THE ROBERT GORDON UNIVERSITY ABERDEEN

FACULTY OF MANAGEMENT Aberdeen Business School Title: Consumer perception and attitude towards the visual elements in social campaign advertisement. Name: Brijesh Choudhary Matriculation Number: 0918748 Submission Date: 18th January 2012 Supervisor: Grace Mackie Aim: The study aims to evaluate the impact of social advertising campaigns on consumers
attitude through analysis and critical evaluation of visual elements.

Objectives: 1. To conduct an In-depth analysis of, how social campaigns visuals make their place in consumers mind? And consumers perception and attitude towards the visual elements of social campaign adverts- Consumer perspective. 2. To critically evaluate the visual power of social campaigns advertisements. 3. To critically evaluate consumer perception of various social campaign. 4. To critically compare the effectiveness of social campaigns on male and female. Signed: Total word count (excluding acknowledgements, diagrams, references, bibliography and appendices) 18607 A Dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Postgraduate Certificate/Diploma/MSc Degree in Management.

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ABERDEEN BUSINESS SCHOOL Copyright Declaration Form

Name Email/contact tel no.: Course: Module: Dissertation Title: Supervisor/Tutor: Brijesh Choudhary b.choudhary@rgu.ac.uk MSC Management BSM 581 Consumer perception and attitude towards the visual elements in social campaign advertisements. Grace Mackie

Before submitting confirm: a) that the work undertaken for this assignment is entirely my own and that I have not made use of any unauthorised assistance b) that the sources of all reference material have been properly acknowledged c) that, where necessary, I have obtained permission from the owners of third party copyrighted material to include this material in my dissertation. I have read and agree to comply with the requirements for submitting the dissertation as an electronic document. I agree: That an electronic copy of the dissertation may be held and made available on restricted access for a period of 3 or more years to students and staff of the University through The Robert Gordon University Moodle. That during the period that it is accessible on Moodle the work shall be licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-Share A like 2.5 Licence to the end-user - http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/

Signed.............................................................. Date...................................................................

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THE ROBERT GORDON UNIVERSITY ABERDEEN

Consumer perception and attitude towards the images in social campaign advertisements
Brijesh Choudhary The Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, UK Aberdeen Business School MSC Management Submission Date: 18th January 2012

ABSTRACT
Continuous campaigning of social advertisements tries to convince people to quit smoking, to reject drugs, to practise safer sex, to avoid alcohol abuse, to stop discrimination and aggression or just to educate. The communicative aims of these campaigns can be on the one hand to break down an undesired general and social behaviour. The communication goal of these campaigns is to change someones behaviour, attitude or perception. There are numerous messenger of social message and numerous advertisements fighting with each other to grab consumers attention for their social cause, and use of different elements such as shock elements and sexual elements are more and more present. Image contents in social advertising vary greatly through advertisement to advertisement. The aim of this research is to explore and describe consumers attitude and perception towards the image in social advertising campaign. Furthermore, in order to overcome omissions in existing empirical research, a secondary is to explore such issues from a variety of perspectives by noting and incorporating into the analysis participants gender and age. The literature review concentrates on key areas of consumer behaviour, the role of perception in communication and the role of different image contents and elements in social advertising. Thereafter follows a

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discussion and justification of focus groups as the chosen method that incorporates a detailed description of the participants (including details of participant, sex) as well as description of how the focus groups were conducted, the structure of the semi-structured questionnaire used in the focus groups and a breakdown of the choice of advertising material. Following from these are the results and discussion that focus on four key areas: perception towards social advertising; attention and interest; congruence; and authorial intent and reader response. Results indicate that perception towards image of social advertisements differed quite significantly between the male and the female respondents. Congruence was found to be highly subjective, and although the respondents showed great approval of an advertisement because they felt that the different elements used are justified; they also admitted that social advertisements using shock element and nudity theme purely to attract attention with no clear congruence with the social cause are more effective in capturing their attention. As a result of contrasting shock element and sexual element in social advertisement, the researcher came to the conclusion that these elements are the most effective in capturing attention and interest. The study concludes with a discussion of the main implications of the research and with forwarding of suggestions for further research.

