ADVERTISING'S FIFTEEN
JIB FOWLES* BASIC APPEALS
Emotional Appeals
THE NATURE OF EFFECTIVE advertisements was recognized full well by the late media philosopher Marshall McLuhan . In his
Understanding Media, the first sentence of the section on advertising reads, "The continuous pressure is to create ads more and more in the image of audience motives and desires ."
By giving form to people's deep-lying desires, and picturing states of being that individuals privately yearn for, advertisers have the best chance of arresting attention and affecting communication . And that is the immediate goal of advertising : to tug at our psychological shirt sleeves and slow us down long enough for a word or two about whatever is being sold . We glance at a picture of a solitary rancher at work, and "Marlboro" slips into our minds .
Advertisers (I'm using the term as a shorthand for both the products' manufacturers, who bring the ambition and money to the process, and the advertising agencies, who supply the know-how) are ever more compelled to invoke consumers' drives and longings ; this is the "continuous pressure" McLuhan refers to . Over the past century, the American marketplace has grown increasingly congested as more and more products have entered into the frenzied competition after the public's dollars. The economies of other nations are quieter than ours since the volume of goods being hawked does not so greatly exceed demand . In some economies, consumer wares are scarce enough that no advertising at all is necessary. But in the United States, we go to the other extreme . In order to stay in business, an advertiser must strive to cut through the considerable
* Jib Fowles teaches courses on advertising and mass media at the University of
Houston .
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Et cetera a FALL 1982 commercial hub-bub by any means available - including the emotional appeals that some observers have held to be abhorrent and underhanded .
The use of subconscious appeals is a comment not only on conditions among sellers . As time has gone by, buyers have become stoutly resistant to advertisements . We live in a blizzard of these messages and have learned to turn up our collars and ward off most of them. A study done a few years ago at Harvard University's
Graduate School of Business Administration ventured that the average American is exposed to some 500 ads daily from television, newspapers, magazines, radio, billboards, direct mail, and so on . If for no other reason than to preserve one's sanity, a filter must be developed in every mind to lower the number of ads a person is actually aware of - a number this particular study estimated at about seventy-five ads per day . (Of these, only twelve typically produced a reaction - nine positive and three negative, on the average.) To be among the few messages that do manage to gain access to minds, advertisers must be strategic, perhaps even a little underhanded at times .
There are assumptions about personality underlying advertisers' efforts to communicate via emotional appeals, and while these assumptions have stood the test of time, they still deserve to be aired .
Human beings, it is presumed, walk around with a variety of unfulfilled urges and motives swirling in the bottom half of their minds. Lusts, ambitions, tendernesses, vulnerabilities - they are constantly bubbling up, seeking resolution . These mental forces energize people, but they are too crude and irregular to be given excessive play in the real world. They must be capped with the competent, sensible behavior that permits individuals to get along well in society. However, this upper layer of mental activity, shot through with caution and rationality, is not receptive to advertising's pitches . Advertisers want to circumvent this shell of consciousness if they can, and latch on to one of the lurching, subconscious drives .
In effect, advertisers over the years have blindly felt their way around the underside of the American psyche, and by trial and error have discovered the softest points of entree, the places where their messages have the greatest likelihood of getting by consumers' defenses . As McLuhan says elsewhere, "Gouging away at the surface of public sales resistance, the ad men are constantly breaking through into the Alice in Wonderland territory behind the looking glass, which is the world of subrational impulses and appetites ."
An advertisement communicates by making use of a specially selected image (of a supine female, say, or a curly-headed child, or a celebrity) which is designed to stimulate "subrational impulses and
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desires" even when they are at ebb, even if they are unacknowledged by their possessor . Some few ads have their emotional appeal in the text, but for the greater number by far the appeal is contained in the artwork . This makes sense, since visual communication better suits more primal levels of the brain . If the viewer of an advertisement actually has the importuned motive, and if the appeal is sufficiently well-fashioned to call it up, then the person can be hooked . The product in the ad may then appear to take on the semblance of gratification for the summoned motive . Many ads seem to be saying,
"If you have this need, then this product will help satisfy it ." It is a primitive equation, but not an ineffective one for selling .
Thus, most advertisements appearing in national media can be understood as having two orders of content . The first is the appeal to deep-running drives in the minds of consumers . The second is information regarding the good or service being sold : its name, its manufacturer, its picture, its packaging, its objective attributes, its functions . For example, the reader of a brassiere advertisement sees a partially undraped but blandly unperturbed woman standing in an otherwise commonplace public setting, and may experience certain sensations; the reader also sees the name "Maidenform," a particular brassiere style, and, in tiny print, words about the material, colors, price. Or, the viewer of a television commercial sees a demonstration with four small boxes labelled 650, 650, 650, and 800 ; something in the viewer's mind catches hold of this, as trivial as thoughtful consideration might reveal it to be. The viewer is also exposed to the name "Anacin," its bottle, and its purpose .
