BA MMC-Bachelor thesis Siana Ivo Ivanova
Supervisor: Trine M. ØstergaardMay, 2012 Student No: 403121
Marketing and management communication, BACHELOR THESIS, MAY 2012‘A good scare is worth more than good advice’. A study of fear appeals in social marketing
Siana Ivo Ivanova,
Student No: 403121
Supervisor: Trine M. Østergaard
NOTE: Quote in the title - Horace.
Total No of characters- Main paper (without spaces): 54 843
Total No of characters- Summery (without spaces): 2 644
Summary
One of the most often used strategies in social marketing is fear appeals. However, this means of communicating behavioral change is also one of the most contradictive in terms of effectiveness and ethics. Therefore, this paper will systemize and summarize some theories and hypothesizes on fear appeals to give an as much as possible thorough overview of the topic. The paper will also provide an example of those theories and hypothesizes by the Meth Project campaign materials.
After a brief introduction to the campaign, a theoretical framework is given with the major literature sources, which are going to be used throughout the discussion. Then, the analytical part begins with a definition of the ‘fear appeal’ term and its theoretical relation to the study of social marketing. Following the positivist scientific approach, the paper continues with presentation and verification of the chosen assumptions. Firstly, the role of the communicator, and more concretely, the importance of credibility are related to the effectiveness of the fear-based campaign. Afterwards, the message itself is observed with focus on the advantage of using fear appeals and the amount of fear needed for a successful communication of behavioral change. To depict this, the elements of the Protection Motivation Theory are found in the Ask Meth Project campaign and then conclusions are made on what type of fear appeal is used in it (strong or weak) and is this advantage or not. Moving further, the affect of the target audience is discussed. The Extended Parallel Process model is introduced to underline the significance of the viewers’ perceptions. In addition, the age characteristic is related to the possible effectiveness and the reactance process is presented as a negative result from a fear-based communication. Finally, some ethical implications are given and explained.
The basic conclusions made are that a strong fear appeal supplemented and delivered from a highly credible source has greatest chance of success. Furthermore, the theories that using high amounts of fear is more effective than using low and that fear appeals as a whole are good for grabbing the attention of the audience are verified and proved by the example campaign. However, it is also concluded that it is crucial for high fear to be followed by high self-efficacy message. Next, accounting for the target audience, it is pointed out that even a perfectly-theoretically executed campaign may fail depending on the how the target group perceives it. Additionally, high portrayed severity and relevance are proved major criterions for success among the young target audiences. Moreover, the latter combined with high self-efficacy is confirmed to be preventative means for reactance and boomerang effect. Lastly, by projecting some of the ethical implications it is acknowledged that fear appeals have a twofold effect and raise some significant concerns. For that reason, the paper ends with an open end to further examination of the issue and gives way to a more exhaustive research on some of the mentioned hypothesizes, and elements related to fear appeals.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction 6
1.1. Purpose and Significance 6
1.2. Problem statement 7
1.3. Scientific Method 7
1.4. Structure 8
1.5. Delimitation 9
2. Background information on empirical data source - The Meth Project Campaign 9
3. Theoretical framework 10
3.1. Fear appeal definition and relation to social marketing 10
3.2. The communicators role 11
3.3. Examination of basic assumptions about fear appeals 11
3.4. Literature and theories connecting the target audience and fear appeals 11
3.5. Literature on ethics and ethical implications connected to fear appeals 12
4. What is fear appeal actually and what is its place in social marketing? 12
4.1. The essence of fear appeals 12
4.2. The place of fear appeals in social marketing explained by theories 13
5. Fear appeals and the role of the communicator 14
5.1. What or who is considered credible in social marketing? 14
5.2. Connection between communicator’s credibility and fear arousal 15
5.3. The messenger in the Ask Meth Project campaign 15
