tremendous numbers of consumers
> apparently set aside their skepticism even though they know the
> message is an obvious attempt to sell a product. Of course, there may
> be a basic difference between susceptibility to aspirin commercials
> and susceptibility to commercials for presidential candidates. When we
> are dealing with identical or very similar products, mere familiarity
> may make a huge difference. Robert Zajonc has shown that, all other
> things being equal, the more familiar an item is, the more attractive
> it is. Suppose I walk into a grocery store looking for a laundry
> detergent. I go to the detergent section, and I am staggered by the
> wide array of brand names. Because it doesn't matter too much to me
> which one I buy, I may simply reach for the most familiar one—and,
> chances are, it is familiar because I've heard and seen the name on
> television commercials over and over again. If this is the case, then
> sudden increases in television exposure should produce dramatic
> changes in familiarity and, perhaps, in sales. And that seems to be
> the case. For example, several years ago, the Northwest Mutual Life
> Insurance Company conducted a nationwide poll to find out how well the
> public recognized its name. It came out 34th among insurance
> companies. Two weeks later the company repeated the poll. This time it
> came out third in name familiarity. What caused this amazing leap from
> obscurity to fame? Two weeks and $1 million worth of advertising on
> television. Familiarity does not necessarily mean sales, but the two
> are frequently linked—as evidenced by the fact that A & W Root Beer
> boosted its share of the market from 15 percent to 50 percent after 6
> months of television advertising.
>
> But is voting for a presidential candidate the same kind of decision
> as choosing toothpaste or root beer? The answer is a qualified "yes."
> Several years ago, Joseph Crush and his colleagues found that, by and
> large, the congressional candidates who spent the most money typically
> received the most votes. More recently, Michael Pfau and his
> colleagues have shown that spot television commercials are by far the
> most effective determinants of how people vote...
>
> The Social Animal - Elliot Aronson - 8th Edition 1999
>
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0716733129/
>
> Consumer Psychology Primer
>
http://www.wsu.edu/~taflinge/advant.html
>