Sometimes there is an apparently logical link between an ad's emotional appeal and its product information . It does not violate common sense that Cadillac automobiles be photographed at country clubs, or that Japan Air Lines be associated with Orientalia . But there is no real need for the linkage to have a bit of reason behind it .
Is there anything inherent to the connection between Salem cigarettes and mountains, Coke and a smile, Miller Beer and comradeship?
The link being forged in minds between product and appeal is a pre-logical one .
People involved in the advertising industry do not necessarily talk in the terms being used here . They are stationed at the sending end of this communications channel, and may think they are up to any number of things - Unique Selling Propositions, explosive copywriting, the optimal use of demographics or psychographics, ideal media buys, high recall ratings, or whatever . But when attention shifts to the receiving end of the channel, and focuses on the instant of reception, then commentary becomes much more elemental : an advertising message contains something primary and primitive, an
276 Et cetera • FALL 1982 emotional appeal, that in effect is the thin end of the wedge, trying to find its way into a mind . Should this occur, the product information comes along behind .
When enough advertisements are examined in this light, it becomes clear that the emotional appeals fall into several distinguishable categories, and that every ad is a variation on one of a limited number of basic appeals . While there may be several ways of classifying these appeals, one particular list of fifteen has proven to be especially valuable .
Advertisements can appeal to :
1 . The need for sex
2 . The need for affiliation
3 . The need to nurture
4. The need for guidance
5 . The need to aggress
6 . The need to achieve
7. The need to dominate
8. The need for prominence
9. The need for attention
10. The need for autonomy
11 . The need to escape
12 . The need to feel safe
13 . The need for aesthetic sensations
14. The need to satisfy curiosity
15 . Physiological needs : food, drink, sleep, etc .
Murray's List
Where does this list of advertising's fifteen basic appeals come from? Several years ago, I was involved in a research project which was to have as one segment an objective analysis of the changing appeals made in post-World War II American advertising. A sample of magazine ads would have their appeals coded into the categories of psychological needs they seemed aimed at . For this content analysis to happen, a complete roster of human motives would have to be found.
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27 7
The first thing that came to mind was Abraham Maslow's famous four-part hierarchy of needs . But the briefest look at the range of appeals made in advertising was enough to reveal that they are more varied, and more profane, than Maslow had cared to account for .
The search led on to the work of psychologist Henry A . Murray, who together with his colleagues at the Harvard Psychological Clinic had constructed a full taxonomy of needs . As described in Explorations in
Personality, Murray's team had conducted a lengthy series of depth interviews with a number of subjects in order to derive from scratch what they felt to be the essential variables of personality . Forty-four variables were distinguished by the Harvard group, of which twenty were motives . The need for achievement ("to overcome obstacles and obtain a high standard") was one, for instance ; the need to defer was another; the need to aggress was a third ; and so forth .
Murray's list had served as the groundwork for a number of subsequent projects . Perhaps the best-known of these was David C .
McClelland's extensive study of the need for achievement, reported in his The Achieving Society. In the process of demonstrating that a people's high need for achievement is predictive of later economic growth, McClelland coded achievement imagery and references out of a nation's folklore, songs, legends, and children's tales .
Following McClelland, I too wanted to cull the motivational appeals from a culture's imaginative product - in this case, advertising
. To develop categories expressly for this purpose, I took Murray's twenty motives and added to them others he had mentioned in passing in Explorations in Personality but not included on the final list. The extended list was tried out on a sample of advertisements, and motives which never seemed to be invoked were dropped . I ended up with eighteen of Murrays' motives, into which 770 print ads were coded . The resulting distribution is included in the 1976 book Mass Advertising as Social Forecast .
Since that time, the list of appeals has undergone refinements as a result of using it to analyze television commercials . A few more adjustments have stemmed from the efforts of students in my advertising classes to decode appeals ; tens of term papers surveying thousands of advertisements have caused some inconsistencies in the list to be hammered out . Fundamentally, though, the list remains the creation of Henry Murray. In developing a comprehensive, parsimonious inventory of human motives, he pinpointed the subsurface mental forces that are the least quiescent and the most susceptible to advertising's entreaties .
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Fifteen Appeals
1 . Need for sex . Let's start with sex, because this is the appeal which seems to pop up first whenever the topic of advertising is raised. Whole books have been written about this one alone, to find a large audience of mildly titillated readers. Lately, due to campaigns to sell blue jeans, concern with sex in ads has redoubled .
