Advertising is constantly faced with many controversial issues due to its diverse nature and

possible uses. It is said to have a profound effect on society. Some argue that it makes
people buy what they don’t really want (Thomas, 1967), and some say it promotes
materialism and takes advantage of human frailties (Jobber, 2007). The regulation in late
1997 by the Office of Communications (OFCOM) preventing the advertising of foods high in
fat, salt, and sugar in children’s programming in a move to address obesity in children
(White, 2008) is one of the examples of recent issues advertising is facing.

Advertising is assumed to have the power to persuade people or make them change their
attitudes, perception or behaviour. This ability has therefore been utilised in various creative
ways such as in anti-smoking campaigns, seat-belt campaigns, among others.

With today’s very competitive business environment, companies are paying more attention to
the advantages and leverage that advertising can give them. Advertising is seen as the
locomotive of business without which a business is doomed for failure (Davis, 2000).
Advertising is capable of achieving different types of effects for a company in the short,
medium and long term, it could have an effect on sales within a week of exposure or over the
course of a year and it could also have an effect on a brand beyond a year and into the future
respectively (Butterfield, 1999). One need to bear in mind that advertising is not exclusive to
companies that are profit-oriented, non-profit agencies (charity organizations, Hospitals,
Churches) also employ the service of advertising to reach their various stakeholders. An
example will be NHS advert placement on Yahoo (Yahoo, 2008).

Different clients use advertising for different purposes i.e. not all advertising has the same
objective. William et. al. (2003) summarizes advertising intent to be to change perception,
increase learning (inform), persuade or to change behaviour. An advert however may include
all or some of these objectives.

Considering the media landscape of today in light of increasing technology, advertising

clutter has increased to a level never seen before. We are daily faced with about 4000
messages a day (Staines, 2008). This clutter has become a great challenge for advertisers as
they struggle to get their message through to their audience. The ads must not only be able to
get through to the audience but it has to be captivating enough to hold viewers attention and
elicit positive response.

~1~
This has been the basis for why advertisers are trying to ensure that their ads are likeable.
The element of likability in the ads is assumed to help prevent the ad from been screened out
as their target audience engages in selective perception in order to cope with the ever growing
advertising clutter they are faced with (McDonalds, 1993).

To deviate a little bit, the degree of today’s advertising clutter has given rise to ingenious
strategies such as guerrilla marketing and product or brand placements (Balasubramanian,
1994 cited in Nelson, 2008) (in movies, television shows or series and in video games).
Advertisers use supraliminal messages (non-conscious influences) (Kaikati and Kaikati, 2004
cited in Nelson, 2008) to break pass viewers conscious defenses to avoid the possibility of
being zapped (Rojas-Méndez José et. al., 2008). An example is the placement of Aston
Martin DBS, Ford Ka, Smirnoff vodka and Coca-cola Zero Zero 7 in the new James bond
movie, Quantum of Solace.

Walker and Dubitsky (1994) using theory of “affect transfer” and citing other scholars works
(Alwitt, 1993; Maclnnis and Jaworski, 1989; Madden and Ajzen, 1991) suggests that people
on one hand will associate positive feelings to an advertiser or advertised brand if they
experience a positive feeling towards their advert and on the other hand their attitude towards
the ad will be influenced by their attitude towards the advertiser or advertised brand. Even
without science, one would agree that if people like an advertisement, “they are more likely
to notice and to pay attention to it and are in-turn more likely to assimilate and respond to the
message” it offers (Walker and Dubitsky, 1994).

If a target audience doesn’t respond positively to the message an ad offers, the ad is

considered to be ineffective. ‘A company that employs the service of an advertising agency
to advertise its product expect proof, and, for the most part, that proof must lead to or actually
produce sales’ (Richard Vaughan, 1986 cited in Ramalingam et. al., 2006) or increase in
market share regardless of the fact that other marketing elements like price, place
(accessibility) also need to be in place. In line with the argument of ‘hierarchy of effect’
models such as AIDA, AIETA and DAGMAR, an ad must be able to make its target audience
to take action and not just like the ad alone. For example a Norwegian Charity organisation
who was given an award for its ad was later said to report a £130,000 loss (Jobber, 2007).
This meant that people liked its advert, even professionals (assumed to be the ones who
nominated the organisation for the award) rated it high, but however the ad could not make
people to respond favourably enough to it and as such it couldn’t fulfil its objective as
~2~
measured by the amount of money it was able to generate.

