That was a great commercial, but what were they selling?: Effects of violence and sex on memory for products in televisioncommercials

College students (N = 324) watched a television program containing violence, sex, or no violence or sex. Each program contained 3 violent ads, 3 sexual ads, and 3 neutral ads. Participants were less likely to remember the advertised brands when the ads were embedded in a violent or sexual program than when the ads were embedded in a neutral program. Violent ads were the least memorable. This memory impairment occurred for both males and females, regardless of the content of the ads. If advertisers want viewers to remember advertised brands, they should think twice about sponsoring programs containing violence and sex. © 2007 Copyright the Authors; Journal compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing, Inc

Objectification of women in advertising in Sri Lanka

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to explore the perception of Sri Lankan female consumers towards the objectification of women in advertising and what are their ideas about brands that practice objectification. Design/methodology/approach: The study follows an inductive approach and applies a qualitative research design. Semi-structured interviews were used for data collection. Findings: Findings have shown that Sri Lankan female consumers perceive the objectification of women in advertising as “a practice of portraying women in advertisements in a way that their social and personal value as women is undermined”. Even though there is a negative brand image, people still tend to purchase the product if it provides substantial value for their money. Originality: Previous findings on the use of female sexual objectification in advertising have been mixed and inconsistent. A social shift in society, with the presence of sexually objectifying advertisements, has created a need to understand consumer attitudes towards brands that make use of these advertisements in the current landscape in Sri Lanka. Implications: The study informs policymakers on how to implement appropriate policies and strategies to deal with panic buying situations. Retailers can use this expertise to effectively address the various demand conditions without disrupting their internal business practices

Controversial advert perceptions in SNS advertising: the role of ethical judgement and religious commitment

This study attempts to advance knowledge in the area of controversial advertising by examining the antecedents and consequences of controversial advert perceptions in the context of social media, and particularly social networking sites (SNS). Specifically, we explore how ethical judgement and religious commitment shape controversial advert perceptions leading to attitudes towards the advert, brand attitudes and purchase intentions. Our results indicate that when a SNS advert is judged to be ethically acceptable, the level of perceived advert controversy is lower. However, the impact of ethical judgement on controversial advert perceptions becomes significant and positive when intra-personal commitment and inter-personal religious commitment are introduced as moderators. This result implies that the level of religious commitment changes the ethical judgement - controversial advert perceptions relationship. The results also highlight that controversial advert perceptions negatively influence attitude toward the advert. The study contributes to the limited knowledge on controversial advertising on SNS, yielding significant and relevant implications for academics and advertisers alike, in their effort to improve advertising effectiveness without offending or alienating target audiences

Are you ready for some ... sex, violence, and gender stereotypes?: a content analysis of Monday Night Football commercials and programming promotions

This study examined the content of 200 commercials from the 2004 season of Monday Night Football documenting sexual content, violence, and gender role stereotypes. The data revealed that despite the fact that men appeared twice as often as women, women were more likely to be stereotyped than men. About one quarter of the commercials contained sexual content and about one-fifth contained violence. Beer ads were more sexual than other ads but were not significantly more violent than other ads. There was no clear pattern of variance in the amount of sexual and violent commercials across quarters. Programming commercials were far more sexual and violent than other commercials and were most likely to appear last in the pod. These findings have relevance for recency effects of ad recall as well as social learning theory and gender schema theory. The present data indicate a decline in sexual content, violence, and gender stereotypes compared to previous television advertising studies. Possible reasons for the decline include recent political and social pressure and increased female viewership of NFL games. Despite apparent declines in sexual and violent content, this study alerts us to lingering concerns about commercial content, and raises the possibility that the networks themselves may be the worst offenders