Keywords: Social Advertising, Visual elements, Consumer Behaviour.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
First I would like to thank all participants who so kindly agreed to take part in the present study. Your time and thoughts were greatly appreciated. I am very thankful to my supervisor Grace Mackie for her guidance throughout each stage of my dissertation. Your support and advice has been invaluable throughout this process I have greatly enjoyed working with you. My utmost gratitude also goes to my family especially my mum and dad and to my fianc for their constant support through what hopefully will remain the most trying period of my life.

Thank you.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Abstract.iii Acknowledgementsv Table of Contents..vi List of Figures and Tablesix CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1 1.2 Identification of Topic..1 Aims and Objectives..1 1.2.1 Study Aims1 1.2.2 Study Objectives.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 Rationale for Studies2 Social Campaigns..3 Persuasion4 Outline of Chapters.6

CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 Introduction..7 Effectiveness of a social.8 Visual Processing.8 Advantages of Visual Advertisements9 How an image tells the story..11 2.4.1 2.4.2 2.4.3 2.4.4 2.5 2.6 Semiotics.11 Signs13 How images create meaning..14 Meaning of layout.17

Construction of persuasive powerful theory..18 Influences of images in social advertisements.21

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2.6.1 2.6.2 2.6.3 2.6.4 2.7

Impact on attitude towards advertisements..22 Behaviour Formation..23 Attitude and behaviour work together.27 Information processing.27

Various social campaign approaches.29

CHAPTER 3 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 Introduction...31 Perspective of Research..31 Research process32 Research Approaches.33 Types of research methods33 3.5.1 3.5.2 3.5.3 3.6 3.6.1 3.6.2 3.7 3.8 3.9 3.10 3.11 3.12 3.13 3.14 3.15 Quantitative Approach33 Qualitative Approach34 Mixed methods Approach35 Secondary data collection36 Primary data collection.36

Types of data collection35

Sources of data38 Exploratory Study.39 Qualitative approach of inquiry41 The chosen method (Focus Group).41 Analysis of qualitative data44 Pilot testing.45 Limitations of research..46 Limitation of chosen research method.46 Ethical considerations.47 Summary/Conclusion..49

3.13.1

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CHAPTER 4 DATA ANALYSIS & FINDINGS 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 Introduction.50 Perception towards social advertising50 Congruence.57 Attention, Interest and Attitude.59 Visual vs. Verbal.61 Authorial Intent & Reader response..62

CHAPTER 5 CONCLUSION, IMPLICATION & RECOMMANDATION 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 Introduction...64 Perception towards social advertising............................................64 Attitude, Interest & Attention.......................................................65 Congruence..............................................................................66 Gendered reading......................................................................67 Limitations of thesis & further research.........................................68

CHAPTER 6 REFERENCES References........................................69

CHAPTER 7 APPENDICES Appendix 1 Images.........................................................................70 Appendix 2 Participants in Focus Group..............................................83 Appendix 3 Descriptions of the Advertising Portfolio.............................84 Appendix 4 Semi-structured Questionnaire used in the Focus Group.......87 Appendix 5 Focus Group Sample.......................................................91

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LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES

Figure 1: Cigarette smokes you advertisement; ............................................. 5 Figure 2: Get Unhooked advertisement;...................................................... 16 Figure 3: Belt Up advertisement; .............................................................. 20 Figure 4: Adopt advertisement; ................................................................. 22 Figure 5: Passive Smoking Kills Others advertisement; ................................. 25 Figure 6: Theory of Planned Behaviour; ...................................................... 25 Figure 7: AIDA Model; .............................................................................. 28 Figure 8: Elaboration Likelyhood Model; ...................................................... 29 Figure 9: The Research Process; ................................................................ 32

Table 1: Difference Between Primary and Secondary Data............................. 38 Table 2: Advantages and Disadvantages of Focus Group; .............................. 40 Table 3: Different Views Expressed (Negative and Positive) ........................... 55

