Psychology of Advertising: March 2011

Friday, March 11, 2011

Advertising and Polydactyl Cats

Polydactyl cats have a genetic mutation that gives them more than the usual number of toes on their paws.

What if the extra toes became opposable thumbs?

Would these cats turn pages of books and begin to read?

And, would they begin opening milk bottles for themselves?

In the past week, this commercial for Cravendale Milk has garnered over 1 million YouTube viewers.

It directs viewers to become followers and learn more at The Milk Matters website.

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Creating Creativity

Easter is just around the corner, four weeks away. This means we will be seeing Cadbury's annual delightful mixed metaphor advertising of rabbits, eggs, and chocolate.

It all started, once upon a time, in the magical creative department of Young & Rubicam, New York.

This early 1980s commercial was the first of the "clucking bunnies."

It demonstrates a fundamental principle of creativity. You can't have a new idea, if you only have one idea. It is the collision of metaphors that gives this work its enduring charm and meaning.

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.