Shock Advertisment

On the average day we are constantly bombarded with advertisements. The average student, in the middle of their week, will have experienced up to 10, 000 forms of advertising impressions. So many are passed over, ignored, and not even gazed upon for a few seconds of time. So many of those will have long been forgotten in two weeks time. That being said, in an effort for ads to become more memorable in our lives they have used: humor, fear, simplicity, bent imagery or headlines, creative concepts, direct appeals, showing benefits, and using informational ads.

One big attention grabber that some ads resort to is using Shock to their advantage.

An example of this is below.

Typical advertisements I’ve noticed that use shock to their advantage are ones that deal with prevention. Such as preventing smoking, preventing the use of drugs like heroin and meth, avoiding drinking and driving, avoiding texting while driving, and preventing very dangerous actions in general. Also ads that deal with societal issues such as: preventing anorexia, killing fetuses in the womb or an unborn child, preventing violence against women and sexual assault etc.

On these type of ads I would argue that showing something shocking to drive interest to the viewer is effective. It is more effective than simply pouring a lot of information about the topic on the ad. Having an affective concept that delivers some shock value with some added information and a message is an effective way of drawing the reader in, making the ad something they will remember for a while, and then altering their behavior on the subject.

There was a case study to find out of which 3 different advertising appeals (shock fear and informational) would be more effective for the effects on advertising attention, recall, and recognition in an HIV/AIDS prevention context. The case study stated “We found that as expected, the shock appeal outperformed the fear and information appeals on attention, recall and recognition. Importantly, our results showed that subjects felt the shock ad violated social norms and this interpretation was identified as the cause of heightened awareness for the shock appeal. The evidence to this point supports our contention that shocking ad content is superior to non-shocking content in its ability to attract attention and facilitate memory.” Rajesh V. Manchanda, Darren W. Dahl, and Kristina D. Frankenberger (2002) ,"Shocking Ads! Do They Work?", in NA - Advances in Consumer Research Volume 29, eds. Susan M. Broniarczyk and Kent Nakamoto, Valdosta, GA : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 230-231.

From this study shocking ads have a very good effect to grab our attention and make us remember the content of information, and understand it.

Although some shocking ads push the envelope and are not greeted warmly by their viewers. While some are remembered they don’t necessarily force us to change our behavior. A common example is the shocking informational ads on cigarette boxes. Some smokers see them and get very tired of looking at them, scratch them out, and don’t change their habits. Of course that is a form of addiction. Most shocking ads I just find a nuisance. Seeing them once is fine, but if you have to see them same ad on the bus again and again for a longer period of time the ad may have a reversing effect and you may just want to boycott the product or message because you are so fed up with it. I hope that we won’t end up with more shocking ads to grab our attention, most of them are gruesome and unpleasant. Only some are well executed and good to see.

Based on the execution of the ad the advertisement can give off a good message like this one.

Or a disturbing message like this one.

The message received in some shocking ads are either “OMG that’s wrong, I’ll just look away now” or “wow that’s so true” or just something puzzled and surprised such as “well I didn’t expect that!” in either case shocking do well to get the attention of the viewer but in my opinion do less good in persuading the reader to change, stop, or create a habit. Brands should use shocking ads sparingly in my opinion, I don’t want Ottawa to be littered with them! If the shocking ad will provoke negative publicity and buzz and news they are not worth the effort to put up.

What is the core feature of shock ads is the delivery of the message. Shock adverts should embrace the delivery of the message. However if that message confronts people’s sensitivities it should be careful and not go against what the majority of people are sensitive to. It is okay to be daring but at the same time it is not the responsibility of product ads to confront social views and political issues. Societal ads can touch on society’s way of thinking but should do it in a light way because if they don’t they would receive a lot of backslash, hate, and would hurt their brand. The envelope needs to be pushed a little bit at a time, not be torn apart by one crazy ad.