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CHAPTER ONE
Research Foundation

1.1

IDENTIFICATION OF TOPIC:

The importance of advertising is constantly growing in todays world. The media of social message have its great impact all around, similarly advertising, which use media as its tools, is a persuasive and powerful force that is shaping behavior and attitude in society. Social advertisements are continuously trying to convince people for social cause such as leaving the drug, quit smoking or stop violence etc. Every person in the world are is consumer by of social campaigns. Basically social advertisements developed different government or non-government

organisations. Intentions behind social advertisements are to break down the practice of undesired behavior in society or to stimulate the desirable practices towards environment, people and surroundings. (Bloom and Novelli, 1981). The target of social marketing messages often aim to internal behavior influences on the individual (Kotler, 2005). This particular chapter focuses on the visual advertising of social campaigns and consumers attitude and perceptions about it. And also identifies the research aim, objectives, and rationale of the research.

1.2

Aims and Objectives:

1.2.1 Study aims: The study aims to evaluate the impact of social advertising campaigns on consumers attitude through analysis and critical evaluation of visual impact.
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1.2.2 Study objectives:

1. To conduct an In-depth analysis of, how social campaigns visuals make their place in consumers mind? And consumers perception and attitude towards the visual elements of social campaign adverts- Consumer perspective.
2. To critically evaluate the visual power of social campaigns advertisements. 3. To critically evaluate consumer perception of various social campaign. 4. To critically compare the effectiveness of social campaigns on male and female.

1.3

Rationale for Studies:

Recently academic research has started giving proper consideration of visual rhetoric for its persuasive power (Kenney and Scott, 2003; Scott, 1994). The past research demonstrates that visual persuasion, employed in a context of persuasion in social media creates a first impression very positively. Visual persuasion is quite old concept as a part of persuasion, far predating Aristotle although he was among the first to categorize the method (McGuire, 2000). But now in modern time, we dont have the teachings of Ancients because it was lost after the Dark Age. Thus the knowledge of visual persuasion was de-emphasized. In last 30 years, visual advertisement rhetoric has been in the main line of advertising (Phillips and McQuarrie, 2002). Almost every person takes interest in advertisements these days. Consumers are exposed to hundreds of advertisements every day. In our total life span, we spend almost one and a half year watching TV-ads (Lutz , 1990). Advertising is the subject which seems to be riddled with inscrutability and perceptible contradictions. Advertising has emerged into an immensely composite form of communication, with literally many different ways for the consumer to get a message from business. Social campaigning is one of the forms of advertising.

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There were numerous reasons behind the proposal of this research. Firstly, it will be immensely important to students, research scholars, advertising professionals and campaigners to obtain a proper insight into the reaction and attitude of targeted customers given to the art of creating advertising of social campaigns. There are also expectations that information and comprehension presented in this research will meet many practical implications because there are very few research had been conducted in the similar objectives. Secondly, with the social campaigning advertising companies are in dilemma to process the most accurate way to create an effective social advertisement to avoid risks and time lapse and enhance its effectiveness, improve mass awareness. These are the reasons that is why researcher believes that there is a need to understand the endconsumers attitude and perception about different visual rhetoric that they consider the most effective. Thirdly, instead of wasting valuable money on less effective advertising, organization should invest money on appropriate advertising that really moves the consumers emotionally and the end-customers think is most appealing and impactful in terms of social awareness and value generation. Successful project ultimately give boundless benefits such as financial, operational, technical or even political and will tend to be long-term, based upon the total life span of project (Kerzner 2009).