6. The message and how fear appeals affect its content and structure 17
6.1. The advantage of using fear appeals 17
6.2. ‘The more the better’- or…how much fear is needed in the appeals 18
6.3. PMT and fear appeal in practice – the Ask Meth Project 19
7. Fear appeals and the audience- a critical touching point 21
7.1. What can go wrong?- the Extended Parallel Process 21
7.2. Target audience’s characteristics and fear appeals effectiveness – Age 22
7.3. Reactance or the boomerang effect of fear appeals 24
7.4. The audience in the Meth Project campaign 25
7.4.1. Implementation of the EPPM 25
7.4.2. The issue with the age of the target audience of the Ask Meth Project and the reactance possibility 26
8. Ethical implications connected to fear appeals 28
8.1. What is ethical? 28
8.2. Fear appeals and ethics 29
8.3. A view over ethics and the Meth Project 31
9. Conclusion 32
10. Further perspectives 33
References...... 34
Appendix 1……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………36
Appendix 2……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………39
1. Introduction
‘Social marketing as a term, however, is still a mystery to most and misunderstood by many.’ This is one of the sentences which Kotler and Lee (2008, p.3) use to introduce the readers to their book ‘Social Marketing: Influencing behaviors for good’. This, simultaneously, is the initial starting point for the discussions in the following paper and the reason for its actual writing. As Kotler and Lee very simply depict, social marketing is a term hard to define and hard to understand. From all broad and concrete interpretation, Smith (2006) provides a synthesized one focusing quite precisely on the very nature of social marketing: ‘Social marketing is not a science, but rather a professional craft which relies on multiple scientific disciplines to create programs designed to influence human behavior on a large scale’ (p.38). The reason why this specific definition has been chosen is that it depicts the extensive and inclusive character of the field. It is indeed a ‘craftsmanship’, which includes in itself theories and models from various scientific areas and all of them are gathered and synchronized to work together in order to induce a behavioral change. Commercial marketing theories combined with persuasion tactics and visual influence techniques in an anti-smoking campaign is just one of thousand examples of the latter statement. This is probably the first reason why social marketing is often being misunderstood and even criticized. Smith (2006) also mentions its ‘learned-through-experience’ (p.38) characteristic, which means that a certain amount of the knowledge on the subject is gained through observations and studies of previous social marketing efforts and campaigns. Therefore, this feature is the grounds for many differing conclusions and controversial assumptions.
One of the most discussed methods is the use of fear appeals in social marketing campaigns for persuading target audiences to change a certain behavior. While fear appeals are considered ‘quite useful’ and still a prevalent method for building campaigns by practitioners (Lennon, Rentfro & O’Leary, 2010, p.97) they are also ‘criticized as being unethical, manipulative, exploitative, eliciting negative and unhealthy responses from viewers, and exposing viewers to offensive images against their will’ (Williams, 2011, p.2).
1.1. Purpose and Significance
Building a successful campaign requires a good understanding and knowledge about the tools, which can be used, and their advantages and disadvantages.
The following paper will summarize some of the basic conclusions and observations about fear appeals and their utilization in social marketing. The purpose of doing so is to raise the attention about the controversial discussions and give way to further examination of the topic. In addition, the paper will contribute to the overall study of fear appeals by providing an exemplification of most of the views and touching points on fear appeals through a concrete campaign. Furthermore, the paper will allow the readers to get a better insight into the issue and respectively navigate them when choosing their means of persuasion.
1.2. Problem statement
How can fear appeals be used in a social marketing campaign and what ethical implications are connected to this? To answer this question, relevant theories and assumptions will build the theoretical frame and afterwards a concrete campaign will be used to exemplify and explain their practical implementation. This will provide understanding of how the fear appeal affects the content, structure, and possible effectiveness of a campaign.
