Friday Research: Mirror Mirror on The Wall, Who is The Most Useful of Them All?

When Will You Use This?  

Planning and creating your advertisements.

What’s The Red-Letter Bite Today? 

Today’s ads are bursting with pictures and visual stimulus. Which ones are more effective?

Current research* investigates the conditions under which presenting a person versus a product picture is more advantageous.

The study reveals that consumers’ appearance self-esteem affects how they evaluate ads for cosmetics products; and their academic self-esteem matters for how they respond to ads for educational services. As authors say, “an ad depicting an attractive model (instead of the product) is preferred by people who like their own appearance (consumers with high appearance self-esteem). On the other hand, an ad using a picture of the product (instead of a picture of a model) is preferred by people who do not have a high evaluation of their appearance (consumers with low appearance self-esteem). We also demonstrate that, those who dislike their appearance have more difficulty imagining themselves as turning into the beauty represented by the model in the picture even if they use the product, and this difficulty backfires on attitudes towards the ad.”

Wink Wink: only effective for ladies with high self esteem?

Addition To Your Bag of Tricks    

 

Following this research, there s specifically one thing to remember: you should consider your target audience’s self-esteem level when making design choices. It's advised to use pictures of the product when targeting consumers with low self-esteem in relation to the category. However, when targeting consumers with high self-esteem, use pictures of people who possess desirable characteristics (for example, attractiveness).

*Nilüfer Z. Aydınoğlu, Luca Cian.Show me the product, show me the model: Effect of picture type on attitudes toward advertising, Journal of Consumer Psychology 01/2014. {Thanks for the material}

P.S. When you’re done reading, I’d love for you to share your experience with triggering unconscious mind of your customers? Leave a comment or Tweet me, let's chat!

P.P.S. Need some help on crafting your marketing message? Let's do this together.