Integrated Marketing Communication - Assignment Example

Integrated Marketing communication Outline 1. Introduction Selected advertisement Its details 2. Target audience Who the they are How they were communicated to by the advert 3. Communication Model 4. Persuasion theory What is it all about Types of persuasion Persuasion used If the advert was persuasive 5. Conclusion 6. Recommendations Introduction The selected advertisement is ‘Anti-smoking Ad:Smoking Causes Emphysema, Lung Cancer’ by the Ministry of Health under the following url: ‘http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaeJUCVEp2s&NR=1&feature=fvwp’. It is an anti-smoking campaign against smoking. It emphasizes that millions of people die every year from smoking. The advert is a 3D medical animation showing how smoking causes alveolar sacs to be enlarged and then thinned from emphysema as time moves on. Air is trapped in the lungs because the alveoli cannot contract and the smoker cannot breathe out effectively thus suffering from lung cancer. Target Audience The target audience is the current smokers and the non-smokers in case they may think of smoking one day. The advert communicates well to the target audience because it shows a reality of what takes place in the body when they someone smokes. The message is meant to persuade the smoker to stop smoking and non-smokers not attempt to smoke and to anyone receiving the message to pass it to other people about the consequences of smoking; contracting emphysema and lung cancer. Communication Model. In any communication there is a sender and a receiver as shown in the above diagram. In the case of the anti-smoking advert the sender is the Ministry of Health and the receiver is the target audience (the public: the smokers and those thinking of smoking). A sender and a receiver have different experiences, perception, ideas and so on. They experience, perceive and interpret things in different ways. In the anti-smoking advert the Ministry of Health may perceive the message to get the target audience to act immediately while the target audience may perceive the message as the interference of the Ministry of Health to prevent them from enjoying themselves (Chitty et al 2008). The communication objective of the sender (Ministry of Health) was to create awareness to the public about the dangers of smoking and its effects. For communication to take place there must be some kind of shared location for the sender and the receiver to meet and in this case the channel of communication. The Ministry of Health used Tv and social websites like YouTube to convey the message. The sender always has a message or meaning he or she would like to pass to the receiver whether conscious knowledge or subconscious (Mohan 1989). The message passed by the Ministry of Health is that smoking is not health for smokers and that they need to change immediately before emphysema and lung cancer attacks them. Any communication should have an outcome and this case the outcome is the change in behavior and attitude towards smoking (Trehan & Trehan, 2008). The advert creates fear in the audience by giving them a real picture of what happens immediately cigarette smoke is inhaled. The animation showing the enlargement and shrinking of alveolar sacs and traps in the lungs making it difficult to breath out is very scary. One can’t imagine the color of the lungs changes to dark color and looks ugly and picture his or her own lungs. Fear is used to pass the message that if the smokers don’t stop smoking something bad will happen to them; their lungs will be trapped and will have difficulties in breathing and thus contract lung cancer and emphysema. An effective fear appeal should be able to scare the hell out of people, provide a recommendation that is specific for overcoming the threat aroused, there is perception for recommended action to reduce threat and the recipients believe they can act on the recommended action (Walton, 2004). The fear appeal in the advert is effective because it scares the hell out of people, it gives a recommendation to beat the aroused threat which is cancer or emphysema, the recommended action (stop smoking) is effective in reducing the threat and the audience can believe they can be able to act on the recommended action. Fear appeal commercials hope to get smokers worry about their health in case they contract emphysema or lung cancer. It paints an ugly situation of consequences that are possible of not stopping the act and it points out that one needs to act immediately. The advert fear appeal paints an ugly picture of the results that may be received if the message recipients don’t stop smoking. The advert points out that they need to change before it is too late as their health is priceless. Communication outcome provides feedback in this case the receiver of the message reacts to advert and seeks more information from the sender. The smokers will react to the advert by seeking help and more information from the Ministry of Health and stop smoking (Chitty et al, 2008). Theory of persuasion Persuasion theory deals with messages aimed at changing the receiver’s’ attitudes subtly. According to Severin and Tankard (2001), one of the most basic forms of communication is persuasion. It is the process in which people’s minds are changed and are guided towards accepting some belief, behavior or attitude by using emotional or reasoning appeal. However persuasion is viewed as unethical as it is seen as a trick used to get people to purchase marketers products against their own will. Persuasion is an occurrence that is common regardless of whether an advertiser vies for an increase in sales of his products or an environmentalist organization convincing residents to concern the natural resources (Collins & O’Rouke, 2008). Sometimes people don’t know when they are persuaded because persuasion can either be a conscious or unconscious action. In persuasion, change in attitude is very important and though once can be persuaded through an argument made, it doesn’t mean he or she can practice what was heard. To change people’s attitudes towards things and situations the message sender should aim to change people’s behavior which is very important. The elements of persuasion process are controllable factors being message arguments and peripheral cues and uncontrollable factors being receiver involvement and initial position. Message arguments deal with the strength and quality of the message (Walton 2004). In most cases advertising fails to convince consumers because of so many brands that aren’t clearly differentiated and consumer emotions. The reputation and credibility of a communicator reinforces the persuasion theory. The level of acceptance of the message by the receiver or the level of perception of the receiver will be low if the communicator’s message is not reliable or not credible. A peripheral cue is another element that involves graphics, scenery and background music. It also determines the outcome of the persuasive effort. The receiver may like the music or be moved by the sceneries in the message and get convinced or they may think it is not credible. Another element of persuasion process is receiver involvement in which the marketing communication becomes relevant to a receiver and this determines the form of persuasion (Mohan, 1989). When consumers are involved, they become motivated to process the message arguments while those not involved may process only the peripheral cues. Elaboration Likelihood model (EL) divide consumers into involved and not involved consumers. Those involved process the message using thoughtfulness of a higher level known as central processing while those not involved use thoughtfulness that is lower known as peripheral processing. The difference between the top involved the level of attitude being changed due to active thinking. The final element in persuasion process is receiver’s initial position which deals with self-generated thoughts produced by persuasive efforts yielding results. The mental responses yielded could me supportive arguments and counter arguments The aim of persuasion in advertising is to alter consumer response to favor the brand. The two common types of persuasion used advertising are emotion-based persuasion and rational based persuasion. According to Stiff & Paul (2003), rational persuasion aims to shape, change and reinforce the response of the consumer through logical argument. This is achieved by communicating the products benefit to the consumers and relies on consumer benefits than the features of the products. Convincing proof is also another way of communicating rationally where it is based on the quote ‘seeing is believing’ (O’Shaughnessy and O’Shaughnessy, 2004). The commercials or advertisements take a form of demonstrating a product. Emotional appeal on the other hand is used to stir emotions that are either negative or positive that can motivate a customer to purchase the product. Emotional appeal uses shame, guilt and fear appeals to get people to do what they are supposed to do or to stop doing things they shouldn’t be doing. Positive appeals like pride, humor, love and joy can also be used (Kotler& Armstrong, 1994). The problem with emotional persuasion is that it is hard to measure though easier to measure rational persuasion as it is easier by asking customers if they feel more inclined to buy a certain product but asking them if they feel inclined to form a relationship with the product they may think you are out of your mind. The type of persuasion used in the anti-smoking advert is emotional appeal. Emotional appeal uses fear to stop smokers from smoking and prevent the non-smokers from smoking. The use of fear appeals influences people through persuasive messages. This is because they are used to threaten or arouse fear in an audience to kindle attitude change. In our advert example the 3D animation shows the expanding and then shrinking of alveolar sacs which traps the lungs and thus preventing effective breathing. The message is very