Effectiveness of Public Service Announcements - Research Proposal Example

?Running Head: Effectiveness of Public Service Announcements Effectiveness of Public Service Announcements Submitted by Goes Here Name September, 2011 Contents Introduction 2 Literature review 4 Research Question 5 Research Methodology 6 Conclusion 7 Works Cited 7 Effectiveness of Public Service Announcements 3 Introduction 3 Literature review 4 Research Question 6 Research Methodology 7 Conclusion 7 Works Cited 8 Effectiveness of Public Service Announcements Introduction Celebrity endorsements are one of the most famous methods of marketing used today. Celebrity endorsers are being used in about 25% of all the advertisements that we can see on the television. Marketers are investing large sums of money to have a contract with the celebrities as they believe that celebrities can affect the chances of success of a product. (Erica Weintraub Austina*, 2008) Kiakati believe that use of celebrities can have many benefits and advantages such as - (Anita Elberse, July 2011) Facilitating the identification of brand by consumers Changing the negativity associated with a brand Repositioning a brand Affecting the purchase intentions of the consumers. Celebrities are fickle in nature and although promotions through them may increase brand visibility it may also make your brand related to some negative characteristics. (Veer, Becirovic, & A.S.Martin, 2010) Public Service Announcements are designed to inform the audience about certain aspects or to induce certain behavior in them by the use of mass-media approaches. The important point in most of the public service announcements is that they are not trying to sell a product. They are trying to sell an idea or a belief system. A PSA which encourages people to use public transport system is trying to modify their behavior over a long period of time. Making a person buy soap is entirely different from making him do a particular thing again and again. (Dan Werb1, 2011) We will try to analyze through this research how effective the use of popular celebrities or respected spokesperson is in creating the final attitude change in the target audience of the PSA. all celebrities responsible for just bringing in the crowd or can they help PSA in the same way they help the FMCGs. Consumers tend to copy their icons and use the products preferred by them ; will they also follow their lead in changing their attitudes towards a particular thing or is it too personal to be affected by a celebrity. We will analyze this particular aspect of PSAs in the research paper – How effective is the use of celebrities for bringing about the attitude change desired by PSAs. Literature review Some properties such as likeability of the celebrity , expertise , trustworthiness and similarity causes a celebrity endorser to become a cause of persuasive information to the audience and also ends up creating a sense of certainty and encourages the user to try the product or the service. Acceptance of a message by a receiver can be influenced by celebrity endorsers as people consider them to be believable sources of information about a product. The balance theory principles emphasize the creation of an emotional connect between the observer and the endorser. This emotional relationship also creates and emotional connect between the audience and the cause. Is this fact also true for a cause espoused by the PSAs? Will a celebrity help in creating an emotional connect of the user with the cause. McGuire (1998) has created a very effective input output matrix for creating effective public service announcements. Along the input axis are important aspect of the message such as source, message factors, channel factors, receiver factors and finally target behaviors at which the communication is aimed at. McGuire says that for the PSA to be effective; the target audience must have contact with it, must pay attention to it, like it, understand and learn from the content, agree with it, store the information presented by it and make decisions based on it. (Kang, Cappella, & Fishbein, sep 2009) The question which arises here and will be part of our research is which of these input factors described by McGuire can be positively affected by a spokesperson or a celebrity used for PSA. Petty and Cacioppo (1981) have developed the elaboration likelihood model of persuasion which explains the peripheral route to persuasion and the central route. In the peripheral route, persuasive influences are more tangential to the issues at hand. For egg- in a PSA targeted against smoking in youth, the peripheral route will show the teenagers having a better sex life after quitting smoking. (William G. Shadel, January 2009) Central processing occurs when the person at hand is aware about the main message of the PSA and is motivated to consider its content. We will analyze the use of celebrities for both these routes of persuasion and try to find out the effectiveness in each case. A PSA is usually not presented to the audience at the time of action. A PSA is supposed to make the audience think and act on the message later. Thus human memory plays a very important role in the success of a PSA. (Shen, Monahan, Rhodes, & Roskos-Ewoldsen, 2009) If the audience is attracted by a PSA, likes it but is not able to recollect it later the whole exercise ends in futility. Many researchers have found that for the message to be effective, retained and used highly credible sources of delivering the message have to be used and these