An advert is an embodiment of several other elements whether it is a print ad, video (TV) or
audio ad. These elements which include sound, images or text could be used alone or in
various combinations. In considering a likeable ad, the particular element of the ad which is
liked needs to be identified i.e. what part of the ad does the target audience like? Is it the
whole ad or a particular element in it? Take for instance the use of a favourite celebrity as an
endorser in an ad like Serena Williams in Puma ads. The celebrity could be the liked element
in the ad and not necessarily the product advertised or the message offered.

The possibility of the liked element to be a potential distracting factor is a possible option to
consider. It is accepted that the use of celebrities in ads gives them a better chance of being
noticed, but it does not guarantee that the ad will be read (Solomon et. al., 2006) or that the
audience will pay attention to the message it presents. The liked element competes for a fair
share of the target audience’s limited time and attention span. If the ad is therefore not read
by the audience exposed to it, it stands the same risk as an ad that is disliked and it will not be
able to fulfil its objective.

When the liked element that catches the attention or interest of a target audience becomes the
distraction from the intended message, the objective of the ad is compromised and that makes
the ad ineffective. An example can be given from a study carried out by Tsai and Chang
(2007) using female and male undergraduates to find out the effect of physical attractiveness
of models on advertising effectiveness. The study showed that the use of highly attractive
models in ads resulted in a decrease in the ads effectiveness compared to using normally
attractive models (Tsai and Chang, 2007).

Endorsement has been a strategy also that companies use to try and persuade customers and
make them like their product. Cases of endorsers who were once liked but were later disliked
due to an unbecoming or unacceptable behaviour have also been noted as a possible way by
which an element of liking could make an ad ineffective.

Many recent examples show companies dropping endorsers even before the signed agreement
has elapsed. Sometimes some of them were dropped the moment the company perceived that
a recent move they made (i.e. the endorser) could spell trouble in the nearest future. An
example is the case of Christian Dior and Sharon Stone after “she publicly suggested the

~3~
horrific devastation wrought by the Sichuan earthquake was karmic retribution for China's
treatment of Tibet.” The company had to cut short the endorsement and also pull out their ads
in China that featured her (Forbes, 2008). Companies need to be careful in what or who they
choose to put in their ads as they seek to make customers like, accept and respond to their
ads. They should remember that advertising is part of the fabric of their brand’s personality
(Biel, 1990 cited in McDonalds, 1993) and attitudes towards the advertising as explained
earlier have a direct effect on the advertised brand.

The element of liking used in an ad must not only be likeable but it must also be relevant to
the product because people have tendency to judge the product based on the cues (which in
this case is the liked element) presented in the ad. For a low involvement product, where the
likelihood of taking the peripheral route to persuasion is possible (Petty et. al., 1991), if the
liked element is not product-relevant or it is complex to decipher the message it intends to
delineate, then it would not help the target audience to make a positive response towards the
product. Relevance as been found to be one of the two factors that is predictive of new
product success (Olson (1984) cited in Du Plessis, 1994). The audience needs to believe that
the ad is relevant to them if they are going to process the ad in the first place. Personal
relevance is said to be the most important variable affecting a person’s motivation to process
a message (Petty et. al. 1991). Relevance is very important especially when considering
mature consumers who according to research have more difficulty encoding information into
memory than younger consumers (Cole and Houston, 1987 cited in Phillips and Stanton,
2004).

An ad that is liked and relevant but cannot be recalled when needed is equally as good as one
which was not likeable or relevant. Not all ads need the target audience to make an
immediate response and when they even do the people may be miles away from where the
action ought to be carried out. For example, a detergent ad that people watched or read about
at home a week before they had need for such an item. The duration, interval or events that
occur between exposure to the ad and when or where the target audience is able to carry out
the expected act could cause the viewer to forget the ads message even though the ad was
liked. What is necessary at the point when the viewer is about to carry out a related decision
is the ability to be able to recall the previously viewed ad. A fast way around this has been
either to make available point-of-sale-ad displays or put retrieval cues on the product package
(Kelly, 1987 cited in Petty et. al., 1991).

~4~
When viewers have formed a favourable attitude towards a liked ad and its message at the
time of exposure, the possibility that they may have to differ their response/action to the ad to
a later time means they must be able to recall not just the ads intended message but the
message recalled (considering the fact that all the message implication may not be retrievable
due to time lapse) under the new condition, environment, scenario or mood must be strong
enough to elicit the same positive attitude as it did during first exposure.

