Evaluating Health Campaigns with the Communication-Persuasion Matrix

In this report it will investigate at least three recent health education campaigns and use them to explain two models of behaviour change. The three recent health education campaigns will be ‘Smoke Free’, ‘Change4Life’ and ‘FRANK’. The two models of behaviour change will be the theory of reasoned action and the stages of change model.

Often pictures can convey a stronger and more appealing message than a speech. With this in mind, the Centers for Disease Control advertising campaign promoted the importance of getting flu shots effectively through their visual media advertisements. Visual media can be evaluated through many factors. For instance, this type of media uses certain techniques to appeal to their audience: association, bandwagon, universal appeal, and flattery. The Centers for Disease Control's flue vaccine advertising campaign uses many appealing persuasive techniques to convey that getting vaccinated is beneficial.

Advertising is a complicated form of marketing, it’s almost like an art form. One must be acutely aware of their audience and what captures their attention, otherwise the advertisement will fall flat. There is a myriad of different ways to lure consumers into buying a product; for example, the Center for Disease Control’s (CDC) managed through a series of advertisements to convince individuals of the importance in getting a vaccination for the influenza virus. It was applied using multiple techniques, namely the methods of universal appeal and association. These techniques helped the CDC to effectively promotes the flu vaccine and get their message across to a wide range of people.

The use of effective persuasion techniques will not only the marketing and sales personnel to make more sales and meet the targets but also enable them to have an edge over the competitive environment. So of the techniques used in the commercial video from state farm insurance company on one hand show an effective means of communicating to convince the audience while on the other hand, the video is too complex to comprehend for an a normal and uneducated citizen. Here are some of the effective persuasion techniques that have been used in the commercial to reach out and convince their target audience to use and stick to the company’s insurance services. Moreover, these techniques are aimed at making the incumbent customers to become more loyal to State Farm insurance. According to Petty, Richard and Cacioppo (1984), there are two routes effective persuasion no matter the kind of media used to deliver the message to the audience. First, one can persuade effectively by building a central argument(s) in the message. Secondly, the persuader can effectively deliver the message to his or her target audience by trying to appeal to the audience by associating the message with what they can accept favorably. Usually, the favorable peripheral cues in the message lures the

When people see or hear advertisements, whether it be in a magazine or on television, many do not stop to consider or analyze the techniques that go into making the advertisement effective. For instance, the Center for Disease Control has a campaign that has the purpose of promoting the influenza vaccination. If you examine the campaign closely, it becomes clear that the advertising campaign targets a diverse audience of all ages, genders, and races who could all benefit from getting an influenza vaccination. In this advertisement campaign, the Center for Disease Control effectively promotes the benefits of getting an influenza vaccination to a targeted audience using numerous persuasive techniques such as association and universal appeal.

The CDC's ad campaign promoting influenza vaccinations has a widespread appeal to many audiences due to its use of several proven persuasive techniques. Through the use of association, flattery, and universal appeal, as well as a variety of strategies, the ad campaign is highly convincing and is able to reach many audiences.

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

If it has been identified that the central route of persuasion on an audience is necessary due to high relevance to the persuasive message, this gives the persuader a framework to begin crafting a strong argument. Since relevance is what captures the audience’s attention, the persuader must exploit this. For example, if the persuader is attempting to sell a car to an individual the the use of the central route, and the potential buyer has been categorized as one that clearly understands the relevance of the purchase, the persuader should do his or her best to make their product seem the most relevant to the customer. The seller may do this by asking the customer to visualize how happy they will be in their new car. This can also be done by highlighting the features of the car that are most applicable to the customer’s concerns (safety, high gas mileage, etc). These methods will invite the receiver to become more involved with the target of persuasion. All of these ways utilize the customer’s judgment of high relevance to the situation to construct a strong argument.

There is little evidence that persuasion can be effective because subjects do not integrate the information into their own belief system. The experiment was designed to test the relative importance of attribution versus persuasive manipulations by comparing persuasion treatment with an attribution treatment. The persuasion techniques were designed to be maximally effective by using a credible source delivering a repeated message stating the benefits of change. The attribution techniques were designed to be maximally

In order to attract a specific demographic, advertisement companies employ diverse methods of persuasion. Corporations such as Wendy’s hire advertisement agencies for their expertise in how to attract target audiences to their products. Wendy’s advertisement campaign for ‘Where’s the Beef?’ integrates a few different methods of persuasion; credibility, similarity with the target, and likeability. Wendy’s is trying to entice the 16-40 age demographic of Americans. By incorporating these methods of persuasion to attract the aforementioned target age demographic, Wendy’s is anticipating to attract new customers, consequently increasing profitability.

Advertising is a form of communication used to encourage or persuade an audience to continue or take some new action. But when advertisers produce an ad, they have many different variables that come into play if they want to successfully persuade consumers. The first most important step they have to figure out is, what type of audience they are trying to target. They then create images and intend to appeal specifically to the values, hopes, and desires of that particular audience. This is why someone would rather pick the well-known Malboro cowboy ads over the new female cigarettes of Virginia Slims. Each of these ads targets a specific audience;

Cohen, E. L., Shumate, M. D., & Gold, A. (2007). Original: anti-smoking media campaign messages: theory and practice. Health Communication, 22(2), 91-102.

The 25 minute Magic Bullet infomercial is full of persuasion in many aspects. Throughout my paper I will highlight how the commercial uses Ranks Model of Persuasion, starting with the intensify and downplay strategies that I observed from watching the Magic Bullet Commercial. The strategies and tactics that the persuaders used worked well, by the end of the commercial I wanted the product they advertised. Throughout my paper I will go more in depth to Rank’s Model of persuasion by analyzing, explaining, and providing examples from the Magic Bullet infomercial. There are two main strategies of Rank’s model, intensify and downplay.

Petty and Cacioppo (1981) have developed the elaboration likelihood model of persuasion which explains the peripheral route to persuasion and the central route. In the peripheral route, persuasive influences are more tangential to the issues at hand. For egg- in a PSA targeted against smoking in youth, the peripheral route will show the teenagers having a better sex life after quitting smoking. (William G. Shadel, January 2009) Central processing occurs when the person at hand is aware about the main message of the PSA and is motivated to consider its content. We will analyze the use of celebrities for both these routes of persuasion and try to find out the effectiveness in each case.

Social psychologists have not only studied the effects of persuasion, but also the elements that contribute to attitude change. Carl Hovland (1953) developed the Hovland-Yale model of persuasion, in which he used a research team from Yale University. They found that there are a considerable number of factors that can influence how likely attitude changes are to occur, however they also noticed that some are more important than others [McGuire et al 1996]. One of the key factors they found that determines whether persuasion occurs is the communicator. Social psychologists have found that persuasion can be influenced depending about who is presenting the argument, which can impact on how an audience receives it. The credibility of the communicator plays a large role in influencing persuasion, in which