The fascinating thing is not how much sex there is in advertising, but how little . Contrary to impressions, unambiguous sex is rare in these messages . Some of this surprising observation may be a matter of definition : the Jordache ads with the lithe, blouse-less female astride a similarly clad male is clearly an appeal to the audience's sexual drives, but the same cannot be said about Brooke Shields in the Calvin Klein commercials . Directed at young women and their credit-card carrying mothers, the image of Miss Shields instead invokes the need to be looked at . Buy Calvins and you'll be the center of much attention, just as Brooke is, the ads imply; they do not primarily inveigle their target audience's need for sexual intercourse .
In the content analysis reported in Mass Advertising as Social
Forecast, only two percent of ads were found to pander to this motive .
Even Playboy ads shy away from sexual appeals : a recent issue contained eighty-three full-page ads, and just four of them (or less than five percent) could be said to have sex on their minds .
The reason this appeal is so little used is that it is too blaring and tends to obliterate the product information . Nudity in advertising has the effect of reducing brand recall . The people who do remember the product may do so because they have been made indignant by the ad; this is not the response most advertisers seek .
To the extent that sexual imagery is used, it conventionally works better on men than women ; typically a female figure is offered up to the male reader . A Black Velvet liquor advertisement displays an attractive woman wearing a tight black outfit, recumbent under the legend, "Feel the Velvet ." The figure does not have to be horizontal, however, for the appeal to be present, as National Airlines revealed in its "Fly me" campaign . Indeed, there does not even have to be a female in the ad : "Flick my Bic" was sufficient to convey the idea to many. As a rule, though, advertisers have found sex to be a tricky appeal, to be used sparingly . Less controversial and equally fetching are the appeals to our need for affectionate human contact .
2. Need for affiliation . American mythology upholds autonomous individuals, and social statistics suggest that people are ever more going it alone in their lives, yet the high frequency of affiliative appeals in ads belies this . Or maybe it does not : maybe all the images
ADVERTISING'S FIFTEEN BASIC APPEALS
2 79 of companionship are compensation for what Americans privately lack. In any case, the need to associate with others is widely invoked in advertising and is probably the most prevalent appeal . All sorts of goods and services are sold by linking them to our unfulfilled desires to be in good company .
According to Henry Murray, the need for affiliation consists of desires "to draw near and enjoyably cooperate or reciprocate with another; to please and win affection of another ; to adhere and remain loyal to a friend." The manifestations of this motive can be segmented into several different types of affiliation, beginning with romance. Courtship may be swifter nowadays, but the desire for pairbonding is far from satiated . Ads reaching for this need commonly depict a youngish male and female engrossed in each other . The head of the male is usually higher than the female's, even at this late date ; she may be sitting or leaning while he is standing . They are not touching in the Smirnoff vodka ads, but obviously there is an intimacy, sometimes frolicsome, between them . The couple does touch for Martell Cognac when "The moment was Martell ." For
Wind Song perfume they have touched, and "Your Wind Song stays on his mind ."
Depending on the audience, the pair does not absolutely have to be young - just together . He gives her a DeBeers diamond, and there is a tear in her laugh lines . She takes Geritol and preserves herself for him. And numbers of consumers, wanting affection too, follow suit .
Warm family feelings are fanned in ads when another generation is added to the pair. Hallmark Cards brings grandparents into the picture, and Johnson and Johnson Baby Powder has Dad, Mom, and baby, all fresh from the bath, encircled in arms and emblazoned with
"Share the Feeling ." A talc has been fused to familial love .
Friendship is yet another form of affiliation pursued by advertisers
. Two women confide and drink Maxwell House coffee together ; two men walk through the woods smoking Salem cigarettes . Miller
Beer promises that afternoon "Miller Time" will be staffed with three or four good buddies . Drink Dr . Pepper, as Mickey Rooney is coaxed to do, and join in with all the other Peppers. Coca-Cola does not even need to portray the friendliness ; it has reduced this appeal to "a Coke and a smile ."
The warmth can be toned down and disguised, but it is the same affiliative need that is being fished for . The blonde has a direct gaze and her friends are firm businessmen in appearance, but with a glass of Old Bushmill you can sit down and fit right in . Or, for something more upbeat, sing along with the Pontiac choirboys .
As well as presenting positive images, advertisers can play to the
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Et cetera • FALL 1982 need for affiliation in negative ways, by invoking the fear of rejection. If we don't use Scope, we'll have the "Ugh! Morning
Breath" that causes the male and female models to avert their faces.
Unless we apply Ultra-Brite or Close-Up to our teeth, it's goodbye romance . Our family will be cursed with "House-a-tosis" if we don't take care . Without Dr. Scholl's anti-perspirant foot spray, the bowling team will keel over . There go all the guests when the supply of
Dorito's nacho cheese chips is exhausted . Still more rejection if our shirts have ring-around-the-collar, if our car needs to be
Midasized . But make a few purchases, and we are back in the bosom of human contact .
