Advertising on Impulse
by Dick Dyer, APR

Recent news reports including the Editor of Advertising Age Magazine have caused many people who advertise to scratch their heads in amazement. Specifically, the editor said that the Federal Government’s attempt (through $1 billion in advertising) to get people to stop or not start using drugs failed miserably because “advertising does not affect impulse behavior.” Many of my clients have asked me to explain what he meant. The following is my response.

Many of you who have followed this column know that I refer often to the Diffusion Process Model, a body of research done in the ‘60’s to determine how behavior change occurs in people. The upshot of that research is that people, most of the time, talk to other people in their circle of friends and trusted advisors when they are trying to decide what to do or buy. One way communications tools, like advertising are important to the process, but they do not remain a huge factor in the decision-making time frame. This is especially true of impulse behaviors around drugs and sex. In other words, most people don’t stop to discuss safe sex during the height of sexual activity—they have to have been influenced long before the libido kicks in.

Here’s what advertising does do well in causing a person to change behavior or buy your product. Advertising makes people aware that your option or an option exists, it provides good basic information to affect the decision-making process and (this is very important) it reinforces where people already are. Without the benefit of advertising and the other one-way communications tools, people would not know that your option exists, or have good information about your benefits. In short, they would be left to the grapevine of people out there who have experienced your product or service—“word of mouth advertising.”

Word-of-mouth advertising is good, but it is not an exacting science and leaves lots to chance. A better approach is a targeted advertising campaign and a word-of-mouth strategy.

For example, federal health folks wanted to have greater impact on members of the gay community and their safe sex practices. In one city, Baltimore, they provided the traditional one-way communications devices regarding safe sex (brochures, letters, advertising in targeted publications, etc.) and they employed an opinion leader technique. Agents went into gay bars and other gathering places and identified opinion leaders and evoked them to help spread the good word about safe sex to their community. The net result was an immediate jump in safe sex practiced as witnessed by health tracking devices. This compared to cities where only safe-sex literature was utilized as part of the campaign.

Is there anyone out there in America who doesn’t know that smoking is unhealthy, that unprotected sex is dangerous or that drugs are harmful? It is no surprise that people deciding on those choices are doing so on impulse. When an admired friend is offering you that cigarrette, when the hormones are raging and the opportunity presents—you are acting on pure impulse. Impulse requires a stronger force to counteract the possessed pressures.

The Federal Government is not going to give up on the advertising just yet, they are going back to the older style of advertising—shock advertising. You know that form, the frying egg in the pan comparision to your brain on drugs, the Ohio State Police films on accidents promoting seatbelt, the tar filled picture of a human lung after smoking. Shock advertising tends to work because it forces our attention and the personalization of what is normally considered to be someone else’s problem. If you are young, you can’t possible get cancer or AIDS or any of those problems that other people get.

The point of all this is: Advertising works well, but when you get to higher level emotional decision making of the impulse type, you need to employ additional and equally strong techniques for changing or preventing undesirable behavior.

Dick Dyer operates his own public relations firm in Winthrop, Maine. He enjoys hearing from readers on column ideas and/or questions they would like pursued within this column. You can reach him by email dyerapr@fairpoint.net or by phone at (207) 512-2217.