Behaviour Change

PROPAGANDA FOR CHANGE is a project created by the students of Behaviour Change (ps359) and Professor Thomas Hills @thomhills at the Psychology Department of the University of Warwick. This work was supported by funding from Warwick's Institute for Advanced Teaching and Learning.

Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Template ads: Caribu chocolate and DHL.







These images are 2009 adverts for Peruvian bitter-chocolate brand Caribu with the tagline, "The Dark Side of Sweetness.".

Both ads show little girls performing unexpectedly sinister tasks once having eaten the chocolate. Quite literally, they are the 'sweet' element of the picture whilst their acts are 'dark'. It makes use of the extreme consequences template as explained by Goldenberg et.al whereby once having consumed the product, "the absurdity of the consequence, even though presented in a serious manner, is eminently obvious to the viewer." (p.341) . One would not expect such innocent-looking young girls to attempt poisoning a friend at a pretend tea-party or put a chick in a meat-grinder to use its meat in her play-kitchen. 

However whilst the advert insinuates that their chocolate brings out a person's unexpected side, marketing itself as mysterious and so-good-that-its-actually-bad, I feel the advert does more harm than good for its product as nobody's appetite is particularly triggered upon seeing the gruesome insides of a baby animal.





This DHL advert uses the Interactive Experiment Template employing a transparent page with a delivery-man printed on it who transports the package between two customers. The increased engagement of the audience with the product's 'journey' to and from customers is an inventive advertising technique making for a memorable ad.

References:
- Goldenberg, J., Mazursky, D., & Solomon, S. (1999). The fundamental templates of quality ads. Marketing science, 18, 333-351. 




2 comments:

  1. Sorry Thomas, I've just had a scroll and realised the DHL one has been posted before, apologies!

    ReplyDelete
  2. no worries. This is good stuff. Thanks for contributing it.

    ReplyDelete

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