Advertising and Humour

The primary objective of this paper is to postulate a tripartite division of jokes according to three major incongruity-resolution mechanisms underlying their incremental development, and to review the existing models of joke interpretation in the light of the joke categories advanced here. Most of these well-entrenched frameworks, as will be shown, fail to capture all the three mechanisms of jokes. In the garden-path mechanism, the incongruous punchline evokes a concealed sense of the preceding text, bringing to light its initially covert ambiguity. The hearer cancels the first effortlessly made (default/salient) interpretation in order to prioritise another, compatible with the import of the punchline. Secondly, the red-light joke ends with a surprising punchline which neither proves the setup ambiguous nor invalidates any earlier inferences but brings unexpectedly incongruous piece of information, which is then rendered congruent with the first part of the text. Thirdly, the distinguishing feature of the crossroads category is that it is already the setup that includes the focal incongruity, entailing incomprehensible premises which surpass absurdity typical of many jokes. Consequently, the hearer cannot successfully complete the comprehension process of the setup until the punchline (frequently also incongruous) is introduced, after which any incongruity is resolved.

This article presents findings from research investigating the effectiveness of humor appeals (humor relatedness and humor mechanisms) to Indonesian millennials for predicting their attitudes toward printed ads and their purchase intentions. In total, 543 Indonesian millennials participated in three experimental studies to test the relationship between humor appeals and the need for cognition to predict their attitudes and intentions. It was found that humor appeals were effective in predicting millennials’ attitudes toward printed ads and their purchase intentions. However, the need for cognition did not significantly influence the relationship. Indonesian millennials were more likely to not engage in thinking processes when evaluating humorous ads, which may be influenced by their characteristics and cultural backgrounds.

Online advertising has become a very popular and cost effective communication tool for marketers. However, humour banner advertising has never received attention from the researchers. We develop a conceptual framework of how consumers perceive humour banner advertising. When online consumers are not actively looking for a product and exposed to banners involuntarily, they try to minimise their cognitive efforts and process peripheral cues of the advertising message rather than the message content. Thus, they form preliminary attitudes toward the banner and the advertised brand based on the favourability of peripheral cues. As humour represents a strong executional cue and is the perfect attention-grabbing tool with a low-involved audience, in general, humour banner advertising is likely to be more effective in an online environment than non-humour banner advertising. We also discuss how content relevance between an advertised brand and the website, an individual's need for cognition and the type of consumer online behaviour moderate the effectiveness of humour banner advertising. An extensive literature review is used to identify the research findings that support our conceptual framework.

According to the cognitive approach to humour, the understanding of jokes implies the recognition of an incongruity followed by its resolution. Through our work, we aim to contribute to this strand of research by investigating the link between cognitive processes and the understanding of humour. In particular, we will explore the distinction between the three different types of contrariety (global, intermediate and additive) that has emerged from the research on the psychology of perception and is characterised by different perceptual evidence, and how it applies to the concept of incongruity. We will also discuss what a reading of humorous incongruity in terms of perceptual patterns may add to previous definitions of incongruity and how it helps to contribute to the further operationalisation thereof.

The use of humor has become common practice in advertising; yet our knowledge about its impact has not been updated since the last major review almost twenty years ago. In the interim, a great deal of humor research has been conducted. The outcome of this research only partially supports earlier conclusions and highlights the need to apply humor with care. Humor is by no means a guarantee of better ads, but its effect can be enhanced with careful consideration of the objectives one seeks to achieve as well as the audience, situation, and type of humor.

This paper raises a proposed cross-cultural examination of online advertising effectiveness in China and the UK setting against the background of globalization and the widespread usage of online business communication. Different from previous studies, such specific indexes of Hofstede's cultural dimensions as individualism/collectivism, uncertainty avoidance, power distance, masculinity/femininity and long-term orientation which behind the hidden relationships between culture and online advertising effectiveness are suggested to be explored and revealed in the present study based on three measurements including attitudes towards banner ads, ability to recall banner ads and frequency of clicking banner ads. Moreover, the discourse analysis is also advised to be conducted at the same time to evaluate the role of culture in banner advertisement. In this way, the marketers will be enlightened by this study when formulating their online advertising strategies.