Human beings are dynamic and their behaviour and attitude always depend on both their
frame of mind and the situational or environmental context they find themselves (Gordon,
2006). If a liked ad fails to remain relevant when it is needed the most, a customer or the
target audience could change his/her previous position on the ground that the information
presently recalled is not strong enough or seems irrelevant to their present state (Petty et. al.,
1991). A change is also possible because people sometimes “miswant” i.e. they make choices
based on their expectation of how much of the chosen thing or idea they will like
(Winkielman and Berridge, 2003). Most often they make decision or conclusion using the
limited information they have at that particular moment. People’s information elaboration
resources are said to be limited (Mikhailitchenko et. al., 2007).

Having an element of liking in advertisement might not be important if it cannot present a

superior, relevant reason at the time the target audience intends to take an action relative to
the intended message and objective of the ad. In summary, it is not the ‘present’ that matters
but ‘then’, i.e. the point when action would be taken. The ad must be involving enough to
create a memory experience that people can carry along all through from exposure to action.
It must be able to maintain its argument or persuasive strength all through the period. The
other alternative is for companies to keep spending on getting through to their target audience
at different points in time and the consequence of such action will be an increase in their
advertising spend.

Factoring in an element of involvement into ads has been seen as a good way of helping
people to recall the ad at later times. The degree of involvement generated by the ad
determines whether or not the ad will successfully pass from where it is temporarily stored
into the more permanent store of the short-term memory (Branthwaite and Swindells, 1995
cited in Hollis, 1995). Ads should therefore not only be likable and relevant, but they must be
involving long enough for the ads message to be stored in short-term memory (Hollis, 1995).
To aid recall, the ad in total must be designed to be meaningful and comprehensible because
~5~
the more it is, the easier it will be to remember (Craik and Lockhart, 1972 cited in Zinkhan et.
al., 1983).

Liking could be a deceptive pointer for advertisers as they seek to design ads that will be
effective to their given audiences. It should first be established that individual, group,
cultural, gender and age differences exist in the definition of what ‘liking’ is and the effect of
such differences go a long way in determining whether an ad will be effective or not.

Generally, the younger age group is said to have a more positive attitude towards advertising
and are less offended, insulted and misled by advertising (Rojas-Méndez et. al., 2008).
However, young consumers (18 – 35) (even by early adolescence) are said to have a high
level of scepticism about advertising and are highly critical of marketing strategies that are
directed at them (Neuborne, 1999 and Schiff, 2000 cited in Phillips and Stanton, 2004).

This 18 – 35 age group are more information seeking unlike other ages and generally have a
good ability to encode information using various strategies (Phillips and Stanton, 2004).
Their high need for ad/claim/product-relevant information to use for evaluation shows they
have a high need for cognition and thus are more likely to avoid the peripheral route when
evaluating an ad. Therefore, if the element of liking used in an ad for this age group is to
make them draw conclusions by taking the peripheral route to persuasion, such ads will not
be effective.

Phillips and Stanton (2004) revealed that what actually caught the interest and attention of
this particular age group in an ad was among the major elements that caused a decrease in
persuasion. This was also found to occur with the mature age groups. What triggered recall
had a negative impact on persuasion. These same elements were responsible for helping the
people to store the ad in their memory. However, that an ad is liked and can be recalled is not
a proof of an ad’s effectiveness. It doesn’t imply that because it can be recalled, then it
means the people will act according to what the ad offers. Liking may serve as an element to
help in coding and storing a message, but it still does not guarantee that people would
respond positively to it.

In a differing light, examples of ads that were labelled with terms that meant the ads were
disliked but which still achieved its objective have been cited. In Putrevu’s study on
“Consumers responses toward Sexual and Non-sexual appeals”, people were reported to

~6~
describe the inclusion of sexual appeals in ads as unjust, unethical and offensive but in
contrast to their description, it was observed that the inclusion rather led to superior attitudes
and purchase intent (Severn, Belch, and Belch, 1990 cited in Putrevu, 2008).

Well-liked ads according to Bartos (1980, 1981) (cited in Walker and Dubitsky 1994) are said
to be “too soft” to break through the competitive clutter” which as at the time he wrote
(1980/81) and when he was quoted (1994) was not as much as what we are experiencing
today. To get through to people takes a lot more than a likeable ad because the human brain
(which can adapt to most changing environments) has adapted to today’s highly commercial
environment by learning how to screen out messages (Henry in Butterfield, 1999). How this
works is that when something is learnt overtime and mastered, it becomes habitual (like
driving a car) and is then executed automatically and unconsciously (Gordon, 2006). This
means we don’t have to pay conscious attention to each second of the activity anymore
because such learning are stored and executed by the procedural memory.

