Psychology of Advertising: Sesame Street Turns to Online Spice

Saturday, October 9, 2010

Sesame Street Turns to Online Spice

Sesame Street went viral on Friday.

Parodies of popular video ideas can be productive ways to hitchhike on the success of others. In this parody of the the highly successful Old Spice commercial that also went viral, Sesame Street shows strategic and creative smarts.

Of course the audience is parents, not children. The video reminds them of the joyful experience that is Sesame Street and points vividly to its qualities as a teacher of children. It also teaches us that Sesame Street is online.

This viral commercial is "Spot ON."

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Important Readings For You

Eighmey's journal articles on Internet advertising place him among the 10 most widely cited on the subject. His path-making article "Profiling User Responses to Commercial Websites" (see Journal of Advertising Research, March 1997) has been cited in more than 783 scholarly articles and books.

For a conceptual and data-driven analysis of youth values and the propensity to act on values, read Eighmey's article "Why Do Youth Enlist? Identification of Underlying Themes" in Armed Forces & Society, Vol. 32, No. 2, (January, 2006).

Read "Harlow Gale and the Origins of the Psychology of Advertising" in the Journal of Advertising, December 2007 for historical perspective.

For the big picture read "The Psychology of Persuasion: Perspectives for Theory, Research and Application in a Diverse World." A book co-authored with Osei Appiah and published by Cognella, 2011.

For 450 print ads that bring to life Advertising and American History, scroll down to the link featuring the original ad for Oreo cookies. Why not check out all the other links, too.