Compliance Gaining
is a vital part of advertising in today’s media driven world. Compliance
gaining strategies are organized into five basic types, rewarding activity,
punishing activity, expertise, activation of impersonal commitments, and
activation of personal commitments. Advertising uses each and every one of
these tactics to reach specific target audiences, promote activity and
ultimately purchase.
Rewarding is the
most common strategy used in advertising. Whether a product is offering
comfort, happiness, instant results or reliability the advertiser is presenting
a reward for the consumer when they try the product. Essentially the advertiser
is promising the consumer a benefit for using that product. Rewarding activity
involves obtaining compliance in a positive way. An example of rewarding their
customer by using positive images is shown in the Reebok Reetone Easytone Shoe
ad. Reebok offers a reward to buying their new tone up shoe and guarantees that
you will see results in your legs, calves, and buttocks after wearing them for
a certain amount of time.
Although you tend
to see positive advertisements more so than negative ones, this doesn’t mean
that the second tactic isn’t used. In fact negative advertisements tend to be
the ones that people pay attention to the most. The Punishing Activity tactic could
be seen in todays advertising world as ads we call shock ads or shockvertising.
Shock Ads tend to use vulgar images or sayings to frighten or even offend its
audience by disrupting social norms and ideas. Shockvertising purposefully
places ads to grab people’s attention and make a statement. It was proven that
shocking content in advertisements drastically increased attention of the
audience, made them remember the ad, and positively influenced their behavior. These
may come off negatively and even as a punishment. Many times public service announcements,
AIDS awareness, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, and anti smoking advertisements
use shockvertising as a way to insure that their audience hears and feels the
message. Some of the most well known supporters of shock advertising is PeTA (People for the Ethical
Treatment of Animals), WWF(The World Wide Fund for Nature), and United Colors of Benetton.
Another popular
form of compliance gaining used in multiple advertisements today is Expertise.
The Expertise tactic involves efforts to make their target audience believe
that the persuader has some special knowledge or credibility. This is used
immensely in skin, healthcare, cosmetics, and hair products. The infamous
“dermatologist recommended or nine out of ten doctors prescribed this brand
over the rest” statements are perfect examples of agencies using credibility as
their main attraction to a product. There are countless television commercials
with actors dressing up as doctors in order to appear credible when referring a
certain product. Colgate, Neutrogena, Tresemmé, Aleve, and Bayer use prime examples of
the Expertise compliance gaining tactics.
The activation of
impersonal commitments strategy includes an effort to engage a target
audience’s internalized commitments such as telling the audience that he/she
will feel bad about him/herself if he/she does not comply. An example of this
would be a healthy food companies or weight loss brands that promotes their
product or company by saying it is guilt free, implying that you won’t feel bad
about yourself after eating it. This is
also found in gym or fitness companies advertisements, they suggest you will
feel better about yourself after joining/going through their programs. Common
activation of impersonal commitment companies includes Yoplait, All Natural
Popchips, Jenny Craig, Weight-Watchers, Subway and many more.
The final
compliance-gaining strategy is activation of personal commitments. This relies
on triggering a person’s commitment to others. The feeling of being indebted to
someone or something is often used to make the person or target audience comply
to repay the favor. Advertisements that suggest that you owe something to
someone use guilt as a way to promote their brand. Anti-Smoking ads often state
that you owe it to your children or peers to quit smoking. Anti-Abortion
advertisements often use this tactic as well. Even college or university
advertisements use activation of personal commitments to your family or
children to earn a degree to better their lives. Navy, Air Force, Army,
Marines, and Coast Guard “Support Our Troops” advertisements may also use this
tactic when saying “freedom is never free”.
Whether you are
aware of it or not almost every advertisement is trying to persuade you in one
way or another, using various techniques such as those found by Marwell and
Schmitt’s Compliance-Gaining tactics. I have gone through and revised a few of
Marwell and Schmitt’s “How You Might Get Your Teenager to Study” examples with
some that an advertising agency might use to try and get their target audience
to buy a product.
Promise: If you comply, I will reward you. For example, if you buy
this product we guarantee that you will be satisfied or we will give you your
money back.
Threat: If you do not comply, you will regret it. This is the next
big “thing” but only for a limited time. Get it while you can.
Expertise (Positive): If you comply, you will be rewarded because
of the “nature of things”. For example if an advertisement for a college says
that their graduates make an average of 6 thousand dollars more a month than
the other college in town.
Expertise (negative): If you do not comply, you will be punished
because of the “nature of things” A commercial advertisement or public service
announcement for The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s anti-smoking
campaign might show a previous lung/throat cancer patient who has to talk
through a machine. Showing this negative experience through someone who is seen
as an expert in the situation might push some of the audience members to comply
to take steps to quit smoking. Essentially stating that if you don’t quit you
will end up like me and will be punished in the long run.
Liking: Acting friendly and helpful to get the customer in a good
mood or “good frame of mind” so that they may comply to the message of the
advertisement. This may be used more in television commercials when they show a
group of people who seem happy and friendly and then later they show their
product. An ad for liberty mutual showed no logo until the last second after a
long five minute advertisement on giving a little to get a little. They showed
people being friendly and going out of their way to do random acts of kindness
for complete strangers that turned into the message being if you give a little
now someone will have your back when you need it most. Showing friendly clips
might make the audience comply with Liberty Mutual’s message.
Pregiving: When a company sends out a free coupon or a
complimentary service they are then expecting the consumer to come into their
business or store and look into their products.
Compliance
Gaining is everywhere in the advertising world today the most effective ads
were put together to trigger certain emotions and provoke purchases or
compliance within their company. Being aware of these tactics might make you
take a step back and reevaluate what you comply with and what you resist.
Refrences:
Dahl, Darren W. et al. "Does it
pay to shock? Reactions to Shocking and Nonshocking Advertising Content among
University Students" Journal of Advertising Research 43 (2003):
268-280. Page 268, Retrieved January 22, 2008
Marwell, Gerald, and David R. Schmitt. "Dimensions of
compliance-gaining behavior: An empirical analysis." Sociometry
(1967): 350-364.
