Effectiveness of Public Service Announcements

Ever since the start of commercial radio in the 20’s and the since the first silver screen entered the market, broadcasting messages by celebrities has been a tool employed to endorse products.”Just about every star was associated with one sponsor’s product he or she plugged.”(1). Over the years celebrity endorsement became an essential part of marketing (more than 25% of television ads feature celebrities)(5), for the endorser it became an easy way of generating an income while for the endorsing company it became a guaranteed way to reach a wide segment of potential clients.

This is a Public Service Announcement. There is a Tornado headed our way. The Warning will be from 7:00 am to 11:00 pm eastern time. The following Counties will be affected, Allegheny, Beaver, and Washington. Wind Gusts will be up to 65 mph. Please go to a safe area in your home (example, basement, bathroom, somewhere with no windows). You will need to take enough food and water to last you until the Warning is lifted. There is a strong possibility that you will lose power during this Tornado. If you have flashlights, batteries, and a radio please take these with you as well. If hit with the Tornado you could be severely injured by flying objects. Anything with gasoline in them could possibly explode. Medical Teams will have a

“People are more likely to pay attention to a TV commercial if one of their favorite players is talking, than they would be if the owner of the company was the star” (Miller). It is the association with the known and likeable character which may attract people to follow celebrity endorsements. It may also be the association with success which the athlete is characterizing. Whatever the case may be, Miller gives tips of what marketing companies look for before persuading a player with an endorsement:

Celebrity Endorsement is a form of brand or advertising that involves a well-known individual using their fame to help promote a product or service. The most common business users of products are manufactures of perfumes, and clothing. Some Techniques that are used are for example, television ads and launch event appearances.

Today, one can see the tactic of persuasion being used as a standard avenue to influence a person’s attitude or beliefs by presenting them with different messages that encourage things like using certain brand name products, vote a certain way, or where to take a vacation just to name a few. There are four types of people that include gullible people, skeptical people, firm believers, and people who are leaders who trust others as well as make others follow their ideas. Persuasion is a widespread topic of social psychology and may be done in different ways. There are two types of cognitive processes by which to persuade someone, which are the central route or the peripheral route. For this assignment I used mostly the central route approach as well as using a little of the peripheral route approach. To reinforce the peripheral route approach the use of pathos was also used during the video to play on the emotions of the watcher. This PowerPoint is effective at using the central route of persuasion, peripheral

Family references within messages have influenced me by tugging at my heartstrings with stories that are relatable. If a film, television show, or even a commercial for a product or charity uses a narrative that I can identify with through a personal experience, then it almost always seems to have a stronger emotional impact. This form of identification through a relatable narrative can be used as a form of persuasion. Kenneth Burke claims that identification is the simplest form of persuasion in his book, The Rhetoric of Motives. He also states that an audience becomes vulnerable to persuasion once they relate, understand, feel the same as, or share a common experience. This is especially true for me when I can identify with a family reference

A good way to spread awareness of LGMD would be to send representatives to high schools to speak in health classrooms about what LGMDs are and the toll they take on the person with the disease physically, mentally, emotionally.

Attitudes are evaluations of people, objects, and ideas. (Akert, 2013) Cognitively based attitudes are based on thoughts and beliefs one has about an object, and this attitude provides pros and cons of an object, so we can decide if we want to be associated with it or not. Affectively based attitudes are based more on people’s feelings and values than on their beliefs about the nature of an attitude object. (Akert, 2013) The elaboration likelihood model is the umbrella for this topic, because it explains the two ways in which persuasion can change someone attitude. The two ways are persuasion through the central route and the persuasion through the peripheral route. The elaboration likelihood model refers to processing the message which is related to the cognitively based attitudes. Persuasive communication is most successful in changing attitudes when going through the central route because the audience is motivated, whereas with the peripheral route the audience is not motivated. Now I am going to discuss the routes of persuasion through advertisements in detail.

