Uncover Why Your Advertising Works

The best ads pull a variety of triggers. That’s valuable because a prospective purchaser might respond to one appeal more intensely than to another. It’s also valuable because every prospect is more likely to purchase when there’s a bunch of triggers.
     Uncovering why your successful advertising works gives you tools for improving your marketing. Consumer behavior research can help reveal the true triggers.
     Researchers at University of Saskatchewan and Santa Clara University explored the appeal of macabre fashion ads. The researchers included a Jimmy Choo ad showing a woman pulling a purse out of a swimming pool in which it appears that a man’s corpse is floating and a Dolce & Gabbana ad portraying one woman skewering another in the neck.
     Such ads stop the consumer via shock. Another example from a few years ago was a pair of TV ads for the Volkswagen Jetta inspired by the car having garnered top safety scores in crash tests. In each ad, the view is from inside a Jetta when a truck crashes into the car so severely that the air bags inflate. The crashes were real, with stunt actors inside the cars. Volkswagen says the ad campaign caused shoppers to get more interested in buying a Jetta.
     The Saskatchewan/Santa Clara fashion ad researchers said there was more than shock value, though: The macabre images triggered storytelling in the viewers’ minds. Structured interviews with research participants revealed that once having been stopped in their tracks, the viewers asked themselves questions like “What is happening here?,” “What led up to this scene?,” and “What’s likely to happen next?” They spent more time contemplating the situation and so potentially thinking about the product.
     Knowing all this, you might decide to skip the shock and find other ways to stick your story to consumers.

For your profitability: Sell Well: What Really Moves Your Shoppers