“Types of advertising appeals” is a search that provides little relevant information through Google search results.

I’ve read pages listed through the search results covering cultural differences in advertising appeals to a site promoting different types of signs as “types of advertising appeals.” Of course, the latter site belongs to a sign company.

I found only one search result that was anywhere close to what I know about different types of advertising appeals. It was a PowerPoint presentation, apparently for an advertising course lecture. It provided no details, but merely listed the types of advertising appeals.

Furthermore, an LSI search provided none of the words generally considered types of advertising appeals by scholars and educators. So I decided to write this post to add to the online body of knowledge on “types of advertising appeals.”

Advertising appeals are based on human needs and persuasion theories and research. There are as many types of advertising appeals as there are human needs, but advertisers primarily organize these appeals into seven categories:

7 Types Of Advertising Appeals

Fear

Humor

Sex

Music

Rational

Emotional

Scarcity

I’ll cover each with a brief definition of that type of advertising appeal. Then I’ll provide my thoughts or experiences regarding each type. But in order not to overload you with information, I’ll cover this information over several consecutive posts. Today’s post covers fear and humor.

Types of Advertising Appeals: Fear

Fear is generally not considered a good type of advertising appeal. However, it is frequently promoted as a good one among Internet marketing gurus.

If you agree with the gurus, choose your fear appeals carefully. It appears to me that this appeal works best when it’s related to lesser fears like having bad breath or losing out on a money-making opportunity.

When it relates to the big fears like dying or loosing a loved one, people are more inclined to block the message. They move into denial mode and ignore the rest of the advertising message.

Types of Advertising Appeals: Humor

Humor is an effective type of advertising appeal, but it must be used carefully. What one person finds funny, another considers appalling.

For example, the people who create most advertising campaigns for television are creatives at large marketing agencies. The burn-out in those positions is great. So advertising employees in these positions tend to be young – Generation Yers and Xers.

As a Boomer, most of their humor totally leaves me cold. Of course, I’m frequently not in the target market for the advertisement, but sometimes I am. I’ve discussed the problems of trying to market across generations before in this blog. Those problems increase when using humor.

For my posts on sex and music as types of advertising appeals, click the link below:

Types of Advertising Appeals 2

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Posted 8-26-08: Types of Advertising Appeals 1

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 26th, 2008 at 6:11 am and is filed under Advertising.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.