Purpose of the article The issue of creating advertising that is culturally congruent has been considered to be very important to experts dedicated to the field in the past years. Culture is an important internal factor of customer behavior that needs to be fully considered if the advertising campaigns aim to address its target audience effectively. The goal of this article is to contribute to existing knowledge in the area of culturally congruent advertising. More specifically, to find out what advertising appeals are preferred in Slovak television advertising. Methodology/methods Main scientific method of the present research was conceptual content analysis. The results are based on the sample of 133 TV commercials broadcasted in Slovak televisions during the 2012 in selected four segments (beer, financial services, periodicals and non-alcoholic beverages). Scientific aim Aim of this contribution is the introduction of preferences and frequency of usage of advertising appeals used...

Purpose What happens when an ad parody is created with subtle, professional changes to text and imagery, making it almost indistinguishable from the original corporate brand ad? This paper labels this limiting condition of ad parodies as hijacked advertising. Can viewers of such ads recognize whether the ad is hijacked or not? Also, what are the effects of using the dimensions of disparaging humor and offensiveness, commonly used in hijacked ads, on attitudes toward the brands in these ads and a propensity to engage in negative word-of-mouth (WOM) behavior? Results show that ad hijacking recognition moderates the effect of disparaging humor and offensiveness dimensions in hijacked ads on the dependent variables, with adverse attitudes toward the brand and increased intentions to engage in negative WOM behavior only when consumers can recognize that a hijacked ad is indeed hijacked. Further, the moderating effect of ad hijacking recognition on the dependent variables is attributable ...

In international communication, adaptation of messages to the audience’s values has been prominently studied. In advertising, a meta-analysis of experimental studies showed that ads with culturally adapted value appeals are generally more persuasive and better liked than ads with culturally unadapted value appeals. This general effect was not observed for studies with Western Europeans. One explanation may be that these studies did not examine individualism–collectivism, whereas adaptation to this dimension has been shown to be very successful. In this article, this explanation was tested. Six experiments were conducted in which participants from Belgium, the UK or the Netherlands judged an ad with an adapted, individualistic appeal or with an unadapted, collectivistic appeal. The experiments and a subsequent meta-analysis indicate that Western Europeans are not more persuaded by the culturally adapted than by the culturally unadapted value appeals based on individualism–collectivis...

One of the sources of relief, entertainment and socialisation during the Covid pandemic lockdown was the massive exchange of memes on social media and messaging applications. The objective of this chapter is to analyse and categorise 150 Peninsular Spanish memes collected from different interactive channels online (mainly social media and the messaging app WhatsApp) during the strict 2020 Covid lockdown in Spain (March-May 2020). The sample was then analysed under "incongruity-resolution theory" and categorized with the following research questions in mind: (a) what inferential strategies the internet user is expected to perform to interpret these Covid memes correctly; (b) what role text and image play in the eventual derivation of humorous effects from these memes; and (c) what kind of contextual information the internet user is expected to have access to for successful comprehension. Answering these research questions will eventually allow for a differentiation between Covid memes and non-Covid ones, as already intuitively felt by most users.

This study compares the relative effectiveness in the use of culturally incongruent cues in informational and transformational advertising. A case study was done to explore the extent to which ethnic/ culturally incongruent cues are used in advertising in informational and transformational advertising and to compare the effectiveness of these ads between the two advertising forms. The study sought to address two questions: (1) To what extent are ethnic/culturally incongruent cues used in informational or transformational advertising? and (2): Is the use of culturally incongruent cues more effective for informational or transformational ads? A content analysis approach was used to extract social media data from YouTube for this study. The advertisements used to compare the effectiveness of informational and transformational ads were selected from AdWeek’s top 10 most watched YouTube videos of 2013. Nvivo 10 was used to capture the commercial and comments to be analyzed as part of the...

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to gain understanding of how young consumers with varying cultural and linguistic backgrounds experience and perceive humorous Business English lingua franca (BELF) mediated communication used in transit contexts.Design/methodology/approachFor the collection of qualitative data, the present study relies on focus group discussions in three European countries. The data were analyzed by the authors by applying the phenomenographic approach as a method.FindingsYoung European consumers expressed a preference for humor and playfulness in BELF-mediated communication, yet they can be a challenging group to be informed and entertained with humorous BELF communication, as they differ in their taste of humor due to varying language- and culture-based identities. However, BELF as a communication tool was seen as functional and unproblematic by the informants. These informants perceive the role of resonant – wit type of humor in BELF – messages with noncultura...