As self-directed as Americans pretend to be, in the last analysis we remain social animals, hungering for the positive, endorsing feelings that only those around us can supply . Advertisers respond, urging us to "Reach out and touch someone," in the hopes our monthly bills will rise .
3 . Need to nurture . Akin to affiliative needs is the need to take care of small, defenseless creatures -- children and pets, largely. Reciprocity is of less consequence here, though ; it is the giving that counts. Murray uses synonyms like "to feed, help, support, console, protect, comfort, nurse, heal ." A strong need it is, woven deep into our genetic fabric, for if it did not exist we could not successfully raise up our replacements . When advertisers put forth the image of something diminutive and furry, somethin, that elicits the word
"cute" or "precious," then they are trying to trigger this motive . We listen to the childish voice singing the Oscar Mayer wiener song, and our next hot-dog purchase is prescribed . Aren't those darling kittens something, and how did this Meow Mix get into our shopping cart?
This pitch is often directed at women, as Mother Nature's chief nurturers . "Make me some Kraft macaroni and cheese, please," says the elfin preschooler just in from the snowstorm, and mothers' hearts go out, and Kraft's sales go up . "We're cold, wet, and hungry," whine the husband and kids, and the little woman gets the Manwiches ready . A facsimile of this need can be hit without children or pets : the husband is ill and sleepless in the television commercial, and the wife grudgingly fetches the NyQuil .
But it is not women alone who can be touched by this appeal . The father nurses his son Eddie through adolescence while the John
Deere lawn tractor survives the years . Another father counts pennies with his young son as the subject of New York Life Insurance comes up. And all over America are businessmen who don't know why they dial Qantas Airlines when they have to take a trans-Pacific trip ; the koala bear knows.
4. Need for guidance. The opposite of the need to nurture is the
ADVERTISING'S FIFTEEN BASIC APPEALS
2 8 1 need to be nurtured : to be protected, shielded, guided . We may be loath to admit it, but the child lingers on inside every adult - and a good thing it does, or we would not be instructable in our advancing years . Who wants a nation of nothing but flinty personalities?
Parent-like figures can successfully call up this need . Robert
Young recommends Sanka coffee, and since we have experienced him for twenty-five years as television father and doctor, we take his word for it . Florence Henderson as the expert mom knows a lot about the advantages of Wesson oil .
The parent-ness of the spokesperson need not be so salient ; sometimes pure authoritativeness is better . When Orson Wells scowls and intones, "Paul Masson will sell no wine before its time," we may not know exactly what he means, but we still take direction from him. There is little maternal about Brenda Vaccaro when she speaks up for Tampax, but there is a certainty to her that many accept .
A celebrity is not a necessity in making a pitch to the need for guidance, since a fantasy figure can serve just as well . People accede to the Green Giant, or Betty Crocker, or Mr . Goodwrench . Some advertisers can get by with no figure at all : "When E .F. Hutton talks, people listen ."
Often it is tradition or custom that advertisers point to and consumers take guidance from . Bits and pieces of American history are used to sell whiskeys like Old Crow, Southern Comfort, Jack
Daniels. We conform to traditional male/female roles and age-old social norms when we purchase Barclay cigarettes, which informs us
"The pleasure is back ."
The product itself, if it has been around for a long time, can constitute a tradition . All those old labels in the ad for Morton salt convince us that we should continue to buy it . Kool-Aid says, "You loved it as a kid . You trust it as a mother," hoping to get yet more consumers to go along .
Even when the product has no history at all, our need to conform to tradition and to be guided are strong enough that they can be invoked through bogus nostalgia and older actors . Country-Time lemonade sells because consumers want to believe it has a past they can defer to.
So far the needs and the ways they can be invoked which have been looked at are largely warm and affiliative ; they stand in contrast to the next set of needs, which are much more egoistic and assertive .
5 . Need to aggress . The pressures of the real world create strong retaliatory feelings in every functioning human being . Since these impulses can come forth as bursts of anger and violence, their display is normally tabooed . Existing as harbored energy, aggressive drives
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Et cetera • FALL 1982 present a large, tempting target for advertisers . It is not a target to be aimed at thoughtlessly, though, for few manufacturers want their products associated with destructive motives . There is always the danger that, as in the case of sex, if the appeal is too blatant, public opinion will turn against what is being sold .
Jack-in-the-Box sought to abruptly alter its marketing by going after older customers and forgetting the younger ones . Their television commercials had a seventy-ish lady command, "Waste him," and the Jack-in-the-Box clown exploded before our eyes . So did public reaction, until the commercials were toned down. Print ads for Club cocktails carried the faces of octogenarians under the headline, "Hit me with a Club" ; response was contrary enough to bring the campaign to a stop .
Better disguised aggressive appeals are less likely to backfire :
Triumph cigarettes has models making a lewd gesture with their uplifted cigarettes, but the individuals are often laughing and usually in the close company of others . When Exxon said, "There's a Tiger in your tank," the implausibility of it concealed the invocation of aggressive feelings .