Brand personality and sexuality levels of luxury advertisements

This study examined perceived brand attractiveness of and identification with fashion luxury brands given different levels of sexuality in advertisements. Sex in advertisements has become increasingly more common to generate attention and interest in fashion luxury products with limited research on its influence on the consumer. A sample of 1266 males and females completed a survey on brand attractiveness and identification after examining an advertisement of a luxury fashion product. Participants were assigned an advertisement that featured a same-gendered model at one of four levels of sexuality (fully clothed to nude). The results indicated less sexuality in luxury advertisements was better in generating attractiveness to and identification with the brand. These findings are important to scholars and marketers of luxury brands

Consumer reactions to nudity in print advertising: Comparing same-gender and opposite-gender effects

YesIt is often assumed that exposure to nude stimuli in advertising influences consumer behavior positively. However, the empirical evidence concerning the effects of nudity on consumer reactions is inconclusive. The goal of this study is to disentangle the effects of opposite-gender and same-gender nudity on female and male consumers' reactions. This study, thereby, offers a framework for the appropriate choice of seminude or fully clothed human stimuli based on advertisers' objectives and consumer–model gender interactions. The empirical data were derived from a large-scale market research initiative from Germany with 61,399 consumer evaluations of 147 real ads from 16 product categories. Female consumers show positive same-gender results for both seminude and fully clothed female models, indicating strong homophily, but nonsignificant opposite-gender effects on information search, positive attitude change, integration of brand into consideration set, and purchase intentions. In contrast, male consumers demonstrate a significantly positive and equally strong influence of opposite-gender and same-gender seminude stimuli on all of the four variables

Advertising business model strategy to increase consumers' brand recognition : an exploratory study testing the benefits of a quiz structure, applying incentives and targeting ads

Atualmente, existe uma saturação do mercado publicitário devido aos novos meios de baixo custo. A sociedade tem acesso a ferramentas para ignorar ou evitar publicidade, nomeadamente, bloquear anúncios na internet, e passar à frente anúncios na TV. O principal objetivo deste projeto é a criação de estratégias publicitárias com o intuito de aumentar a atenção dos consumidores e, consequentemente, o reconhecimento da marca. Este modelo foi construído de forma a testar, os benefícios de uma estrutura quiz, incentivos e anúncios com targeting, de acordo com género, idade e ocupação. O presente trabalho é, de natureza descritiva e, quanto à profundidade, exploratório. Procura-se um primeiro conhecimento empírico da aceitação do modelo imaginado, através dos dados recolhidos que identificam caraterísticas e dimensões da problemática, oferecendo, no final, uma visão mais completa e clara. O desenho metodológico incluiu um simulador de quiz, associado a um inquérito por questionário, capaz de mostrar anúncios publicitários para testar a atenção de 160 participantes, e um inquérito, fundamentado na Teoria de Comportamento Planeado, para recolher a sua opinião. Após um mês, um novo questionário foi aplicado com o objetivo de avaliar o reconhecimento da marca pelos consumidores. Através do desempenho dos participantes, este estudo concluiu que a estrutura de quiz tem influência positiva na atenção e no reconhecimento da marca. Os participantes demostraram uma atitude positiva face à experiência, o que é promissor para a criação de um modelo de negócio com base nesta estratégia de publicidade. Efetivamente destacaram que seria mais fácil a sua aceitação, caso se implementasse em smartphones e se se usasse incentivos.Advertising has now cheap methods to promote products which are leading to market saturation. Nowadays, society has tools to ignore or avoid advertising, giving consumers the ability to block ads from the internet, and fast-forwarding commercials in TV. The main goal for this project was to create a business model strategy to increase consumers’ attention and consequently, brand recognition. This model was constructed to test the benefits of strategies such the implementation of a quiz structure, incentives and targeting ads, according to gender, age and occupation This research has a descriptive nature and follows and presents an exploratory study, using quantitative instruments to collect data. These instruments consisted in a quiz simulator, associated to a questionnaire, showing commercial videos, in order to test users’ attention, along with a survey, grounded in the Theory of Planned Behavior, to assess participants’ opinion. After one month, another questionnaire tested participants’ memory, with the goal of assessing consumers’ brand recognition. Results evaluated participants’ performances, influenced by each strategy, individually and combined. From participants’ performances, this research concluded that a quiz structure helps users focus on the ad and improves their brand recognition. Furthermore, incentives and targeted ads have different influence over each demographic variable, and behave different when combined with each other. From feedback, participants demonstrated a positive attitude towards the business model and highlighted that this model would be more easily accepted, implementing it in smartphones and using a reward system along with targeted ads