Many studies have sought to understand the functional impact of humor in advertising, psychology, and communication. Doctors and other healthcare providers may use humor to treat mental health conditions and for easing stress. This is because humor acts as a tonic in reducing anxiety and resolving conflict. Because of similar benefits, humor is a suitable message medium in advertising. This research specifically examines the relationships among product types, female depictions and humor in its broad use in advertising. The objective is to identify compelling, contemporary and humorous female depictions in advertising. Further, it is to conceptualize how humor can be used to successfully classify a product as fitting into one of the four categories of the product color matrix. The results can offer an idealization for marketing managers and consumers to help them understand how female role depictions can be effectively used with humor in ads. The four propositions developed herein are derived from related literature, through the identification of marketing strategy formulations that achieve product memory enhancement by adopting humor mechanisms properly matched with female role depictions.

Humor is a commonly used communication tool in advertising in the United States, but U.S. marketers know little about its use and effectiveness in foreign markets. Such limited knowledge hinders international managers' ability to determine which aspects of humorous communications are likely to be amenable to global standardization and which should be adapted to local expectations. The authors examine the content of humorous television advertising from four national cultures: Korea, Germany, Thailand, and the United States. Findings indicate that humorous communications from such diverse national cultures share certain universal cognitive structures underlying the message. However, the specific content of humorous advertising is likely to be variable across national cultures along major normative dimensions such as collectivism-individualism. H UMOR is one of the most widely employed message techniques in modem American advertising. Indeed, several of the most memorable American television advertising campaigns (e.g., "Bud Light" and "Joe Isuzu") have incorporated humor as a central component of their communication approach. Given the widespread use of humor by the advertising industry, academic researchers in the United States have sought to identify potential benefits (e.g., reduced

The English language is increasingly used in non-English speaking countries. This paper focuses on attitudes towards the use of English advertising in Indonesia with the aim to analyze the effect of using English to advertise products on Indonesian consumers. This paper reviews the findings of literature in marketing research. The purpose of advertisers’ use of English language is to appeal to consumers, to attract their attention and to stimulate them to learn more about advertised products. The findings proceed in the following manner that English as symbolic value is affecting the purchase intention because the use of English language in advertising is to improve the image of the product that associated with sophisticated and cosmopolitan products. The paper’s analysis has implications for advertising for middle class consumers in Indonesia. The impact of English as prestigious language associated with high status, modernity and sophistication can bring an effect to consumers’ at...

This paper raises a proposed cross-cultural examination of online advertising effectiveness in China and the UK setting against the background of globalization and the widespread usage of online business communication. Different from previous studies, such specific indexes of Hofstede's cultural dimensions as individualism/collectivism, uncertainty avoidance, power distance, masculinity/femininity and long-term orientation which behind the hidden relationships between culture and online advertising effectiveness are suggested to be explored and revealed in the present study based on three measurements including attitudes towards banner ads, ability to recall banner ads and frequency of clicking banner ads. Moreover, the discourse analysis is also advised to be conducted at the same time to evaluate the role of culture in banner advertisement. In this way, the marketers will be enlightened by this study when formulating their online advertising strategies.