Depicted arguments are a common way for advertisers to tap the audience's needs to aggress . Don Rickles and Lynda Carter trade gibes, and consumers take sides as the name of Seven-Up is stitched on minds . The Parkay tub has a difference of opinion with the user ; who can forget it, or who (or what) got the last word in?
6 . Need to achieve . This is the drive that energizes people, causing them to strive in their lives and careers . According to Murray, the need for achievement is signalled by the desires "to accomplish something difficult . To overcome obstacles and attain a high standard.
To excel one's self. To rival and surpass others ." A prominent
American trait, it is one that advertisers like to hook on to because it identifies their product with winning and success .
The Cutty Sark ad does not disclose that Ted Turner failed at his latest attempt at yachting's America Cup ; here he is represented as a champion on the water as well as off in his television enterprises . If we drink this whiskey, we will be victorious alongside Turner . We can also succeed with O.J . Simpson by renting Hertz cars, or with
Reggie Jackson by bringing home some Panasonic equipment . Cathy
Rigby and Stayfree Maxipads will put people out front .
Sports heros are the most convenient means to snare consumers' needs to achieve, but they are not the only one . Role models can be established, ones which invite emulation, as with the profiles put forth by Dewar's scotch . Successful, tweedy individuals relate they have "graduated to the flavor of Myer's rum ." Or the advertiser can establish a prize: two neighbors play one-on-one basketball for a
ADVERTISING'S FIFTEEN BASIC APPEALS
2 8 3
Michelob beer in a television commercial, while in a print ad a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label has been gilded like a trophy .
Any product that advertises itself in superlatives - the best, the first, the finest - is trying to make contact with our needs to succeed. For many consumers, sales and bargains belong in this category of appeals, too ; the person who manages to buy something at fifty percent off is seizing an opportunity and coming out ahead of others. 7 . Need to dominate. This fundamental need is the craving to be powerful -- perhaps omnipotent, as in the Xerox ad where Brother
Dominic exhibits heavenly powers and creates miraculous copies .
Most of us will settle for being just a regular potentate, though . We drink Budweiser because it is the King of Beers, and here come the powerful Clydesdales to prove it . A taste of Wolfschmidt vodka and
"The spirit of the Czar lives on ."
The need to dominate and control one's environment is often thought of as being masculine, but as close students of human nature advertisers know, it is not so circumscribed . Women's aspirations for control is suggested in the campaign theme, "I like my men in
English Leather, or nothing at all." The females in the Chanel No .
19 ads are "outspoken" and wrestle their men around .
Male and female, what we long for is clout ; what we get in its place is Mastercard .
8 . Need for prominence . Here comes the need to be admired and respected, to enjoy prestige and high social status . These times, it appears, are not so egalitarian after all . Many ads picture the trappings of high position ; the Oldsmobile stands before a manorial doorway, the Volvo is parked beside a steeplechase . A book-lined study is the setting for Dewar's 12, and Lenox China is displayed in a dining room chock full of antiques .
Beefeater gin represents itself as "The Crown Jewel of England" and uses no illustrations of jewels or things British, for the words are sufficient indicators of distinction . Buy that gin and you will rise up the prestige hierarchy, or achieve the same effect on yourself with Seagram's 7 Crown, which unambiguously describes itself as
"classy."
Being respected does not have to entail the usual accoutrements of wealth : "Do you know who I am?" the commercials ask, and we learn that the prominent person is not so prominent without his
American Express card .
9 . Need for attention . The previous need involved being looked up to, while this is the need to be looked at. The desire to exhibit ourselves in such a way as to make others look at us is a primitive, insuppressible instinct. The clothing and cosmetic industries exist
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Et cetera • FALL 1982 just to serve this need, and this is the way they pitch their wares .
Some of this effort is aimed at males, as the ads for Hathaway shirts and jockey underclothes . But the greater bulk of such appeals is targeted singlemindedly at women .
To come back to Brooke Shields: this is where she fits into
American marketing . If I buy Calvin Klein jeans, consumers infer,
I'll be the object of fascination . The desire for exhibition has been most strikingly played to in a print campaign of many years duration, that of Maidenform lingerie . The woman exposes herself, and sales surge. "Gentlemen prefer Hanes" the ads dissemble, and women who want eyes upon them know what they should do . Peggy Fleming flutters her legs for L'eggs, encouraging females who want to be the star in their own lives to purchase this product.
The same appeal works for cosmetics and lotions. For years, the little girl with the exposed backside sold gobs of Coppertone, but now the company has picked up the pace a little : as a female, you are supposed to "Flash 'em a Coppertone tan ." Food can be sold the same way, especially to the diet-conscious; Angie Dickinson poses for California avocadoes and says, "Would this body lie to you?" Our eyes are too fixed on her for us to think to ask if she got that way by eating mounds of guacamole .
