The Impact of Persuasion

Four benefits of studying persuasion

The pervasiveness of persuasion More than $260 billion per

year is spent on advertising in the U.S. (Kardes, 2005)

The average person is exposed to 300-400 persuasive messages per day from the media alone (Rosseli, Skelly, & Mackie, 1995)

The average person watches 1,000 commercials per week (Berger, 2004)

An average of $800 per person is spent on advertising in the U.S. each year (Berger, 2004)

Obvious forms of persuasion

A 30 second spot for Super7Bowl XLIII costs $3 million for a 30 second spot.

Product placements in movies and TV amounted to $2.5 billion in 2005 (PQ Media).

Morgan (2005) “between 15-30 products are inserted in every half hour of television programming”.

Product placement on American Idol

Product Placement

http://www.brandchannel.com/brandcameo_films.asp

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Less obvious forms of influence

“buzz” marketing or “stealth” marketing: Based on word of mouth

endorsements two-thirds of all

consumer goods sales are now directly influenced by word-of-mouth (Middleton, 2001)

Endorsements are disguised as personal, spontaneous encounters with a product’s users

Relies on “product seeders” or trendsetters

•Ford gave trendsetters free cars and asked them to be seen in trendy places with them

Viral marketing in action YouTube’s staggering

popularity was not driven by commercial advertising

Marketers are scrambling to get onto MySpace.com and Facebook.com

Live Strong bracelets became an overnight fashion sensation

New media and persuasion

Texting, IM YouTube Facebook Myspace Twitter Digg Podcasting

Not so obvious contexts for persuasion science art architecture and

environmental design

traffic engineering

Picasso’s Guernica (art as persuasion)

Weird persuasion

The town of Clarke, Texas renamed itself Dish, Texas in exchange for 10 years of free satellite TV

GoldenPalace.com paid $25,000 for William Shatner’s kidney stone and $28,000 for a grilled cheese sandwich with an image of the Virgin Mary.

Pervasiveness of persuasion Anti-war persuasion:

Getting naked for peace Billboards Celebrity endorsers Infomercials Logos, insignia TV commercials

Merchandising Print ads Product placement Spam, pop-up ads Sponsorship Telemarketing Social media

1. the instrumental function

Learning about persuasion assists one in becoming a more effective persuader

The ability to persuade is one important dimension of communication competence Communication competence involves

acting in ways that are perceived as effective and appropriate (Spitzberg & Cupach, 1984)

the fact that you’ve been engaging in persuasion your whole life doesn’t mean you’ve been doing it as well as you can.

2. the knowledge function

Enquiring minds want to know Learning about persuasion increases one’s

understanding of how persuasion works, or “what makes it tick.”

Overcoming habitual persuasion: Individuals are often unaware of their own habitual, reflexive patterns of persuasion.

underlying social forces and rhetorical exigencies that give rise to persuasion

3. the defensive function

Learning about persuasion makes one a more savvy, discerning consumer of persuasive messages

One is less likely to succumb to telemarketers, infomercials, mail-order scams, and high pressure sales tactics.

study of persuasion can expose strategies, tactics, unethical approaches

4. the debunking function

Learning about persuasion helps to dispel folk-wisdom, false stereotypes, and outmoded concepts of how persuasion functions Example: gaze avoidance and deception

Persuasion research has yielded a host of non-obvious, counter-intuitive findings Example: logical-emotional dichotomy