INTRODUCTION
The success of a company organization in the present, cutthroat marketplace depends on how efficient its advertising is. For this reason, the majority of multinational corporations, as well as local businesses extensively, invest in marketing their products (Luo et al., 2009). The majority of businesses employed a variety of advertising appeals to draw in their target demographic, typically using sex appeal, humor, romanticism, and adventure to entice customers and capture the largest market share. The majority of the time, marketers employed sex appeal advertisements to attract clients out of all types of appeal in advertising. There is a marketing maxim that goes, "Sex Sell." According to this maxim, marketers feel that including sex in advertisements makes it simple to grab consumers' attention ( Sameer,2018). The basic goal of advertising is to get attention from consumers at any cost, and it has the potential to affect their purchasing decisions. If the advertisement is interesting to the consumer then there is a high chance that the consumer will buy the product or the consumer will have a preference over the other products (Mughal et al., 2018).
The main goal of this study is to determine whether or not sex appeal in advertising aids businesses in influencing customer purchasing decisions. Organizations have been exploiting sex to promote their products or brands since the late 1960s, and this has become the standard style of advertising in western culture (Sameer, 2018). For the purposes of this study, "sex" refers to the utilization of both men and women in various sexual circumstances or a state of sexual pose to pique the curiosity of potential clients.
It can be difficult to get consumers' attention through commercials in a way that will affect and result in beneficial behavior for businesses. Consumers are always being bombarded with stimuli and noise, so finding a way to communicate the information that a business needs to get over to the market has required innovative approaches. The unconscious mind in people pushes and stimulates people to act in specific ways, hence utilizing sexual elements in advertisements might draw greater attention from consumers, according to Freud's psychoanalytic theory. Provocative language and sexual urges are frequently used in advertisements for a variety of products, including Calvin Klein and the perfume Obsession. Such appeals have become more prevalent in commercials during the past few decades (Mager & Helgeson, 2011; Reichert & Carpenter, 2004). To make items and brands more appealing to consumers and to affect their behavior, advertisers purposefully sexualize them in commercials (Hermannsdóttir & Gunnarsdóttir 2015). Nudity in sex appeals advertisements has been the subject of contentious debate in recent years regarding its use in product/brand promotion. Marketers must consider the cultural beliefs, customs, norms, and religious values of a particular society when designing advertising campaigns because these factors are crucial in determining how customers behave in society. If they are not taken into consideration, an organization risk consequences like a boycott of their goods in that society (Al-Hyari, 2012). Numerous studies have looked at how sexual attraction in commercials affects customer behavior. The purpose of this study is to determine whether consumers' attitudes regarding sexual material or their viewpoints when it comes to advertisements have altered in northern Ghana.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to perform a preliminary examination of informational and transformational advertising appeals in contemporary advertisements for healthy and unhealthy foods. Design/methodology/approach Western (European) food advertisements published in Belgian food magazines were content analyzed to identify informational and transformational advertising appeals. Belgian food advertising was selected as an adequate representation of Western (European) food advertising because marketing in Belgium is permeated by international influences (cf. Belgian Federal Government). Advertisements were sampled from three magazines over a period of five years, from January 2009 to December 2013. The sample comprised 325 unique advertisements, including 159 for healthy foods and 166 for unhealthy foods. Findings The results of the content analysis indicated that healthy food advertisements in Belgium are mainly informational, whereas unhealthy food advertisements are mainly ...

Surrounded by staggering world-wide economic crisis and country specific financial burden, Turkish consumers feel pinched and marketers face the challenge to find a way to attract their attention to make them buy what they provide. In tough times, is humor the remedy for marketers? This paper aims to find an answer to this question and it examines the impact of humor in advertising. Alongside its advantages, humor also carries certain risks: will the viewer be bored after a few exposures; will it create an unexpected offense on the viewer? The paper investigates the views of various marketing experts on use of humor in marketing communication as to understand if such an approach will work with special focus given to the “psyche” of the population during a period of economic uncertainty and value consciousness. With the aims stated, the researchers conducted a series of expert interviews with marketing professionals, academicians and psychologists. Additionally, a focus group with se...

Surrounded by staggering world-wide economic crisis and country specific financial burden, Turkish consumers feel pinched and marketers face the challenge to find a way to attract their attention to make them buy what they provide. In tough times, is humor the remedy for marketers? This paper aims to find an answer to this question and it examines the impact of humor in advertising. Alongside its advantages, humor also carries certain risks: will the viewer be bored after a few exposures; will it create an unexpected offense on the viewer? The paper investigates the views of various marketing experts on use of humor in marketing communication as to understand if such an approach will work with special focus given to the “psyche” of the population during a period of economic uncertainty and value consciousness. With the aims stated, the researchers conducted a series of expert interviews with marketing professionals, academicians and psychologists. Additionally, a focus group with se...

Kirkmann (2008: 1) defines jokes as "short, necessarily punchlined humorous (tacitly contemporary) items in the form of narrative, riddle, advertisement, pun or other formula, etc". With the intent of being humorous, a joke can be seen as a short story or ironic depiction of a situation. In order to have a humorous sense, jokes will normally have a punchline which leaves them with that humorous taste. jokes can be a statement or a single phrase, that employs sarcasm (Ibid: 3). This study deals with the pragmatic aspect of Arabic jokes. In other word, we are trying to find out the pragmatic structure of Arabic jokes. For the purpose of our study we have selected three Arabic jokes to be the case of our analysis. In order to achieve our goal, we have taken Grice"s maxims, Speech acts theory and kinds of implicature as a model of analysis of the selected data. Therefore, by applying our modal, we can deduce whether Grice"s maxims, speech acts theory and kinds of implicature can be utilized in a similar or different way in the act of joking.