1.4

Social Campaigns:

Creating a campaign is a creative and a technical process where scope of art and science come together (Campaignstrategy, 2011). In socially derived marketing, elements of visual language come together with the scientific research results of social science and knowledge. This thesis will mainly focus on social and information campaigns developed by any organization fighting for social issues such as human rights, environmental issues, poverty, violence, public health and security, etc. Social marketing is defined as the "design, implementation, and control of programs seeking to increase the acceptability of a social idea in a target group" (Kotler and Armstrong, 1989). Social campaigning is the field which is a

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type of non-profit marketing, which includes public health campaigns (e.g., those to reduce smoking, alcoholism, drug abuse, overeating); environmental campaigns (e.g., wilderness protection, recycling) and other campaigns (e.g., human rights, social equality) - (Kotler and Zaltman, 1971). In our daily life, we see continuous campaigning around us which try to persuade people to quit smoking, to discard drugs, to ignore alcohol, to practice safer sex or to educate. The basic aim of these campaigns can be on the one practice to break down the undesired activities, as for example activities which harm the environment (global warming, pollution), harm health (drinking, smoking, drug addiction) or have an effect on other in society (violence, sexual abuse). On the other side behavior can be influenced which is enviable (dont drink & drive, use condoms, keep the city clean) for the own life or the society. A social campaign is a broad attempt to converse ideas and practices with mass media and interpersonal communicating.

1.5

Persuasion: Persuasion has become very important in advertising. A main reason is that

market competitor found it very easy to erode any functional or value advantage attached with a product. Companies are trying to reactive wide neglected manners of reaching to customers. Persuasion is to change someones attitude, perception or behavior as a communication goal. Persuasion is a symbolic process in which communicators try to convince other people to change their attitudes or behavior regarding an issue through the transmission of a message, in an atmosphere of free choice (Perloff, 2003). As we think about communication as a way of persuasion tool and its social impact on general peoples life there is one more word can come to mind, is Propaganda. Persuasion is very effective element for marketing. Persuasion occurs in interpersonal relations or in mediated settings and in the noble situation it allows a free flow of information in the direction of two-way. Persuasion is positive process of communication that can produce valuable results. The Posters

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image (figure 1 given below), are good examples of visual adverts. This is an antismoking campaign image.
Figure 1: You dont smoke cigarette, cigarette smokes you.

Source: ADESF, (2011) This poster gives a message to people, which is basically visual persuasion. Image tells, you dont smoke cigarette, cigarette smokes you. The girl illustrated shows a

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gesture of smoking, inside her body, her internal organs burn like the blaze of a cigarette.

1.6

Outline of Chapters: This research study is divided in five different chapters providing an overview

of the research undertaken. The very first chapter of this research discuss about the aim and objectives, visual persuasion as a whole and with comparison with other aspects of communication and a brief introduction to the social campaigns and advertising in the social campaigns. Second chapter consists of various academic literature reviews spoke about visual processing, persuasion in advertising and processing fluency to set up the theoretical framework for present research which has helped the researcher to study, understand and apply the literary work of other authors, scholars and professionals to justify the research undertaken. The literature review underlines the emotional and experimental nature of visual advertising in social campaigns. It also highlights the attitude and perception created by consumers affected by visual persuasion. Third chapter discusses in detail about the research methodology used while conducting the research, along with problems and limitations faced. Fourth chapter focuses on research findings and analysis. It presents the results of each study. Results for all studies will comprise detailed analysis of qualitative data which concern to experimental processing of visual persuasion. Fifth chapter discusses about the conclusion and recommendations. It includes interpretation and discussion of the key finding along with the discussion of the theoretical and practical connotation of the results. Fifth chapter will also give some suggestions for future research and to finish with the limitations of the research.

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CHAPTER TWO
Literature Review

2.0.0 Introduction This chapter discusses the aims and objectives of the research, importance and background of the social advertising and visual persuasion. This chapter focuses on the various literatures related to the visual persuasion, social advertising and consumers attitude and perception towards it. These literatures have been published in various books, journals and articles. Because of the uniqueness of the research, researcher felt the limitations to source literature which are directly or indirectly related to the research nature and problem. Though the literatures used in this section develops a wide understanding of various advertising phenomenon in the recent decades. Now consider an image with no words that advertises a social cause of nosmoking. There is a picture of cigarette litter box stuck on the wall. This box has a front of transparent plastic sheet with the picture of lungs. This lungs picture has such transparency that all the used cigarette filters inside are visible through it. Thus at first glance, the litter box seems like lungs filled with burnt cigarette. It doesnt seem like a pleasant picture. Perhaps reading this description can make you think about it. Now you have read it you can build an image in your mind. It can stir up some positive feelings in your sense. Now you have encountered the image verbally, but the main point is that, have you come across the image visually? The experience appears to have been immediate and it could have given a long lasting
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impact with more emotional and stronger effect. The image which is just described above is a social campaign figure no smoking in Appendix 1 (advertisement 1).