Use of celebrities in advertising is no new concept, companies have used celebrities to sell everything from cars, to moisturizer. Celebrities, due to our consumerist and media based society, are the ideal salespeople. (Wright, 2015) PETA’s campaign team understands that celebrity can help sell products and put a spin on that marketing technique by using celebrity endorsement in order to sell their ideals, and a vegetarian/vegan lifestyle. Celebrity endorsement can help companies and non-profit organizations such as PETA to gain public recognition, and to make a strong impression on viewers and consumers, so that they will remember the product, or in PETA’s case, consumers will remember the ideals and advocacy that the organization is promoting. (Fleck, Korchia, & Le Roy, 2012) It’s also apparent that a celebrities attractiveness has something to do with it as well. Fleck, Korchia, and Le Roy also state that “A celebrity spokesperson's physical attractiveness has a positive impact on brand recall, attitude toward the brand and purchasing intent”

PSAs, or public service announcements, are sent out by government or local institutions to help reduce the number of incidents relating to a certain area. PSAs are often about public safety, covering issues like bicycling protection, anti-drinking and drugs, and car safety. One big issue that is given a lot of attention to by the Department of Transportation, highway safety, and police departments are distracted driving incidents that they believe can be stopped. PSA’s can help reduce the number of distracted driving incidents because if they are presented effectively, they can make the people think about their driving skills and habits, and make them think about it both out of driving, and while driving. However, many people believe that PSAs

Starting a new school year as a tenth grader, I thought there wouldn’t be any big changes but there was, and there is. My classes became slightly more difficult than they were last year, as a freshman. Which made it more challenging to keep up with all the class work, tests, quizzes, and homework. Although, most of the assignments assigned became a bit effortless, of course effort is needed but it’s just so simple to do. All of my classes balance between those two, being challenging at times but also being simple. I, like every other student was enrolled into a World History class. In History class, we were assigned a Public Service Announcement(PSA) just recently.

The elaboration likelihood model states that persuasion can be take two different routes, central or peripheral. The central route requires a person to think critically about the argument proposed, considering both its strengths and weaknesses, then to elaborate on relevant themes. Whereas, the peripheral route does refer to the attempts at persuasion, in which the change in attitude is a result associated with positive stimuli- popularity, an attractive model or a millionaire, which could be relevant to substance of the argument. Selling products by associating them with attractive models or either by promoting that the product will result in social benefits. This is the result of peripheral attitude change techniques. Chaiken’s (1995) study is closely linked to Petty and Capioppo (1986) distinction of the central and peripheral route of processing. Whereas, Chaiken (1995) identified that people systematically consider all aspects of a message given, or people can superficially rely on a heuristic such as thinking that either longer arguments or arguments including statistical figures/facts are more true. The study suggests that people are more likely to resort to heuristic processing if the have limited time in order to process the message or if they are in a positive mood. Differences between the elaboration likelihood model and the

Celebrity endorsement is a billion dollar industries today (Kambitsis et al., 2002) with companies signing deals with celebrities hoping that they can help them stand out from the clutter and give them a unique and relevant position in the mind of the consumer. According to Solomon (2002), the reasons for using celebrity endorsement involves its potential to create awareness, positive feelings towards their advertising and brand. Research has shown that celebrity endorsement can have an impact on the consumer’s attention, recall, evaluations and purchase intentions (Atkin and Block, 1993), Celebrity endorsement is a widely used tactic in marketing and much research

Furthermore there are other researches as well which suggest that the approach of using a celebrity to endorse a product can not be viewed as a general practice of using any celebrity for any product endorsement. Pornpitakpan (2003), while discussing match-up hypothesis, describes the results of a study by Erdogen et al (2001) which suggests that "British advertising agency managers considered various criteria like celebrity- target audience match, celebrity-product match, overall image of the celebrity, cost of hiring the celebrity, celebrity trustworthiness, controversy risk, celebrity familiarity, celebrity prior endorsements, celebrity likeability, risk of celebrity overshadowing the brands, celebrity expertise, celebrity profession and celebrity physical attractiveness". A match between the target market and the endorser is important for effectively transmitting right message to target audience. For example, the advertisements which are produced by Pepsi, are mostly targeted for youths and so the celebrity endorsers that they use in their advertisements are young personalities. The match up hypothesis goes true for the multiple celebrity advertising as well. A good example of this is the Pulse Polio campaign taken up in India to eradicate the polio

The central route to persuasion requires high efforts of processing which occurs through a complex structure, thus leads to longer lasting effects of persuasion. However, if an audience is lacking in motivation, in which they are not analytical or involved with the message they are more likely to take the peripheral route to persuasion. In this case, peripheral cues are used in which these cues trigger an acceptance of the messages thus leading to persuasion, which is usually a temporary effect [Myers et al 2016 p190-191].