This article presents findings from research investigating the effectiveness of humor appeals (humor relatedness and humor mechanisms) to Indonesian millennials for predicting their attitudes toward printed ads and their purchase intentions. In total, 543 Indonesian millennials participated in three experimental studies to test the relationship between humor appeals and the need for cognition to predict their attitudes and intentions. It was found that humor appeals were effective in predicting millennials’ attitudes toward printed ads and their purchase intentions. However, the need for cognition did not significantly influence the relationship. Indonesian millennials were more likely to not engage in thinking processes when evaluating humorous ads, which may be influenced by their characteristics and cultural backgrounds.

The aim of this research is humor consumption and its extensive use in today’s advertising. One of the most prominent features of humor is its convictive nature. A humorous context may increase liking for the source at the same time creating a positive mood. Humor does serve to make the audience laugh, make the viewers happy and create positive mood. In general, humor itself has a permanent presence and a specific role in advertising. However, it should be underlined that humor should be used carefully in advertisements; otherwise it may result in resistance. Using humor is regarded as a win-win situation. While in some cases humor usage depends on the product or brand advertised. In some cases humor is considered not appropriate if attached with some products and particular occasions. Results show correlation effect and in fact humor related Ads found as much more effective than those without humor and this effect is apparent, when it comes to highly complex and sophisticated humor...

This study was carried out to find out the impacts of comic factor in TV advertisement on buying behavior of college and university students. Questionnaire was designed and used to gauge the effects of comedy in advertisements. Sample size was 120 and it was comprised of university business students (Preston University Islamabad, International Islamic University Islamabad and Qauid-e-Azam University Islamabad). Data Analysis provided coefficient of determination R square value as 0.576. With significant Alpha figure of all variables, F value was 26.907 at 0.01 level. Outcomes revealed that comedy in TV advertisement convinces the consumer’s attention, interest, desire and action (AIDA) to buy the product. Objective of the study was achieved as it was found out that comic factor in TV ads affect the attention, interest, desire and action and hence buying behavior of students. Results also revealed that buying behavior of students due to comic factor in TV ads is gender free.

Evidence of the universal value of humor appears in its widespread use as a communication device. Despite frequent appearances in advertising, within and across national contexts, researchers tend to treat humor as a culture-bound phenomenon, without offering universal theories or frameworks for exploring the use of humor-based ad appeals in cross-cultural advertising. This article undertakes a systematic review and synthesis of literature on humor in cross-cultural advertising to produce a research taxonomy (7Cs). On the basis of this taxonomy, the authors suggest a research framework which highlights the need to focus on cultural values rather than country differences, consideration of alternative research methods, careful assessment of measurement equivalence issues, and the inclusion of both cognitive and affective models of Ad effectiveness. A set of research propositions is developed to guide further research on humor in cross-cultural advertising.

This paper focuses on the comparison of sense of humour and attitudes to humour in a peer group of 10-11 year-olds. It surveys children with normal intellectual abilities and children with mild intellectual disability (mild ID). The SHQ-6 questionnaire and a set of cartoons were used as research tools. Although children with mild ID regard humourists as irritating and they feel uncomfortable in situations where someone jokes, they generally laugh more. Does it mean they understand jokes better, if they laugh more?

This study assesses the impact of employee use of jokes embedded in face-to-face conversations with customers. Our main finding-derived from experiments in which employee use of jokes was manipulated-was that jokes reduced customer satisfaction. This reduction occurred regardless if jokes was related or unrelated to the employee's overall message. Our results also indicate that the use of jokes had a negative impact on perceived message relevance, and that perceived relevance mediated the link between employee use of jokes and customer satisfaction. In addition, our results show that no joke usage versus joke usage did not produce different emotional responses. This suggests that the impact of jokes on affect is attenuated when jokes are embedded in conversational content.

This study investigated the effects of programme context on memory for humorous television advertisements in South Korean participants. Humorous and non-humorous Korean advertisements were embedded within two programme contexts; humorous and nonhumorous. When the programme ratings of humour, enjoyment and involvement were higher, unaided recall was poorer. In addition, unaided recall of the advertisements was better when they were embedded within a non-humorous programme. However, there was no significant programme-advertisement interaction effect. Overall, both free and cued-recall were higher for humorous advertisements than for the non-humorous advertisements. The findings are 1 discussed in terms of cultural differences and changes in television programmes and advertising over time.

