You might have seen and heard many ads that urge you to quit smoking. Some may scare you, others may disgust you, and some may not have any effect at all. There are some which might even want to make you feel like having a cigarette!!! What is so different in these quit smoking ads that makes our reactions to them so varied? Why is it that some anti-smoking ads are effective and others are not? Some recent research findings might be able to shed some light on this subject.
Quit smoking ads — Why some ads work and some don’t
There have been many surveys and researches that have been done on quit smoking ads in recent times. A research study done by the PRIME lab at the University of Missouri sheds some light on this. This study is an attempt at analyzing why different ads evoke different reactions.
In this study, researchers looked at those ads that attempt to scare or disgust or evoke both these emotions in viewers. The result of this study gave some insight as to why these ads evoked varied emotions in the viewers. This study was carried out with the help of an experiment that involved 58 subjects who were made to watch videos of the three above mentioned types.
When subjects were made to watch ads that attempted to scare or disgust the viewer with images and messages, the viewers seemed to react in a desirable way. They either felt scared or disgusted and seemed more likely to change their smoking behavior. But when fear and disgust were combined in a single ad, it became too much of a stimulation. Subjects seemed to find it very noxious and some even had an urge to smoke to overcome this feeling.
Another study was recently released by the University of Georgia. This study too was an attempt to analyze why different quit smoking ads had different effects on the viewers. They,however, came out with a different explanation for the same. This study was more concentrated on reactions of youth.
They analyzed various anti-smoking adverts and viewers’ reactions to them. They found a pattern in the way viewers reacted to various ads. If a particular advertisement had a tone that gave the viewer an impression that their friends were listening to those ads and were being affected by them, the viewers were more likely to be affected by these ads. This agrees with the fact that youth, especially adolescents, were more likely to listen to their friends than anyone else.
On the other hand, if the ads did not give such an impression to the viewers, they were more likely to act rebellious and become more curious about smoking. The more youth saw ads that asked them not to smoke, the more they had an urge to do so. Their reactions were greatly affected by their perception of what their friends thought of these ads. If they felt that their friends were affected by these ads, they were more likely to reduce their smoking habit. But if they believed that their friends were not affected, they were more likely to take up smoking even more.
Although we have a long way to go in understanding the varied emotions and reactions these ads evoke in viewers, these studies give us a fair idea of how these ads can be made more effective.