What makes this image an impressive social advertisement is the unusual and unexpected way of implication of its objective. It could have made in a straight forward way with the cancer affected lungs coupled with some phrase such as smoking can cause cancer. The image has two elements in it, one is lung picture and other is litter box. These two have no obvious relation to each other and then lets the viewers mind experience those two elements together and make appropriate and meaningful connection on its own (as mind does it naturally).

2.1

Effectiveness of a Social Campaign The campaigns effectiveness and attitude of consumers and perceptions

towards it, are measured by focus groups and semi-structured questionnaire. On one hand the campaign point at its communicative working, which refers to the variety of the communication means (How many people received the message?), the approval and status of the communication (Did people like it?) and the relocation of the message (Did people understand the message?). On the other hand it looks at its effects on knowledge of people (Do people know more about the subject now?), attitude (Did their attitude change referring to the topic?) and their behaviour (Did a real behavior change take place?). An actual behaviour change can frequently not actually be measured but rather the peoples intention to alter their behavior in question is measured. Further it is checked if the people have developed a requirement for more information referring to the topic of campaign or if the information provided by the campaign is adequate.

2.2

VISUAL PROCESSING:

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Almost 75% of whole information processed in brain is basically visual (Franks, 2003). There are some extensive researches has been done by Anne Marie Barry (Barry, 1997; Berry, 2005) in visual processing and the implication of how the visual system functions for people in modern times trying to navigate the visual environment. At subconscious level, minds dont make a distinction between real and the information in visual form transmitted to us from bill-boards, newspapers, phone screen, computer screen or any other way. Our mind is like a processor which process information avidly that is always looking for meaning and understanding. Our mind has a tendency to fill in unfinished visual narratives automatically such as movies and commercials that go from one scene to another while leaving the large gaps in narrative. Barry (1997) states that the typical high school student in late 20th century had been exposed to 350,000 condensed stories containing basic problems and solutions communicated with much idealized emotion-educing images all of which make life seem very easy. Barry (1997) also warns about heavy volume of exposure towards visual adverts may be productive when we know about how the information is processed by the visual system. Experience is the root of visual processing and visual processing stands between our self and the world with the help of these experiences. Advertising practitioners such as Phillips et al. (2002) think that these connections are in existence and have tried to merge their communications with positive experience, which will resound with our unconscious mind (Schroeder, 2002). Schroeder (2002) explains how market is full of visual imagery trying to persuade; brands are portrayed extensively with the use of images and a number of products are made in such a way to correspond visually. The dominance of visual imagery does not necessarily make for visual literate consumers. Visual consumption often involves mere looking without comprehension, gazing without knowledge, and watching without engagement (Schroeder, 2002: p.11).

2.3

Advantages of visual advertisements:

