Marketing communications specialists use a variety of appeals to accomplish their objectives. For example, informational appeals are often used to introduce a new product, or provide an update on brand enhancements, and emotional appeals are developed to make the viewer laugh or feel guilty. Sometimes advertisers are successful in achieving their intended objectives with a particular advertisement and sometimes they are not. Indeed, research has documented that there are no guarantees that the viewing audience actually feels the intended emotion associated with the appeal. For example, advertisers using a guilt appeal expect the audience to feel guilty, to have some feeling of failing at their own ideals or ethical principles but viewers do not always feel guilty.

In their research, Cotte, Coulter and Moore focused on two factors -- consumers’ evaluations of the advertisement’s credibility and the advertiser’s manipulative intent -- that can affect whether or not the advertiser accomplishes his or her objectives. Specifically using ads that are intended to make consumers feel guilty, these researchers explore what happens when consumers perceive the advertiser as ill-intentioned, as compared to when they believe an ad is perceived as credible and not manipulative.

Findings

Ad credibility and inferences of manipulative intent are negatively related: the more credible the ad, the less the consumer feels manipulated. In addition, as consumers infer more of a manipulative intent on the part of the marketer, they are less likely to feel guilty. In addition, as consumers perceive more manipulation, they are more likely to become angry. Further, the more credible the guilt ad, the more consumers feel guilty when they see the ad. If the ad is more credible, and is seen as less manipulative, then consumers have more favorable attitudes towards the ad and the company that sponsored the ad. The reverse is also true; more perceived manipulation results in negative attitudes towards the ad and the marketer.

This suggests consumers’ evaluations of ad credibility and advertiser motivations extend beyond simply how they respond to one given message; these evaluations impact subsequent attitudes toward the ad, attitudes toward the sponsor and corporate attributions. As such, advertisers need to walk a fine line between getting a message across and being perceived as overtly manipulative. Marketers need to use caution when selecting guilt-inducing tactics due to the negative effects of perceived manipulation and unfairness on attitudes towards the company.

Implications for Marketers

Marketers striving for effective uses of guilt appeals should focus on presenting viewers with messages that resonate with consumers’ experiences. More speculatively, marketers may also want to consider offering strategies for reducing guilt, such that consumers believe the claims, feel guilty, and act (by purchasing or following through with some other behavior) to alleviate the guilt, all without feeling overtly manipulated. However, an important caveat is that the more guilt tactics have been used in an industry, the higher will be the persuasion knowledge of most readers of the ad, and the less likely it is that the tactic will go unrecognized.

Guilt appeals that are perceived as containing well known manipulative tactics do not work; there will not be a congruency between the representation in the ad and the consumer’s response. In this era of increasingly market-savvy consumers, advertisers need to avoid well-known guilt tricks, and rather develop appeals that provide credible information in a non-manipulative way.

References

Cotte, June, Robin Coulter, and Melissa Moore (2005), “Enhancing or Disrupting Guilt: The Role of Ad Credibility and Manipulative Intent,” Journal of Business Research, 58 (3), 361-368.