The Representation of Gender in Contemporary Chinese Television Advertising: An Analysis of Content, Meaning, and Production

This thesis examines how gender is portrayed in Chinese television commercials and how these representations reflect the social and cultural contexts of their production and the institutional practices of advertising production personnel. To date, while there have been a plethora of studies on gender representation in advertising in western contexts only limited attention has been given to Chinese advertising portrayals of gender. This study, therefore, explores particular ways in which femininity and masculinity are discursively constructed, and how this process, in turn, contributes to reinforcing and/or challenging certain gender ideologies, in particular those found in Chinese Confucian culture. The study is unique in its approach to Chinese television advertising in that it combines methods from textual analysis (quantitative content analysis, semiotic analysis and critical discourse analysis) and empirical research (interview). A sample of 679 television commercials was collected and analysed in this investigation. Content analysis was initially applied to identify recurrent patterns and characteristics of gender representation which, in turn, formed the basis for in-depth semiotic and discourse analysis. Specific signs, images, codes, discourses and myths were subsequently discussed. The study also included semi-structured interviews with 26 Chinese advertising personnel in order to understand their multiple dispositions toward gender and their actual experiences of depicting female and male characters in the creative process. Several main findings emerged from this study. The portrayal of gender in Chinese television commercials is complex because it embodies a series of simultaneously conflicting and complementary discourses on what constitute femininity and masculinity. The results of the content analysis revealed that the representation of gender in this study’s sample still remains stereotypical in terms of the different distribution of the sexes across product category, role, dress, age, credibility and voice-over. By focusing on the constructs of gender in domestic, occupational and recreational contexts, the use of semiotic and discourse analysis revealed that Chinese television advertising not only portrays women and men in line with the significant aspects embedded in both Chinese and western patriarchal traditions, but is also constitutive of cultural shifts in gender ideologies through highlighting modern (western) values. In addition, the interview findings yielded support for the conclusions of textual analysis, demonstrating that the process of advertising production is significantly influenced by traditional and modern gender values, the restriction of advertising regulations, client expectations, and the professionals’ divergent perceptions of gender and their assumptions about the audience

The effectiveness of the length of commercials in different types of television programs

The effectiveness of television advertising has been most extensively investigated with two variables, moods-generated by television programs and the length of commercials. However, scant attention has been paid to determining these variables together and investigating the interaction between them in influencing advertising effectiveness. This study hypothesized that longer ads would be more effective than their shorter counterparts and that ads placed in a positive mood program would be more effective than those embedded in a negative program. To examine these hypotheses, this study conducted a 2X2 factorial-designed experiment. The data for this study were analyzed using a two-way analysis of variance (ANOVA). This study included two independent variables, commercial-length formats (15-second and 30-second) and program-induced moods (positive and negative). The dependent variable was advertising effectiveness measured by brand recall, brand recognition, attitude toward ad (Aad), and purchase intention (PI). Consistent with previous research, the length of commercials was positively associated with advertising effectiveness regardless of moods-generated by television programs. In terms of context-induced mood, however, the findings were not as significant as that of commercial length. The ANOVA analyses found significant mood effects from an individual measure of attitude toward ad where the ad placed in the positive television context was found to be more effective than those in the negative-mood condition. For other variables, the findings were not significant, and they were somewhat contradictory. Similarly, interaction effects were only found in individual ad and brand. However, this study failed to detect significant interaction effects in overall evaluations. Based on the findings of this study, it can be concluded that commercial length effects are more salient in affecting ad performance than effects generated by program context. Nonetheless, considering two significant interactions and several near-significant interactions, more empirical research should follow to gain a better understanding of the effects of context-induced mood and commercial length on television advertising