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Unlike visual processing, verbal processing is mostly limited in language center within higher cortex. Childers and Jiang (2008) differentiate the two systems and explain that verbal process takes longer time to be processed, whereas visual process obtains an immediate response from mind. Thus, in the situations of advertising research that make naturalistic conditions, in which participants doesnt wish to direct all of their resources to process the persuasive stimulus. It is rational to expect that because the brain processes visual information easily. There is some research in advertising which is done by Hung and Wyer (2008), in which there were two conditions for participants. Either they were allowed to use their full mental capacity to process the advertisements or in condition of mental restrictions where they had to memorize a 12 digit number prior to process the advertisement. This experiment presented a solution for pretended comprised verbal, visual or combination of both. Advertisement was rated based on participants own perceptions that (i) advertisements are generally full of information or (ii) information is intentionally exaggerated in advertisements. Result showed that when the advertisements were shown in a pure visual form without any cognitive load, advertisements were rated most effective (with more information) than in other situation. Contrarily, when these advertisements were shown in a verbal format, participants rated them as desperately exaggerated. Basically results explain the notion that visual advertisements are more prominent and more reliable, because mind is able to get more information while processing fewer resources. In modern age consumers may not be practiced as visual processors to handle successfully with huge number of visually persuading advertisements to which they are exposed over life time. In addition, in comparison of how visual and verbal advertisements are processed, visual advertisements have advantages because of its ability to communicate a big amount of information almost immediately. The implementation of these advantages expressed by visual information is that imagery used in advertisements could be more persuasive than similar information communicated by verbal form. This persuasive potential of visual form can be more powerful in naturalistic situation when consumers have less time to be exposed to an advertisement, or face similar contradiction where it
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is bit difficult to pay attention towards an object which consumers are asked to respond. Researches show that visual imagery has some special advantages over verbal information in the context of persuasive imagery in the condition of mental constraint (Mcquarrie et al., 2003a; Hung and Wyer, 2008). There is one exception, previous researches had been focused on the same context but where people had lots of time to process the advertisement (Mcquarrie et al., 2003b).

2.4

How an image tells the story A message is a construction of signs and through interaction with the viewer

it produces meaning. (Fiske, 1990) A graphic designer is professional in communication that is responsible to translate the theory into a visual message. A designer should understand the concept that how an image creates the meaning in consumers mind. In a practical situation a graphic designer is like a transformer who transforms the information in an apparent and understandable manner to viewers by visual language. But many times a designer is not the real sender but a creator of a particular message. Thus in this sense a graphic designer is a visual engineer who makes visual mediums for information. A viewer cant be seen as an inactive participant in the visual communication. A communication is the creation and exchange of meaning where a viewer builds meaning with his values and cultural beliefs by his own understanding and manifestation (Fiske, 1990). Thus communication cant be seen as one way communication or understanding of sender, but a viewer has an important active role too. Codes, signs and signatures create the basic form of meanings in visual persuasion.

2.4.1 Semiotics

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The study of signs (Semiotics) explains the way an image creates meanings. Semiotics provides a number of tools for describing the persuasiveness of an image and relates it to a broader system of meaning. Bal and Bryson (1991: p.174) states that Human culture is made up of signs, each of which stands for something other than itself, and the people inhabiting culture busy themselves making sense of those signs. Researchers depend on the scientific definition that puts forward ideological scientific knowledge. The knowledge of ideology is created in such a manner to legal imbalanced social power relations such as gender, class and race. Advertising is one of the most impactful and influencing ideological forms in modern capitalism. In this context (social campaigning), semiotics is centrally focused on social impact of meaning. Other different study on semiotic focus on the image only as the basic site of images meaning, giving a prominent attention to compositional aspects of the site. Images obviously vary system to system in symbolism. Dividing the elements of meaning in visual communication is bit more challenging than in a language communication. Mitchell (1986) clearly states that The image is syntactically and semantically dense in that no mark may be isolated as a unique, distinctive character (like a letter of an alphabet), nor can it be assigned a unique reference or compliment. An image may be seen as a picture field with assembled marks, which suggests different objects in an implicative manner and an order of processing. The concurrent existence of particular objects in the context of a particular field may propose a notion, create a story and make a fiction. Images are able to declare, comprise, and other types of symbolic statements. Examples can be seen in Appendix 1 (advertisement 2) where image shows the Social advertisement image illustrates the sign of killing. Image shows a cigarette as a part of time bomb. The meaning of bomb connects cigarette towards its meaning. This advertisement argues when smoking kills you with the sign of clock. Small additional text argument SMOKING KILLS apparently confirms the visual argument. On the fact that images are based on convention, all images should be understood according to learned prototype, process is not merely captivated rather
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it is cognitively absorbed. An image may be depicted as symbolic presentations, in which one sign or symbol system (image) communicates with (word) said by another. An unexpected and good fusion of text and image can create a strong memorable effect. Pairing ideas in random manners is the real meaning of rhetorical depiction (Heckler and Childers, 1992). A cognitive psychologist states how human mind response complex figures. Human mind is very fine tuned and pays attention to less unfamiliar figures, especially when figures have very small difference than expected (Shepard, 1990). For every shape which our mind sees through eyes, our mind tries to match it with a match from a so called dictionary of already encountered shapes previously, which we create up over the life time (Marr, 1982). But if an unfamiliar figure is totally different from anything else in the so called dictionary, then either it will be disregarded or mind may take a new step to add this figure as a new entry. It becomes very complicated when brain tries to fit a new shape which differs partially from already existed one. These partially close shapes makes mind to pay closer attention while encountering an advertisement.

