THE IRRITATION PARADOX
Wiebe Heeres s2401320
Why this research topic?
› Irritating advertising campaigns yield positive effects for the advertising firms but it doesn’t seem intentional.
› Present-day advertising:
- Advertising is everywhere, it’s difficult to stand out from the clutter. - Half of all advertising uses a form of humor (Millward Brown 2013). › Research question:
Do irritating advertisements have higher advertising effectiveness than humorous advertisements, and is this effect mediated by
What do we know?
› Superiority of the pleasant (Silk and Vavra 1974). Classical
conditioning effect: like the ad, like the brand (Aaker and Bruzzone 1985).
› Law of extremes (Silk and Vavra 1974). Distinct positively and negatively valenced ads are more effective than neutral ones.
Could irritation be more effective? And why?
› Positive: more impact (Edell & Burke 1987; Stayman & Aaker 1988). Negative: better remembered (Fritz 1979), higher
information-processing depth (James and Kover 1992).
› Negativity bias (Baumeister et al. 2001; Rozin and Royzman 2001). Negative events have more impact and are more intensively processed than positive events.
› Current advertising landscape + negativity bias = higher effectiveness for irritating advertising over humorous advertising, with an
Research methodology
› Between-group experimental design, n=97.
› Manipulating type of advertisement: respondents saw either funny or irritating commercial
› Pretest and manipulation check. › Measures:
- Advertising effectiveness -> unaided claim recall.
Results
› H1 - Claim recall found to be significantly higher for the irritating commercial over the humorous commercial (T-test).
› H2 - Information-processing depth not significantly higher for the irritating commercial over the humorous commercial (T-test).
› H3 - Information-processing depth positively influences claim recall (Regression).
› H4 – Information-processing depth isn’t proved to mediate the
Conclusions and limitations
› Answering the research question:
Irritating advertisements indeed have higher advertising
effectiveness than humorous advertisements, but no proof is found that this effect is mediated by information-processing depth.
› Information-processing depth measure could be of influence. › Results only apply to people with higher education.
Implications
› Employing irritating elements in advertising can improve advertising effectiveness.
› Inducing information-processing depth can improve advertising effectiveness.
› Use caution: not only advertising effectiveness matters. Irritation may have consequences for other factors like brand attitude.