To therefore successfully breakthrough to today’s target audience who sees advertising as a

form of intrusion, ads must include something that is unexpected (Henry in Butterfield, 1999)
and it must include an element of irritation if the ad would be effective (Bartos 1980, 1981
cited in Walker and Dubitsky 1994).

Other techniques apart from the use of irritation and “the unexpected” that replace liking have
been adopted in the advertising industry. An advert against drinking and driving used guilt
when they showed the driver crashing through a fence and then killing a kid. NSPCC’s ad on
Yahoo also used guilt to get people to stop violence towards children. They featured
someone hitting a harmless teddy bear repeatedly. These two illustrations can’t be said to be
likeable experiences though they play on the audience’s emotion just like an element of liking
could have also done.

It is however agreed that liking contributes to (Sun et. al, 2001) and is an important predictor
of advertising effectiveness (Du Plessis, 1994; Walker and Dubitsky, 1994). Nevertheless, it
needs to be understood that it is only one facet of a more complicated construct
(involvement) which only guarantees the efficiency of communication (Hollis, 1995). Hollis
(1995) says the ‘effectiveness of advertising is more dependent on the relevance of the
message’ to the target audience.

~7~
The overwhelming attention given to the study of “liking” in relation with advertising
effectiveness gives room for the possibility that advertisers may be engrossed in it and
therefore lose sight of the main objective of their advertisement. It should always be
remembered that “likability” is not the objective of creative strategy (Du Plessis, 1994) rather
it is more of a gatecrasher which helps to get the message through to the target audience. It
doesn’t [really] matter if the ad is liked or not, as long as the message it offers is given
attention and responded to, then the ad is agreed to be effective.

~8~
BIBLIOGRAPHY

REFERENCES

1. Amandine, Garde, (2008), ‘Food advertising and obesity prevention: what role for the
European union?, Journal of Consumer Policy, 31, no. 1: 25–44.
2. Ambler, Tim, (2008), ‘What will neuroscience do for Advertisers?’, Admap, Issue
490, (Jan.): 24-26.
3. Ambler, T., (1998), ‘Myths about the mind: time to end some popular beliefs about
how advertising works’, International Journal of Advertising, 17, no. 4: 501.
4. Arnold, E., Price, L. and Zinkhan G., (2004), Consumers, 2nd edn, New York,
McGraw-Hill/Irwin.
5. Davis, Simone Weil, (2000), ‘Living up to the Ads – Gender fictions of the 1920’s’,
Durham NC, Duke University Press.
6. Du Plessis Erik, (1994), ‘Understanding and using likability’, Journal of Advertising
Research, 34, no. 5, (Sep/Oct): RC_3 – RC_10,
7. Fam et. al, (2004; 2005), cited in Munusamy, J. & Wong Chee Hoo, (2007), ‘Attitude
towards advertising among students at private higher learning institutions in
Selangor’, Unitar E-Journal, 3, no. 1, (Jan.): 31 - 51,
http://vlib.unitarklj1.edu.my/staff-
publications/jayaraman/Attitude_toward_Advertising_final%20revised.pdf, accessed
2/12/08.
8. Foxall, G., Goldsmith, R. & Brown, S., (1998), Consumer Psychology for Marketing,
2nd edn, London, International Thomson Business Press.
9. Gordon, Wendy, (2006), ‘What do consumers do emotionally with advertising?’,
Journal of Advertising Research, 46, no. 1, (Mar): 2 – 10.
10. Henry, Steve, ‘Creative briefing: the creative perspective’, in Butterfield, Leslie,
(1999) (ed.), Excellence in Advertising: The IPA guide to best practice, 2nd edn,
Oxford, Butterworth-Heinemann.
11. Hollis, N. S., (1995), ‘Like it or not, liking is not enough’, Journal of Advertising
Research, 35, no. 5, (Sept./Oct.): 7 - 16
12. Hudson, S., Hudson, D., Peloza, J., (2008), ‘Meet the parents: A parent’s perspective
on product placement in children’s films’, Journal of Business Ethics, 80, no. 2 (Jun):
305 - 325