A study was undertaken to assess how culture might impact online behaviour and communication preferences. Specifically, motivations for going online and visual versus verbal processing preferences were assessed across the US and Korean respondents. Other general relevant variables were also measured such as access to computers, time spent online and online purchase behaviours. Results indicate that access to computers and the internet are high for both consumer groups and very similar. The same can be said for time spent online. However, the US citizens are more likely to be motivated to shop online and look for information online than Korean consumers. In contrast, Korean consumers are more motivated than the US consumers to head online to fulfil social goals such as making friends, meeting people and participating in newsgroups. With respect to communication style preferences, US citizens are found to have stronger preferences for verbal styles in comparison to the Korean respondents. Implications for advertisers and researchers are discussed.

This article responds to calls for further research on ethical issues in advertising. The study examines whether advertising strategies which use female-disparaging themes are perceived as ethical, and what effect this has on ad and brand attitudes. It also examines whether or not humour assuages ethical evaluations of female-disparaging ads. The findings from an experimental research design, which included 336 British respondents, show that nondisparaging and non-humorous ads are considered to be the most ethical, while disparaging ads (regardless of the level of humour) are considered the least ethical. Across the board, female-disparaging ads are not perceived as ethical; however, high benevolent sexists appear to favour them most. Finally, an ad's perceived ethicality mediates the relationship between ad disparagement and ad attitudes; likewise, an ad's perceived ethicality and ad attitudes mediate the relationship between an ad's female disparagement and brand attitudes. Femaledisparaging ads should be avoided given that they are perceived as less ethical and given the impact that advertising has on behaviour, as well as on societal and moral values. Advertisers should also avoid using female-disparaging advertising themes, even light-hearted ones, since they constitute a risky strategy for the ad and the brand as they can backfire and alienate consumers.

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ocial scientists regard the U.S. and the Republic of Korea as countries with opposing cultural values. Given this contrast, the advertising of each culture is expected to differ. An examination of magazine advertising indicates that American ads strongly express the individualistic culture; however, the Korean ads not only express collectivistic ideas but individualistic ones as well. Although this phenomenon is not entirely surprising given the strength ofWestern influence, Korean individualistic messages are different from American individualistic messages. This suggests that expressions of individualism in ads blend with the elements of each culture to produce uniquely different messages ..

This article responds to calls for further research on ethical issues in advertising. The study examines whether advertising strategies which use female-disparaging themes are perceived as ethical, and what effect this has on ad and brand attitudes. It also examines whether or not humour assuages ethical evaluations of female-disparaging ads. The findings from an experimental research design, which included 336 British respondents, show that nondisparaging and non-humorous ads are considered to be the most ethical, while disparaging ads (regardless of the level of humour) are considered the least ethical. Across the board, female-disparaging ads are not perceived as ethical; however, high benevolent sexists appear to favour them most. Finally, an ad's perceived ethicality mediates the relationship between ad disparagement and ad attitudes; likewise, an ad's perceived ethicality and ad attitudes mediate the relationship between an ad's female disparagement and brand attitudes. Femaledisparaging ads should be avoided given that they are perceived as less ethical and given the impact that advertising has on behaviour, as well as on societal and moral values. Advertisers should also avoid using female-disparaging advertising themes, even light-hearted ones, since they constitute a risky strategy for the ad and the brand as they can backfire and alienate consumers.

Several authors have proposed frameworks to help advertisers predict and plan advertising effectiveness. Rossiter and Percy's advertising grid (1997) recommends that the ad appeal should match the purchase motivation or attitude base. They suggest that for utilitarian brands informational advertising is more effective than transformational advertising. Likewise, for hedonic brands transformational advertising is more effective than informational advertising. These recommendations were tested in an experiment with different products and different ads. Advertising effectiveness was measured by brand and ad evaluations.In contrast with Rossiter and Percy, we find that advertising that mismatches rather than matches the motivation for the brand is more effective. Our finding can be explained in two ways. Firstly, schema theory suggests that a moderate degree of incongruity between advertising and brand perceptions and unexpected but relevant information in the mismatching ad results...

In recent years, Thailand videos advertising is generally known as the leading producer of weep-worthy viral videos in the world. Reasons for Thailand advertisements to stand out from the rest is said to be because of its commonly used advertising appeals, and cultural values focused in majority of Thailand advertisements. This research aims to study advertising appeals and cultural values in Thailand video advertisements. Specifically, the research investigates the reflection of cultural value through advertising appeal through the executional framework in Thailand video advertisements. This exploratory research employs primarily the method of ethnography in order to understand how cultural values are reflected through the advertising appeals in video advertisements from Thailand. The result shows that the most commonly used advertising appeal are Family Appeal, followed by Health Appeal and Effective Appeal. In terms of cultural values, the result shows the Thailand’s advertisemen...