2.4.2 SIGNS: Sign is the basic unit of semiotics. Saussure (1974) defines the sign as the most important and the basic unit of a language. Sign consists of two parts, which are the signifier and the signified. The Signifier is the basic material vehicle such as drawn, photographed, written, dots, lines and shapes. The Signified is the concept behind figure. Signs are meaningful only when they are different from other signs, by a code or pattern that systematize these differences. Difference produces the meaning. Visual signs can represent an object which doesnt have any connections to sign, such as a signature of a person or a cross bone and skull for death. Symbol can be explained as a sense by convention, a sign created by culture, not by nature, only in the condition, when a picture can indicate an object without any visual resemblance. The American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce (1955) states

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that considering the relation between signifier and signified, signs have three different kinds: Iconic: the signified is represented by the signifier with the likeness towards it. Eg. Different maps and photos. (Appendix 1, advertisement 3) Index: sign depicts something which is not in image. It shows the simple relationships and narrative elements. (Appendix 1, advertisement 4) Symbol: symbolic signs show the clear relationship between signified and signifier. Often meaning is created by rules, culture and conventions. Eg. Numbers, digits and letters. (Appendix 1, advertisement 5)

2.4.3 How images create meaning: There are three categories of an image: syntax, semantics and pragmatics. These three steps are the way to understand the cognitive process in the viewers mind created by image. At first, when a viewer approaches an image of advertisement, viewer perceives it with general bricks and forms to build up the total image. Then the viewer understands the signs and tries to interpret the whole image (Morris, 1946). Sometimes it is tough to understand the signs because there are no apparent boundaries between the parts of image. Once a viewer is able to identify the particular element as a sign, then image can be explored (Fiske, 1990): 1. Syntax, the Esthetical Level (Form): In a formal figure, syntax is the relation between signs. It basically focuses on form and the unit of images rough material. A viewer is provided a type of hierarchy by the structure and construction of different elements, so that a viewer can understand less important and more important element. A connection is developed between dissimilar elements. 2. Semantics, the referential level (Content): The semantics is about its referred things and the connection between different signs. This is all about the images content. The signifier and signified are the two components

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which make sign together. Signifier is the image of sign as seen by viewer and the signified is the concept behind it. This concept is widely common to the members of same language. 3. Pragmatics, the Communicative Level (Interpretation): A viewers cognitive process is considering the various aspects. A spectator connects the elements together and tries to evaluate it with the help of its perspective. An image is constructed by form and content. Image behaves like a message. Content changes over into argument or statement.

Barthes

(1977)

described

signs

in

another

way.