10. Need for autonomy . There are several ways to sell credit card services, as has been noted : Mastercard appeals to the need to dominate, and American Express to the need for prominence . When
Visa claims, "You can have it the way you want it," yet another primary motive is being beckoned forward - the need to endorse the self. The focus here is upon the independence and integrity of the individual; this need is the antithesis of the need for guidance and is unlike any of the social needs . "If running with the herd isn't your style, try ours," says Rotan-Mosle, and many Americans feel they have finally found the right brokerage firm .
The photo is of a red-coated Mountie on his horse, posed on a snow-covered ledge ; the copy reads, "Windsor - One Canadian stands alone ." This epitome of the solitary and proud individual may work best with male customers, as may Winston's man in the red cap. But one-figure advertisements also strike the strong need for autonomy among American women . As Shelly Hack strides for
Charlie perfume, females respond to her obvious pride and flair ; she is her own person. The Virginia Slims' tale is of people who have come a long way from subservience to independence . Cachet perfume feels it does not need a solo figure to work this appeal, and uses three different faces in its ads ; it insists, though, "It's different on every woman who wears it ."
Like many psychological needs, this one can also be appealed to in
ADVERTISING'S FIFTEEN BASIC APPEALS
2 8 5 a negative fashion, by invoking the loss of independence or selfregard.
Guilt and regrets can be stimulated : "Gee, I could have had' a
V-8." Next time, get one and be good to yourself.
11 . Need to escape . An appeal to the need for autonomy often co-occurs with one for the need to escape, since the desire to duck out of our social obligations, to seek rest or adventure, frequently takes the form of one-person flight . The dashing image of a pilot, in fact, is a standard way of quickening this need to get away from it all .
Freedom is the pitch here, the freedom that every individual yearns for whenever life becomes too oppressive . Many advertisers like appealing to the need for escape because the sensation of pleasure often accompanies escape, and what nicer emotional nimbus could there be for a product? "You deserve a break today," says
McDonalds, and Stouffer's frozen foods chime in, "Set yourself free ."
For decades men have imaginatively bonded themselves to the
Marlboro cowboy who dwells untarnished and unencumbered in
Marlboro Country some distance from modern life; smokers' aching needs for autonomy and escape are personified by that cowpoke .
Many women can identify with the lady ambling through the woods behind the words, "Benson and Hedges and mornings and me ."
But escape does not have to be solitary . Other Benson and Hedges ads, part of the same campaign, contain two strolling figures . In
Salem cigarette advertisements, it can be several people who escape together into the mountaintops . A commercial for Levi's pictured a cloudbank above a city through which ran a whole chain of young people .
There are varieties of escape, some wistful like the Boeing
"Someday" campaign of dream vacations, some kinetic like the play and parties in soft drink ads . But in every instance, the consumer exposed to the advertisement is invited to momentarily depart his everyday life for a more carefree experience, preferably with the product in hand .
12. Need to feel safe . Nobody in their right mind wants to be intimidated, menaced, battered, poisoned . We naturally want to do whatever it takes to stave off threats to our well-being, and to our families' . It is the instinct for self-preservation that makes us responsive to the ad of the St . Bernard with the keg of Chivas Regal .
We pay attention to the stern talk of Karl Malden and the plight of the vacationing couples who have lost all their funds in the American
Express travelers cheques commercials. We want the omnipresent stag from Hartford Insurance to watch over us too .
In the interest of keeping failure and calamity from our lives, we like to see the durability of products demonstrated . Can we ever
286 Et cetera • FALL 1982 forget that Timex takes a licking and keeps on ticking? When the
American Tourister suitcase bounces all over the highway and the egg inside doesn't break, the need to feel safe has been adroitly plucked .
We take precautions to diminish future threats . We buy Volkswagen
Rabbits for the extraordinary mileage, and MONY insurance policies to avoid the tragedies depicted in their black-and-white ads of widows and orphans .
We are careful about our health . We consume Mazola margarine because it has "corn goodness" backed by the natural food traditions of the American Indians . In the medicine cabinet is Alka-Seltzer, the
"home remedy" ; having it, we are snug in our little cottage.
We want to be safe and secure ; buy these products, advertisers are saying, and you'll be safer than you are without them .
13. Need for aesthetic sensations . There is an undeniable aesthetic component to virtually every ad run in the national media: the photography or filming or drawing is near-perfect, the type style is well chosen, the layout could scarcely be improved upon . Advertisers know there is little chance of good communication occurring if an ad is not visually pleasing . Consumers may not be aware of the extent of their own sensitivity to artwork, but it is undeniably large .
