Introduction
An advertising appeal is a method that uses a type of message intended to influence the way the consumer responds to what is being sold. In order to reach the consumer, the right appeal needs to be used, and that is based on the objective of the campaign and the type of consumer being targeted. Irrespective of what product or service we are marketing, it’s important to understand your audience and understand what inspires them. The following seven appeals are the most common strategies advertisers use to reach their target audience and motivate them to buy.
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1. Emotional appeals
Emotional appeals are the best collective appeals used by marketers. This type of appeal targets a consumer’s emotions and influences consumer involvement. Anytime a marketer can get a consumer to categorize with the situation, especially through emotion, the percentage of conversion (purchase) increases dramatically. Emotional appeal also includes
- Personal appeal: focused on emotions centred around the need for love, joy, self-esteem, happiness, safety, and family well-being
- Social appeal: focused on the individual need for recognition, respect, involvement, affiliation, and status
- Fear appeal: focused on individual needs based on fears… fear of loss of health, safety, and beauty
- Humour appeal: It is proven that “humour” sells because attention, association, and memory recall are improved through an engaging humorous message.
2. Sex appeals
Sex exercises the strongest effect on consumer attitudes among seven different appeals commonly used in advertising. Sex appeal has been used for so many years by marketers to capture the attention of the sexes. An advantage of using sex appeal is proven to break through clutter. If your advertising in a busy time slot using sex appeals will help the ad get noticed, this helps in increasing brand recognition. The disadvantage of sex appeal is that it can be challenging and may cause negative reactions with different cultures.
3. Humour Appeals
Humour is a proven appeal type for grabbing attention and keeping it. When consumers find something humorous, it has value because it causes them to watch, laugh, and, most importantly, remember. By capturing the viewer’s attention, humour appeals cut through advertising clutter and allow for enhanced recall and improved moods; consumers who are happy associate the good mood with the product and service. E-Trade’s talking baby ad campaign provides an example of this appeal, with the goal of attracting viewer attention through humour. However, humorous ads can be tricky to design because those that aren’t received well result in only the ad being remembered, rather than the product or brand.
4. Fear appeals
Fear can appeal to people when a product or service is needed to help reduce risk in someone’s life, such as risk of financial failure, poor health issues, security of losing a home, and even political choices. The emotion of fear can be used effectively as long as it is not to extreme or harsh, which may ultimately affect your brand. Therefore, caution is in order. Think of BCAA Life Insurance’s “How would they get by without you?” campaign.
5. Rational appeal
Rational appeal aims to focus on the individual’s functional, utilitarian, or practical needs for particular products and services. Emphasize the characteristics and features of the product and the service and how it would be beneficial to own or use the particular brand. Rational appeals use logic, facts, and data to convince consumers to buy products and are often found in advertisements for medications, cookware, and cleaning products.
6. Music appeal
Music in advertising refers to music integrated in (mass) electronic media advertisements in order to enhance its success. Music in advertising affects the way viewers perceive the brand by different means and on different levels and “can significantly affect the emotional response to television commercials.” In advertising, “music can serve the overall promotional goals in one or more of several capacities.”
David Huron came up with six primary categories, which include: entertainment, structure and continuity, memorability, lyrical language, targeting, and authority establishment. Being able to use music in advertising has made advertisements more enticing and attention-getting for the audience. Fifteen seconds is currently the standard duration of a television commercial so advertisers need to be able to successfully grab their audience’s attention, which music does.
7. Scarcity appeal
“Majority of stock sold!” “Nearly sold out!” Are you getting nervous by seeing these kinds of phrases in advertisements? Do you feel like that you have to buy this product? Scarcity is based on limitations. A scarcity appeal is often used with fear appeals to help in affecting customers by missing out on a potential event. The advantage of scarcity appeal is that it is great for encouraging users to take action. The disadvantage of scarcity appeals is that they must be genuine to consumers; otherwise, they will induce negative attitudes towards the brand.