~9~
13. Jan, Stapel, (1994), ‘Observations: A brief observation about likability and
interestingness of advertising’, Journal of Advertising Research, (March/April).
14. Jerry, Thomas, (2008), ‘Advertising effectiveness’, Admap, Issue 491, (Feb.): 29-31.
15. Jobber, David, (2007), Principles and Practice of Marketing, 5th edn, UK, McGraw-
Hill International.
16. Kim-Shyan, Fam, (2008), ‘Attributes of Likeable Television Commerciais in Asia’,
Journal of Advertising Research, (Sept.).
17. LaTour, M. S. & Henthorne, T. L., (1993), ‘Female nudity: Attitudes toward the ad
and the brand, and implications for advertising strategy’, The Journal of Consumer
Marketing, 10, 3: 25 – 32.
18. McDonalds, Colin, (1993), How Advertising Works, A review of current thinking,
Oxfordshire, Henley-on-Thames.
19. Mikhailitchenko, A., Javalgi, R. G., Mikhailitchenko, G., & Laroche M., (2008),
‘Cross-cultural advertising communication: Visual imagery, brand familiarity, and
brand recall’, Journal of Business Research, In Press, Corrected Proof, available
online 18 November 2008: 1 - 8
20. Nelson, R. M., (2008), ‘The Hidden Persuaders: Then and Now’, Journal of
Advertising, 37, no. 1: 113 - 126
21. Petty, R. E., Unnava R. H. & Strathman A. J., (1991), ‘Theories of attitude change’,
Handbook of Consumer Behavior: 241 - 268
22. Phillips, D. M. & Stanton, J. L., (2004), ‘Age-related differences in advertising:
Recall and persuasion’, Journal of Targeting, Measurement and Analysis for
Marketing, 13, 1, (Oct.): 7 - 20
23. Putrevu, Sanjay, (2008), ‘Consumers responses toward Sexual and Non-sexual
appeals, The influence of involvement, need for cognition (NFC) and Gender’,
Journal of Advertising, 37, no. 2: 57 - 69
24. Richard, Vaughan, (1986) cited in Ramalingam, V., Palaniappan, B., Panchanatham,
N. and Palanivel, S., (2006), ‘Measuring advertisement effectiveness—a neural
network approach’, Expert Systems with Applications, 31, no. 1, (July): 159-163
25. Rojas-Méndez, J. I., Davies, G., Madran, C., (2008), ‘Universal differences in
advertising avoidance behaviour: A cross-cultural study, Journal of Business
Research, in press, corrected proof, ScienceDirect,
www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/01482963, available online 22 November
2008
~ 10 ~
26. Sniehotta, Scholz, & Schwarzer, (2004) cited in Lewis, I., Watson, B., and Tay, R.,
(2007), ‘Examining the effectiveness of physical threats in road safety advertising:
The role of the third-person effect, gender, and age’, Transportation Research Part F:
Traffic Psychology and Behaviour, 10, no. 1, (Jan.): 48-60
27. Solomon, M. R., Bamossy, G. and Askegaard, S., (2006), Consumer Behaviour - A
European Perspective, 3rd edn, England, Financial Times/Prentice Hall.
28. Staines, Mike, (2008), ‘Moments of Truth’, Admap, (Jan.)
29. Sun, T., Wells, W. D. & Youn, S., (2001), ‘commercial liking and memory:
moderating effects of product categories’, Journal of Advertising Research, 41, no. 3,
(May/Jun ): 7 – 13
30. Thomas, Dennis, (1967), The Visible Persuaders, London, Hutchinson.
31. Tsai, Chia-Ching & Chang, Chih-Hsiang, (2007), ‘The effect of physical
attractiveness of models on advertising effectiveness’ , Adolescence, 42, No. 168: 827
- 836
32. Wells, W., Burnett, J. & Moriarty, S., (2003), Advertising Principles and Practice, 6th
edn, New Jersey, Pearson Education International.
33. White, Roderick, (2008), ‘Segmentation: crutch or booster?’, Admap, Issue 495,
(June): 22-23.
34. Wolin, L. D., (2003), ‘Gender issues in advertising – an oversight synthesis of
research: 1970 – 2002, Journal of Advertising Research, 43, no. 1 (Mar,): 111 - 129
35. Walker, D. & Dubitsky T. M., (1994), ‘Why liking matters’, Journal of Advertising
Research, 34, no. 3, (May/June): 9 - 18
36. Winkielman, P. & Berridge, K., (2003), ‘Irrational wanting and subrational liking:
how rudimentary motivational and affective processes shape preferences and choices’,
Political Psychology, 24, no. 4: 657 - 680
37. Zinkhan G. M., Gelb B. D., Martin C. R. Jr., (1983), ‘The cloze procedure, ...a clue to
advertising likability and message recall’, Journal of Advertising Research, 23, No.
23, (June/July): 15 – 20

~ 11 ~