Sometimes the aesthetic element is expanded and made into an ad's primary appeal . Charles Jordan shoes may or may not appear in the accompanying avant-garde photographs ; Kohler plumbing fixtures catch attention through the high style of their desert settings .
Beneath the slightly out of focus photograph, languid and sensuous in tone, General Electric feels called upon to explain, "This is an ad for the hair dryer ."
This appeal is not limited to female consumers : J and B scotch says
"It whispers" and shows a bucolic scene of lake and castle .
14 . Need to satisfy curiosity . It may seem odd to list a need for information among basic motives, but this need can be as primal and compelling as any of the others . Human beings are curious by nature, interested in the world around them, and intrigued by tidbits of knowledge and new developments . Trivia, percentages, observations counter to conventional wisdom - these items all help sell products. Any advertisement in a question-and-answer format is strumming this need.
A dog groomer has a question about long distance rates, and Bell
Telephone has a chart with all the figures. An ad for Porsche 911 is replete with diagrams and schematics, numbers and arrows . Lo and behold, Anacin pills have 150 more milligrams than its competitors; should we wonder if this is better or worse for us?
15 . Physiological needs. To the extent that sex is solely a biological need, we are now coming around full circle, back towards the start of
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2 8 7 the list. In this final category are clustered appeals to sleeping, eating, drinking . The art of photographing food and drink is so advanced, sometimes these temptations are wondrously caught in the camera's lens: the crab meat in the Red Lobster restaurant ads can start us salivating, the Quarterpounder can almost be smelled, the liquor in the glass glows invitingly . Imbibe, these ads scream.
Styles
Some common ingredients of advertisements were not singled out for separate mention in the list of fifteen because they are not appeals in and of themselves . They are stylistic features, influencing the way a basic appeal is presented . The use of humor is one, and the use of celebrities is another . A third is time imagery, past and future, which goes to several purposes .
For all of its employment in advertising, humor can be treacherous, because it can get out of hand and smother the product information . Supposedly, this is what Alka-Seltzer discovered with its comic commercials of the late sixties ; "I can't believe I ate the whole thing," the sad-faced husband lamented, and the audience cackled so much it forgot the antacid . Or, did not take it seriously .
But used carefully, humor can punctuate some of the softer appeals and soften some of the harsher ones . When Emma says to the
Fruit-of-the-Loom fruits, "Hi, cuties . Whatcha doing in my laundry basket?" we smile as our curiosity is assuaged along with hers . Bill
Cosby gets consumers tickled about the children in his Jello commercials, and strokes the need to nurture .
An insurance company wants to invoke the need to feel safe, but does not want to leave readers with an unpleasant aftertaste ; cartoonist
Rowland Wilson creates an avalanche about to crush a gentleman who is saying to another, "My insurance company? New
England Life, of course . Why?" The same tactic of humor undercutting threat is used in the cartoon commercials for Safeco when the
Pink Panther wanders from one disaster to another . Often humor masks aggression: comedian Bob Hope in the outfit of a boxer promises to knock out the knock-knocks with Texaco ; Rodney
Dangerfield, who "can't get no respect," invites aggression as the comic relief in Miller Lite commercials .
Roughly fifteen percent of all advertisements incorporate a celebrity, almost always from the fields of entertainment or sports . This approach can also prove troublesome for advertisers, for celebrities are human beings too, and fully capable of the most remarkable behavior; if anything distasteful about them emerges, it is likely to reflect on the product. The advertisers making use of Anita Bryant and Billy Jean King suffered several anxious moments . An untimely
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Et cetera • FALL 1982 death can also reflect poorly on a product . But advertisers are willing to take these risks because celebrities can be such a good link between producers and consumers, performing the social role of introducer. There are several psychological needs these middlemen can play upon. Let's take the product class of cameras and see how different celebrities can hit different needs . The need for guidance can be invoked by Michael Landon, who plays such a wonderful dad on
"Little House on the Prairie" ; when he says to buy Kodak equipment, many people listen. James Garner for Polaroid cameras is put in a similar authoritative role, so defined by a mocking spouse . The need to achieve is summoned up by Tracy Austin and other tennis stars for Canon AE-1 ; the advertiser first makes sure we see these athletes playing to win . When Cheryl Tiegs speaks up for Olympus cameras, it is the need for attention that is being targeted .
The past and future, being outside our grasp, are exploited by advertisers as locales for the projection of needs . History can offer up heroes (and call up the need to achieve) or traditions (need for guidance) as well as art objects (need for aesthetic sensations) .
Nostalgia is a kindly version of personal history and is deployed by advertisers to rouse needs for affiliation and for guidance ; the need to escape can come in here, too . The same need to escape is sometimes the point of futuristic appeals, but picturing the avant-garde can also be a way to get at the need to achieve .