persuasive as it arouses fear in the recipients and thus stimulates their attitude change towards smoking and changes their smoking behaviors. Fear appeals are used to sell products, promote hygiene, health, conservation of natural resources and so on. In this case in our advert example fear appeal has been used by the Ministry of Health to promote health. I found the advert convincing as it communicated to me emotionally. By watching the 3D animation I was able to picture what could happen inside my body in case I smoke. I imagined smoke entering my lungs, my alveolae sacs expanding and shrinking day by day and then at some point they stop moving and have difficulties in breathing. I could see myself being admitted to hospitals every now and then and my family looking helplessly having spent all the savings on my medication. In my imagination, I regretted ever smoking and wished I could change the situation. It was very scary even if it hadn’t happened to me in reality. In my sober mind the advert communicated to me and I am never going to smoke and I will explain what I watched to any other person I come across. According to LaTour, Snipes and Bliss (1996), fear appeals is used to associate negative behavior with negative effect or a positive behavior with a negative. For instance without brushing teeth cavities are formed and in the case of the anti-smoking advert, smoking leads to cancer and emphysema. In the anti-smoking advert the Ministry of Health associates smoking with contracting emphysema and lung cancer. Smoking is the negative behavior while emphysema and lung cancer are the negative effects. The Ministry of Health thus persuades the audience to avoid contracting emphysema and lung cancer by stopping smoking. Conclusion The advertisement ‘Anti-smoking Ad: Smoking Causes Emphysema, Lung Cancer’ by the Ministry of Health target smokers and non-smokers thinking of smoking. The advert is a 3D animation showing what happens in the body when smoke is inhaled. The alveolae sacs expand and shrink over time and eventually traps in the lungs thus become hard to breathe out. This leads to one contacting emphysema or lung cancer. The sender of the message is the Ministry of Health while the receivers are the smokers and non-smokers. The type of persuasion used is emotion-based persuasion which uses fear appeal to get the smokers to stop smoking to avoid the consequences from taking place. Recommendations Since it is the message has important message that concerns the health of citizens it could have been longer. The advert was very short less than 30 seconds and unless it is repeated after every twenty minutes the audience may not be able to receive it. It could have taken almost 45second to 1 minute in order to explain all the facts like what alveolae sacs are and what are their functions in the body and so on. Not everybody understands the biological language and they may need it explained in a layman’s language. The Ministry of Health could have used cancer and emphysema victims to explain how the situation is on the ground. Some hard hearted smokers may think the 3D animation is something created on the computer to scare them away from their pleasure and may not take the message seriously. But showing a smoker in bed talking about emphysema and lung cancer and how he regrets he could turn back time to do things the right way and urge the smokers to stop and the non-smokers not to engage in the smoking, and then the message would be more credible and believable. The use of an expert like a doctor would have made the message more credible. The doctor could be the executor of the message by explaining the 3D animation in details and use a layman’s language to make the audience understand better. A doctor would be seen attending to patients suffering from emphysema and lung cancer due to smoking and tell the audience that the same will happen to them if they don’t stop smoking. He could then proceed to explain what happens according to the 3D animation provided. The advert provides a solution to non-smokers but not to smokers. Smokers are already indulged in smoking and despite the fact that they are scared to go through what is in the advert; they may have difficulties in stopping despite their willingness. The message could provide a solution for non-smokers like ‘if stopping becomes difficult visit a rehabilitation center or a doctor’ and so on. This is to ensure that the audience takes action on the message conveyed. Reference Chitty, W., Barker, N., & Terence. (2008). Integrated Marketing Communication (2nd ed). Cengage Learning India Pvt Ltd Collins, D., S., & O’Rouke, S., J. (2008). Persuasion (2nd ed). Cengage Learning LaTour, M., Snipes, R, & Bliss, S. (1996). Don't be afraid to use fear appeals: An experimental study. Journal of Advertising Research, 36(2), 59-67. Mohan, M. (1989). Advertising Management: Concepts and Cases. Tata McGraw-Hill, pp 68-70 O’Guinn, T., Allen, C., & Semenik, J., R. (2008). 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