1.3. Scientific Method
As already seen from the introduction, the study of social marketing brings many contradictions and a big part of the knowledge in the field is derived from practical observations and assessments. Therefore, it was considered most appropriate to base this paper on the principle of positivism, or as also called inductivism. The belief about knowledge is that it is derived through observations (Chalmers, 1999, p.44). Furthermore, the used methodology of induction postulates that a theory or a hypothesis can be established as a general rule after verification through a number of observations (Chalmers, 1999, p.53). The basic methods, respectively, has a more quantitative character. However, the biggest problem with the inductive method is the making of generalizations based on finite number observations or on causal logic (Chalmers, 1999, p.50-51).
For that reason, this paper will use induction only as a means of verification of already established and/or under observation theories and hypothesizes about fear appeals. They will be discussed and afterwards verified by the example campaign. In order to avoid the problem of induction, no concrete conclusions will be given. On the contrary, the paper aims at contributing towards the verification of the theories mentioned, but also emphasizes the need for further examinations on the topic.
1.4. Structure
A top-down structure has been chosen for the analytical part of the paper where theories will be addressed first and afterwards the empirical data of the example will be presented and connected to the problem. After each general theoretical part, an example section will follow for any discontinuation to be avoided by strict distinction of theory and practical implementation. More likely, the paper is build to portray the tight bound between theory and practice and their interdependency.
The first section (numerated as 4) of the analytical part will refer to the essence of fear appeals. The first sub-section will deal with the definition of fear appeals and their characteristics. Whereas the second, will provide an in-depth discussion of what the place of fear appeals is in social marketing. No concrete examples will be given here with the chosen campaign, because this part is more theoretical and serves as an introduction to the issue.
Following, in the next part Fear appeals and the role of the communicator the issue of credibility will be touched upon. An examination of how this is revealed through practice will be presented at the end of this section.
Afterwards, the focus will fall on the message and the affect of fear appeals on its content. In the first subsection, the major advantage of fear appeals will be given. In the second, one of the most common assumption will be presented, namely, that strong fear appeals are most efficacious. The section ends with an exemplification of the Protection Motivation Theory by the analyzed campaign in order to verify the latterly mentioned hypothesizes.
Then, the target audience will be related to the use of fear appeals and the possible affects on the campaign effectiveness will be discussed. Firstly, the Extended Parallel Process Model will enter the observation due to its close relevance to the impact of fear on audience’s reactions. Secondly, a concrete characteristic of the audience will be paid attention- age. This is done because the age of target group is often considered important criteria for the success or failure of a fear appeal. Thirdly, the boomerang effect and the process of reactance will be included to extend the understanding of how fear appeals can actually fail. Finally, a closer look will be made at the concrete example campaign and the target audience will be analyzed with its relation to the fear appeal there.
The last section will be dedicated to the ethical implications connected to the use of fear appeals. Here, some of the major ethical issues will be mentioned and explained and an answer will be provided to the second part of the problem statement.
1.5. Delimitation
Since there is a certain page restriction, this paper will not present a through analysis of the campaign used for exemplification. It will only focus on those features that are tightly bound to the use of fear appeals and to the theories discussed in the concrete sections of the writing. In addition, when explaining a hypothesis or assumption, not always both of the campaign materials (posters and videos) will be observed. Furthermore, the issue of fear appeals is extensively discussed and various viewpoints are being presented in many articles and studies. However, not all of them will be covered due to the limited space requirements.
2. Background information on empirical data source - The Meth Project Campaign[1]
Methamphetamine is considered one of the greatest drug threats by the U.S. Department of Justice due to its low costs and simultaneously purity and availability. It is also highly addictive substance resulting in social and individual degradation of the person using it. This imposed the need for a reaction on behalf of the community and the country as a whole.
The resulting campaign that is going to be discussed, as already mentioned above, is the Ask Meth Project latest release ‘What do you know about meth?’. The campaign was started in 2005 in Montana and gradually spread all over the US in seven additional states. It is focused on reducing methamphetamine use through public messaging and policies, as well as community outreach. The research-based massaging campaign has decided to focus on informing and providing all the necessary facts to teens about meth so that they can make a well-informed decision if given the opportunity to try. The strategies, which the Meth