The Role of Emotions and Perceived Ad Effectiveness: Evidence From the Truth FinishIt Campaign

Abstract

Purpose: Examine association between emotional valence and intensity prompted by anti-tobacco advertising messages and perceived ad effectiveness among youth/young adults. Design: Online forced-exposure survey data from a nationally weighted, cross-sectional sample of youth/young adults, collected periodically over a 4-year period. Setting: National. Participants: Thirty-seven cross-sectional surveys conducted online from June 2015 to January 2018; total N = 9534. All participants, aged 15 to 21, were in the intervention; no control group. Intervention: Individuals participating in premarket testing of truth ads were forced exposed to one of 37 anti-tobacco ads. Measures: Emotional response, emotional intensity, and perceived ad effectiveness. Emotional response has been previously studied and measured. Including the discrete measure of “concerned” in positive emotions is unique to our study. It patterned with the other positive emotions when each ad was examined by each emotion. Intensity as measured in this study through the 5-point scale (“how much does this ad make you feel”) is unique in the anti-tobacco ad literature. Although several past studies ranked the degree of emotion elicited by ads, they have not incorporated the intensity of emotion as reported by the participant themselves. The scale was used to determine whether perceived ad effectiveness is similar to those used in previous studies. Analysis: Linear regressions were estimated to assess type of emotional sentiment and level of intensity in relation to perceived effectiveness of the message. Results: All 9534 participants were exposed; no control group. The βs indicate how strongly the emotion variable influences the study outcome of perceived ad effectiveness. Positive emotions (β = .76) were more highly associated with perceived ad effectiveness (β = .06). Higher intensity with positive emotional sentiment and high-intensity negative produced the highest scores for perceived ad effectiveness (β = .30). Conclusion: Eliciting a positive, high-impact emotional response from viewers can help improve perceived effectiveness, and in turn, overall ad effectiveness.

Optimising tobacco control campaigns within a changing media landscape and among priority populations

“…Communications that increase confidence to quit and motivation to access cessation help could also contribute to quitting success,52 75 especially given the protective effect that quitting self-efficacy has in the first 3 months after a quit attempt 76 77. There is substantial room for further work exploring the potential of campaigns that aim to build hope, inspiration, self-efficacy and confidence,74 78 potentially leveraging the evidence regarding tobacco pack inserts 79–83. Research should explore whether campaigns can better motivate and sustain quit attempts by pairing or rotating strong negative health effects messages with messages that build self-efficacy 74 78 84…”

“…There is substantial room for further work exploring the potential of campaigns that aim to build hope, inspiration, self-efficacy and confidence,74 78 potentially leveraging the evidence regarding tobacco pack inserts 79–83. Research should explore whether campaigns can better motivate and sustain quit attempts by pairing or rotating strong negative health effects messages with messages that build self-efficacy 74 78 84…”

Perceived communication effectiveness in implementation strategies: a measurement scale

“…PME is “an estimate of the degree to which a persuasive message will be favorably evaluated—in terms of its persuasive potential—by recipients of that message” [ 10 ]. PME has been widely used in communication interventions, both as a tool to assess message potential in formative research [ 10 , 11 ] and as a surveillance device to monitor audience receptivity during campaign implementation [ 12 , 13 ].…”

Perceived Message Effectiveness and Campaign-Targeted Beliefs: Evidence of Reciprocal Effects in Youth Tobacco Prevention

“…The general idea is that PE would offer a useful indicator of candidate messages' eventual ability to bring about the intended campaign outcomes once they are placed into the market. Based on the same logic, PE measures have also been used by campaigns to monitor audience receptivity to already-deployed messages in order to detect unforeseen problems and enable mid-campaign adjustments (Duke et al, 2015;Rath et al, 2019).…”

“…Perceived message effectiveness (PE) has been widely used in campaign research, both as a tool to assess message potential in formative research (Dillard, Weber et al, 2007;Fishbein et al, 2002), and as a surveillance device to monitor audience receptivity during campaign implementation (Duke et al, 2015;Rath et al, 2019). The last few years have seen a surge of interest in this concept and its application, leading to increased awareness of some important gaps in the literature (Noar, Bell et al, 2018;O'Keefe, 2018aO'Keefe, , 2020Yzer et al, 2015).…”