Analyzing Advertisements
When analyzing ads yourself for their emotional appeals, it takes a bit of practice to learn to ignore the product information (as well as one's own experience and feelings about the product) . But that skill comes soon enough, as does the ability to quickly sort out from all the non-product aspects of an ad the chief element which is the most striking, the most likely to snag attention first and penetrate brains furthest. The key to the appeal, this element usually presents itself centrally and forwardly to the reader or viewer .
Another clue : the viewing angle which the audience has on the ad's subjects is informative . If the subjects are photographed or filmed from below and thus are looking down at you much as the Green
Giant does, then the need to be guided is a good candidate for the ad's emotional appeal . If, on the other hand, the subjects are shot from above and appear deferential, as is often the case with children or female models, then other needs are being appealed to .
To figure out an ad's emotional appeal, it is wise to know (or have a good hunch about) who the targeted consumers are ; this can often be inferred from the magazine or television show it appears in . This
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28 9 piece of information is a great help in determining the appeal and in deciding between two different interpretations . For example, if an ad features a partially undressed female, this would typically signal one appeal for readers of Penthouse (need for sex) and another for readers of Cosmopolitan (need for attention) .
It would be convenient if every ad made just one appeal, were aimed at just one need . Unfortunately, things are often not that simple . A cigarette ad with a couple at the edge of a polo field is trying to hit both the need for affiliation and the need for prominence; depending on the attitude of the male, dominance could also be an ingredient in this . An ad for Chimere perfume incorporates two photos : in the top one the lady is being commanding at a business luncheon (need to dominate), but in the lower one she is being bussed (need for affiliation) . Better ads, however, seem to avoid being too diffused ; in the study of post-World War II advertising described earlier, appeals grew more focused as the decades passed .
As a rule of thumb, about sixty percent of ads make one paramount appeal ; roughly twenty percent have two conspicuous appeals ; the last twenty percent have three or more . Rather than looking for the greatest number of appeals, decoding ads is most productive when the loudest one or two appeals are discerned, since those are the appeals with the best chance of grabbing people's attention .
Finally, analyzing ads does not have to be a solo activity and probably should not be . The greater number of people there are involved, the better chance there is of transcending individual biases and discovering the essential emotional lure built into an advertisement
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Do They or Don't They?
Do the emotional appeals made in advertisements add up to the sinister manipulation of consumers?
It is clear that these ads work . Attention is caught, communication occurs between producers and consumers, and sales result . It turns out to be difficult to detail the exact relationship between a specific ad and a specific purchase, or even between a campaign and subsequent sales figures, because advertising is only one of a host of influences upon consumption . Yet no one is fooled by this lack of perfect proof; everyone knows that advertising sells . If this were not the case, then tight-fisted American businesses would not spend a total of fifty billion dollars annually on these messages .
But before anyone despairs that advertisers have our number to the extent that they can marshall us at will and march us like automatons to the check-out counters, we should recall the resiliency and obduracy of the American consumer. Advertisers may have
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Et cetera • FALL 1982 uncovered the softest spots in minds, but that does not mean they have found truly gaping apertures . There is no evidence that advertising can get people to do things contrary to their selfinterests.
Despite all the finesse of advertisements, and all the subtle emotional tugs, the public resists the vast majority of the petitions .
According to the marketing division of the A .C. Nielsen Company, a whopping seventy-five percent of all new products die within a year in the marketplace, the victims of consumer disinterest which no amount of advertising could overcome . The appeals in advertising may be the most captivating there are to be had, but they are not enough to entrap the wiley consumer .
The key to understanding the discrepancy between, on the one hand, the fact that advertising truly works, and, on the other, the fact that it hardly works, is to take into account the enormous numbers of people exposed to an ad . Modern-day communications permit an ad to be displayed to millions upon millions of individuals ; if the smallest fraction of that audience can be moved to buy the product, then the ad has been successful . When one percent of the people exposed to a television advertising campaign reach for their wallets, that could be one million sales, which may be enough to keep the product in production and the advertisements coming .
In arriving at an evenhanded judgment about advertisements and their emotional appeals, it is good to keep in mind that many of the purchases which might be credited to these ads are experienced as genuinely gratifying to the consumer . We sincerely like the good or service we have bought, and we may even like some of the emotional drapery that an ad suggests comes with it . It has sometimes been noted that the most avid students of advertisements are the people who have just bought the product ; they want to steep themselves in the associated imagery. This may be the reason that Americans, when polled, are not negative about advertising and do not disclose any sense of being misused . The volume of advertising may be an irritant, but the product information as well as the imaginative material in ads are partial compensation .
A productive understanding is that advertising messages involve costs and benefits at both ends of the communications channel. For those few ads which do make contact, the consumer surrenders a moment of time, has the lower brain curried, and receives notice of a product; the advertiser has given up money and has increased the chance of sales . In this sort of communications activity, neither party can be said to be the loser .