This paper reviews advertising studies on China published in 13 advertising, marketing, and business journals during the decade after joining the World Trade Organization (WTO) (2002-2011). Since its WTO entry, China's advertising industry (including regulatory environment and advertising practices) has fundamentally changed, turning it into the world's fastest-growing advertising market and the country with the largest pool of netizens. We adopt the "glocalization" framework to selectively highlight five themes in our review: (1) diversified/shifting cultural values, (2) language and brand names, (3) acceptable/offensive advertising, (4) media growth and control, and (5) agency management. Our discussion follows Taylor's (2005) suggested agenda for international advertising research and focuses on the implications for academic researchers and advertising professionals that these papers collectively provide. In the transitional market in China, insights from pa...

ocial scientists regard the U.S. and the Republic of Korea as countries with opposing cultural values. Given this contrast, the advertising of each culture is expected to differ. An examination of magazine advertising indicates that American ads strongly express the individualistic culture; however, the Korean ads not only express collectivistic ideas but individualistic ones as well. Although this phenomenon is not entirely surprising given the strength ofWestern influence, Korean individualistic messages are different from American individualistic messages. This suggests that expressions of individualism in ads blend with the elements of each culture to produce uniquely different messages ..

A film poster is not merely a collage of images or piece of information or any colourful design. Once the mainstay of publicity tools, if not today, the film poster have been playing a significant role along with the other outdoor publicity tools like hoarding, cutouts, stickers, banner, etc. in different decades. From 7th July 1896, the first day of screening films in India, the uses of film posters for the first instance for the publicity of Lumiere’s films in Bombay to till today, film posters have been the reflection of changing time, technology, techniques and array of ideas and designs of different decades. Starting from Raja Harishchandra, the first Indian film, to till today, the posters of Bollywood films have come a long way from broad visible brush strokes with a striking array of colors and typography to modern day digital prints on glossy sheets. From serving as the prime medium of publicity to subject of study for art lovers, historians and antique collectors in the pr...

Jagdish and Kamakura (1995) argued that celebrity endorsement has become a prevalent form of advertising in the United States. Approximately 20% of all television commercials feature a famous person, and approximately 10% of the dollars spent on television advertising are used in celebrity endorsement advertisements (Advertising Age 1987; Sherman 1985). The purpose of this study is to compare the use of celebrity endorsement between the United Sates and Lebanon in terms of two fundamental cultural dimensions: 1) low versus high context, and 2) individualism versus collectivism. This study investigates differences and similarities regarding celebrity characteristics in the U.S. and Lebanon. INTRODUCTION Jagdish and Kamakura (1995) argued that celebrity endorsement has become a prevalent form of advertising in the United States. Approximately 20% of all television commercials feature a famous person, and approximately 10% of the dollars spent on television advertising are used in cele...

ocial scientists regard the U.S. and the Republic of Korea as countries with opposing cultural values. Given this contrast, the advertising of each culture is expected to differ. An examination of magazine advertising indicates that American ads strongly express the individualistic culture; however, the Korean ads not only express collectivistic ideas but individualistic ones as well. Although this phenomenon is not entirely surprising given the strength ofWestern influence, Korean individualistic messages are different from American individualistic messages. This suggests that expressions of individualism in ads blend with the elements of each culture to produce uniquely different messages ..

Creative media (CM) advertising is an advertising strategy wherein a non-traditional medium is creatively used for advertising purposes. This novel advertising strategy is gaining marketers' interest; however, little is known about its persuasive effects on consumers' cognitive, affective and behavioural responses and the processes that underlie them. Therefore, to convey a genuine experience to consumers, two field experiments with a one-factor (advertising type: creative vs. traditional) between-subjects design were conducted within a supermarket context. Results showed that creative (vs. traditional) media ads not only improve consumers' affective and behavioural responses but also consumers' cognitive responses. Even though no mediations were found through perceived surprise or perceived persuasive intent, results do provide evidence for the notion that perceived humor and perceived value are the underlying mechanisms through which affective and behavioural responses to creative media advertising can be explained.

