Marketing Communications

RATIONAL APPEALS 213

In trying to generate the established advertising objectives, agencies or creatives can use a

multitude of appeals, formats and execution strategies to express or translate their creative idea.^30

Broadly speaking, two diff erent types of creative appeals can be distinguished: rational appeals

and emotional appeals. Emotional advertising appeals are advertisements whose main purpose

is to elicit aff ective responses and to convey an image. Rational advertising appeals , on the other

hand, contain features, practical details and verifi able, factually relevant cues that can serve as

evaluative criteria. Referring to the diff erence between action and image communications as

discussed earlier (see Chapter 1 ), many image communications make use of emotional appeals,

while most action communications use rational appeals. Also, with respect to the diff erence

between product performance and imagery communications, most product performance ads

use rational elements, whereas imagery communications most oft en consist of emotional ads.

However, mixed appeals also exist, employing both rational and emotional elements. Both for

emotional and rational appeals, diff erent formats or execution strategies and diff erent types of

endorsers can be used (see Table 7.2 ). Also, it has to be added here that several of the formats

that can be used for rational appeals could just as well be used for emotional appeals, although

they are discussed only once. For example, a comparative ad can be purely factual, describing

own and competitive prices, but could also be humorous, such as Virgin Atlantic’s campaign

featuring large billboards in airports with the message ‘Enjoy your overpriced fl ight’.

Rational appeals

Rational ads may contain one or several information cues. Th e most widely used classifi cation

system of information cues is the one presented in Table 7.3 , which has been applied in more

than 60 studies.^31 Th e classifi cation consists of 15 diff erent types of information.

Table 7.2 Creative advertising appeals, advertising formats and endorsers

Rational appeals Emotional appeals

z Talking head

z Demonstration

z Problem solution

z Testimonial

z Slice of life

z Dramatisation

z Comparative ads

z Etc.

z Humour

z Fear

z Warmth

z Eroticism

z Music

z Etc.

Endorsers

z Expert endorsement

z Celebrity endorsement

through a box of Freshmates and his hand smashing through the wall showing a can of Old Spice while shouting

‘Old Spice is too powerful to stay in its own commercial!’ Soon consumers started tweeting messages like ‘the Old

Spice Man in other commercials = pure brilliance’, ‘amazing haha’, ‘disruption earns attention’, etc. It looks like

creativity is really appreciated by the general public.^29

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