The unwritten rule of effective advertising involves creating ads that motion to people's emotions, these appeals can be broadly categorized into fear, sex, humor, music, rationality, emotions and scarcity. These appeals are something that are experienced by every person universally, regardless of race, financial stance or intelligence.Think back to an advertisement that you can remember, what motion did it have? chances are it fit into one of the "magic 7" appeals, possibly even using a aggregate of the appeals. Needless to say the thriving advertisement is not only the one you remember, but the one you remember in a positive light. thriving marketers are able to originate advertisements customers conveniently recall in memory... And we all know positive attitudes lead to positive behaviors, such as consumers buying your product! Below is a guide to using the appeals, highlighting both positive and negative consequences related with using the advertising appeals.
Fear Appeal - The first advertising motion and possibly the most effective to date, is the advertising motion of fear. Fear is an emotion that has existed as long as intelligible life has walked the Earth. Fear advertising concentrates on emotional responses from customers to a perceived threat, typically severity and vulnerability. An example of a fear motion would be an advertisement for a "web hosting" company focusing on the severity of downtime experienced on the site and the customers vulnerability of losing company due to downtime. The Good - Fear appeals tend to be very persuasive and are great for capturing peoples attention, such as an eye-catching advertisement of an injured car crash victim due to drink diving. The Bad - hard to gauge how much fear to use, too much and you can scare citizen away from your ads and too little fear and nobody will consideration your ad.
Buffet Displays
Sex Appeal - another universal aspect of being human, sex has been used for years by marketers to capture concentration of the sexes. The use of sex can be subliminal, sexually suggestive, nudity or sensuality, ever consideration how most citizen that appear in ads tend to be attractive? An example of sexual advertising is with the America's Next Top Model Tv series, which has ads showing the girls in sexually suggestive clothes to lure in male viewers to watch episodes. The Good - Sex is proven to cut straight through clutter, if your advertising in a busy time-slot using sex appeals will help your ad get noticed, this helps growth brand recognition The Bad - Sex appeals can be arresting and may cause negative reactions with distinct cultures (non-western) and sex appeals are so prevalent nowadays that they no longer carry the Wow-factor they once did.
Humor Appeal - every person loves to laugh and most citizen have negative attitudes towards advertising but positive reactions to humor, a buyer watching a humorous ad laughs, tells citizen the joke and remembers this greatly helps marketers. There are many memorable Tv ads that use humor to promote their brands, the John West Salmon ad where a man fights a bear for salmon effectively leverages the humor motion The Good - Humor is one of the best methods for cutting straight through advertising clutter as funny ads are more literally noticed by the increasingly time-scarce consumer, humor gets attention, stays in peoples memories and typically win awards The Bad - it is foremost that the joke does not overpower the brand or its related motto, if citizen remember the joke but not the brand this is not effective. Advertisers must also be culturally aware as what is funny in one culture may be obnoxious in another.
Music motion - Music is something that every person enjoys, music is something that is both personal and causes citizen to recall moments that are both good and bad in their life. Music helps capture attentions and link to the consumers emotions. An example of music motion is soft drink company 7Up using the song 'sunshine' by the Partridge family, this helped resonate the message to their target market. The Good - using a well known song can bring back positive nostalgic memories in consumers causing them to have positive attitudes towards your brand, music's intrusive nature means that citizen can still be attracted to the ad even if they are avoiding ads in general. The Bad - positive music can cause negative reactions in consumers if they recapitulate to bad memories in the past.
Rationality Appeal - The rationality motion relies on consumers actively processing the data presented in the ad, this motion is typically used in print media due to the consumers having more time set aside to read the advertising in this medium. Typically rational appeals focus on the practical, functional or utilitarian needs of consumers. Rational appeals are typically used in advertising drugs or wholesome lifestyle products like Vitamins, such as modern ads by pharmaceutical company Swisse which used Australian Cricket captain Ricky Ponting who asserted the personel vitamins to motion to knowledgeable consumers. The Good - rationality is great for high-involvement products and for B2B advertising The Bad - the rational motion must be credible as false claims can cause negative brand attitudes.
Scarcity Appeal - Scarcity is based on limitations, typically this is in the form of little time to buy or little supply. Scarcity is often used with fear appeals, to help empower customers by missing out on a inherent immediately negative event. Australian advertisers use scarcity motion in cricket memorabilia advertising, by contribution The Good - scarcity is great for encouraging users to take action, and is often effectively used with other promotions like coupons, sweepstakes and contests The Bad - scarcity appeals must be genuine or consumers will harbor negative attitudes towards your brand.
Emotional Appeal - arresting to the emotions of consumers is an effective technique for capturing concentration and fostering attachments for a buyer to your brand, it is commonly more effective to merge on positive emotions like happiness, joy, trust and love. Typical industries that use emotions in their advertising copy are banks and assurance agencies who often town on optimistic emotions like happiness and joy in an effort to reconcile commonly held stereotypes of these industries as corporate mega powers. The Good - emotional appeals merge with nearly every motion very effectively, can be the key to building up brand loyalty amongst buyer base The Bad - emotional appeals must match the target store and current Pr history of the company, consumers are increasingly aware of advertising messages.
In summary, the seven appeals of advertising are beneficial to understand when in the beginning stages of creating an advertisement either it be online or offline, building your advertisement colse to a given aggregate of appeals acts as a good beginning point. Some tried and tested combination's of advertising appeals includes the aggregate of fear and rationality (typically used in anti-smoking advertising), and the use of music and emotion commonly are a good basis for any advertisement. In the end the appeals should be taken into consideration with other factors, namely your organizational marketing objectives, media strategy, target store make-up and brand strategy. If for example your club is a local newspaper that caters to a demographic of 40 and above, and its finding to heighten its brand loyalty by expressing its concern and care for the local community, a emotional or rational motion would be most accepted in helping you reach your marketing objective of brand loyalty with your target market.
Guide to Advertising Appeals - The 7 Ad Appeals Explained