those topics, and it was co-taught by a specialist in history, a specialist in literature, and a specialist in the study of language use. The first crew consisted of Henk Reitsma from History, Rod, and myself, and our topic was propaganda. It is one of the most exciting courses that I have ever taught. The formula still is a success, as it is one of the most popular courses in the faculty, and I think it is a model for the way we could arrange our interdisciplinary programmes in the near future. My contribution to the course consisted of a discussion of a range of linguistic phenomena in propaganda: issues like humour, metaphor, and argumentation. The general question that I tried to answer was: is it possible to distinguish propagandistic communication from non-propagandistic communication using a standard linguistic methodology? More specifically, is the language of propaganda different from the language of other classes of discourse, for instance because of its humour? My final example comes from a Dutch periodical 'De Gil', which appeared from March until October 1944. It had an interesting disguise: it was published as an anti-German magazine, promoting such un-German aspects of modern life as jazz music, but in reality it was issued by the Hauptabteilung für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda. A typical 'De Gil' article tries to confuse the readers about the invasion, about the strength of the Germans, and the intentions of the illegal press. An example is the following (the beginning of the 11th issue August 2, 1944). Our division of labour gave Rod the task to define what we mean by propaganda, and to distinguish propaganda from non

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between offence and humour in advertising. One only needs to watch a stand up comic to appreciate that these two emotions are often closely linked. The relationship is also becoming increasingly evident in advertising as brands compete to create a modern, entertaining and witty personality. But when and why does an advertisement move from being funny to being offensive? This study firstly looks at the literature on both humour and offense in advertising and brings them together to establish areas of commonality. This knowledge is then used to analyse advertisements that were complained about to the ASA in 2009 which contained both humour and offense. These cases are examined to find out how offence is created and the type of humour that is creating this offence. The implications of the findings for practitioners and regulatory bodies are then discussed

The inclusion of swear words in advertising is becoming more popular and yet very little has been written on the use of this creative tool. This paper attempts to stimulate this area of research by exploring reasons why an advertiser might use swear words. Drawing on various streams of research a conceptual model is created which identifies six reasons why swear words may be employed in advertising. A number of moderating variables are also recognised which influence the perception of the end consumer to the advertisement. Examples of advertisements containing swear words are then examined to strengthen the validity of the proposed framework.

This article presents findings from research investigating the effectiveness of humor appeals (humor relatedness and humor mechanisms) to Indonesian millennials for predicting their attitudes toward printed ads and their purchase intentions. In total, 543 Indonesian millennials participated in three experimental studies to test the relationship between humor appeals and the need for cognition to predict their attitudes and intentions. It was found that humor appeals were effective in predicting millennials’ attitudes toward printed ads and their purchase intentions. However, the need for cognition did not significantly influence the relationship. Indonesian millennials were more likely to not engage in thinking processes when evaluating humorous ads, which may be influenced by their characteristics and cultural backgrounds.

This study compares the relative effectiveness in the use of culturally incongruent cues in informational and transformational advertising. A case study was done to explore the extent to which ethnic/ culturally incongruent cues are used in advertising in informational and transformational advertising and to compare the effectiveness of these ads between the two advertising forms. The study sought to address two questions: (1) To what extent are ethnic/culturally incongruent cues used in informational or transformational advertising? and (2): Is the use of culturally incongruent cues more effective for informational or transformational ads? A content analysis approach was used to extract social media data from YouTube for this study. The advertisements used to compare the effectiveness of informational and transformational ads were selected from AdWeek’s top 10 most watched YouTube videos of 2013. Nvivo 10 was used to capture the commercial and comments to be analyzed as part of the...

Emotionally pleasant TV commercials are often preferred over merely factual ones. A large-scale study of Belgian TV ads confirms this notion and shows that such commercials also create more positive feelings toward the advertised brand. Interestingly, these effects depend on neither the level of involvement associated with the product category nor the type of product. Independent of the perceived creativity of the commercial or its informational value, emotionality had a significant impact on the evaluation of a brand. However, the effects were slightly more pronounced for products that align themselves with pleasure and experience than for functional products. Advertisers should therefore leverage the power of emotions not only because these ads are better liked, but more importantly because they lead to more favorable brand attitudes.

The influence of a measure of individual differences with regard to the experience of emotions, more specifically affect intensity, on communication effects of different emotional (warm, humorous, and erotic) and nonemotional advertising appeals is tested. Although affect intensity is claimed to be generalizable across moods, the results lend tentative support for the recently raised criticism that affect intensity appears to be mood specific. Indeed, the predicted effects of affect intensity seem to occur more in the case of warm and humorous appeals, and only to a lesser extent in response to erotic ads.