sources of delivery should be able to create a personal connect with the audience. (Joseph B. Walther1, 2010)In this context if we are using a public celebrity; he has his own personality and a public image. We will try to analyze in the research the effect of the personality and characteristic of the public figure on the campaign. Does his image act as a distraction to the audience from the root cause of the PSA? Research Question On the basis of the analysis of the literature the following gaps in the literature have been identified and we will try to answer these gaps through this research – On the basis of the matrix presented by McGuire we will analyze which of the input factors can be impacted by the use of a celebrity. We will analyze three factors in particular – effect on the increase in attention paid to PSA, effect on likeability of the PSA and finally effect on understanding of the audience. This question is of primary importance to the research. We will be able to find out from here if the celebrities have any other effect on a social cause apart from getting people to watch the PSA. Effectiveness of celebrities in peripheral route of persuasion and the central route of persuasion. Which route is more suitable for celebrities? Effect of personality of the public figure on the campaign. DO personal characteristics of the celebrity overshadow the message of the PSA? Research Methodology The questions which need to be answered above are quite exhaustive in nature and will require a primary research to be conducted in order to answer them properly. Primary research is that that focuses on the collection of primary data which has been used for the first time for the purpose of this research. The primary research will be conducted though a Public Service Announcement which focuses on quitting cigarettes. The original PSA which will be selected through primary research will consist of a celebrity. A copy of this PSA will be made without using the celebrity. The sample which is to be surveyed will be divided into 2 parts – the first half will be shown the PSA with the celebrity and the second sample will be shown exactly same PSA but without the celebrity. The differences in two samples will be studied. In order to analyze the effect of PSA a questionnaire will be prepared which the sample will be asked to answer immediately after the PSA is shown to them. Second questionnaire will be prepared and the same sample of respondents will be asked to answer it 2 weeks after the PSA has been shown to them. The second questionnaire will try to analyze what the respondents recall about the PSA. What are the key points that they recall. Do they recall the celebrity or do they recall the message? A comparison will be made between those who viewed the PSA with the celebrity and those who viewed it without the celebrity. Random sampling technique will be used in order to obtain the sample of students who can take part in the research. Conclusion Public Service Announcements are a very important source of communication available to organizations and government. It is generally used for making announcements which are non-commercial in nature. These announcements are done for the general good of the society .It is very important that not only are these announcements heard by a large number of people but their response to these announcements is also very important. Is the audience able to retain the message which the PSA is trying to convey to the audience? How much internalization of the message takes place and what actions are undertaken by the audience after the message has been received by them? These are all important questions associated with PSA and their effectiveness. Through this research an effort has been made to analyze whether it is worthwhile to spend millions on celebrity endorsers for a cause which attempts to change the habit of the audience. Works Cited Anita Elberse, J. V. (July 2011). the economic value of celebrity endorsements. Journal of Advertising Research . Dan Werb1, E. J. (2011). The effectiveness of anti-illicit-drug public-service announcements: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Journal of Epideomology and Community Health , 608 - 1081. Erica Weintraub Austina*, R. V. (2008). Celebrity Endorsements and Their Potential to Motivate Young Voters. Mass Communication and Society,Volume 11, Issue 4 , 420 -436. Joseph B. Walther1, 2. D. (2010). The Influence of Online Comments on Perceptions of Antimarijuana Public Service Announcements on YouTube. Human Communication Research,Volume 36 , Issue 4 , 469 -492. Kang, Y., Cappella, J. N., & Fishbein, M. (sep 2009). The effect of marijuana scenes in anti-marijuana public service announcements on adolescents' evaluation of ad effectiveness. Health Communication, Vol 24(6) , 483-493. Shen, L., Monahan, J. L., Rhodes, N., & Roskos-Ewoldsen, D. R. (2009). The Impact of Attitude Accessibility and Decision Style on Adolescents' Biased Processing of Health-Related Public Service Announcements. Communication Research Journal vol 36 , 104 - 128. Veer, E., Becirovic, I., & A.S.Martin, B. (2010). If Kate Voted Conservative , would you ? The role of celebrity endorsements in political party advertising. European Journal of MArketing , 436 - 450. William G. Shadel, C. S.-T. (January 2009). Uncovering the most effective active ingredients of antismoking public service announcements: The role of actor and message characteristics. Oxford Journals : Nicotine & tobacco Research , 547 - 552. Read More