Barthes

proposed

signification in two orders: the first order is about denotation and meaning, which is identification stage. This level has description. Denotation is basically graphics and design. In this level, perception is the limitation of knowledge. Viewer needs a basic cultural knowledge to understand the meaning of this level (de-notational). Other level is co-notational level. The co-notational has a powerful meaning which refers to the individuals understanding towards a graphic or design. An individual has to be a social group member because a cultural belief and values connects to the image, text and graphic layout in the society. It is like a medium between an individual and culture. Cultural values and beliefs create the meaning or understanding. According to Barthes (1977), rhetoric is the signifiers of co-notational meanings. Signifiers of ideological values and beliefs are the entire graphic, image, text and layout. Groups can be identified by different cultures because each group has similar co-notations. All the members of a single group feel and think similar towards an image. Graphic design is one of the signifying systems in the cultural activity in which those values and beliefs are challenged, reproduced and communicated (Williamson, 1978). Barthes (1977) had developed manners in which the relation (between text and image) is conceptualized indicating towards its meaning. Images contain much potential interpretation, which is called polysemous. In a graphic design, text can
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lead the meaning of an image and text can play an anchor role and it can advance the story of an image. There are two kind of anchor role; both of them are limiting the meanings. The first one works on the level of de-notation and fixes the denotative meaning of an image (Barthes, 1977). Example is given in Appendix 1 (See advertisement 6) which describes; the text is operating on denotation level. It depicts what the picture shows. The text is leading the meaning of the advertisement image, which leaves very less scope to be interpreted in other way by consumer. In this advertisement, a child is a victim of violence and told to keep quite. The text in the image simply identifies what is shown. Second form of anchor role on the connotative meaning guide is the consumer or interpreter towards one particular meaning rather than other (See figure 2 given below).

Figure 2:

Get Unhooked: here in this social advertisement, text plays the anchor role on the connotative meaning. Text guides the consumer towards the particular meaning

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rather than other. In this advertisement, girls smoking addiction is depicted as a fish get caught. Williamson (1978) talk about the different objects in an advertisement which connects to particular qualities. For example picture of a girl can represent the youth and beauty. In advertisements, certain objects can be taken granted for some particular qualities. The composition of different objects is important that how the elements are framed together. Goldman (1992) presents one way to unveil the complexity and map transferring of the different signs. A perfect example is illustrated in Appendix 1 (Image 7) which shows a social advertisement image, context is home where protagonist, a married man drank too much the night before, locked up in a big wine glass (drinking sign). There is his family nearby him waiting for him on breakfast. This social campaign slogan at bottom left puts a question and advising. At the bottom right, there is logo of sender of this social advertisement message. Example shows how signs make the story while affecting each other. Each social advertising image has its own story, emphasizing the negative aspects of drinking in social life. This picture shows an individual captured in a glass, struggling on the next in their social life. The polysemous (multiplicity of meanings of sign) is restricted with the fact that images in social advertisements creates a proposed meaning most of the time (Hall, 1980).

2.4.4 Meaning of Layout: According to Kress and Leeuwen (1996), layout can be analyzed in terms of three systems: Salience, Information value and Framing. Salience is about the eminence of design elements and the attention amount they are getting. Framing is about the manner in which a layout attaches and detaches the element within it (frames, lines, shapes and producing the feel of belonging together). Vertical lines show the strong affect in framing while horizontal lines are weak in framing effect. The meaning and understanding of layout may vary culture to culture. For example:

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western people read left to right and Arabic country people have opposite reading habit. Value of information refers to particular zone of the image (Kress and Leeuwen, 1996). Information value may have three different structures: 1. Top-Bottom Structure: the real will be at bottom while ideal will be found on the top. See the example in Appendix 1 (advertisement 8), which illustrates the top-bottom structure. This advertisement contains two images. The image on top represents the ideal and the image on bottom is the real. This social campaigns advertisement was made for bill-boards. 2. Centre-margin: the center is the main point of information so whatever is at center is most important. There is a bit left-right movement which is quite common in some particular eastern countries. Advertisement 9 (in Appendix 1) presents the example for center-margin, which shows the exaggerated picture of Syphilis virus. Thus the main information is in center. Syphilis virus is the information here. With the exaggeration of the virus depiction represents a threat from outer space. 3. Left-Right Structure: in this structure, already known information is placed on left side while new information is placed on the right side. Advertisement 10 (Appendix 1) is an example of left-right information, in which at the left side earth which we know, how it is and at the right side earth which is flooded, which could develop into.

Layouts are not hard and fast rules to make social advertisement. It cannot bind makers to make social advertising graphics in any limitations. Graphics can be created with the help of common layout to create new meaning and structure. Understanding the basic information on semiotics allows having a deeper look at the construction of visual social message (Leeuwen, 1996).

2.5

Construction of persuasive powerful theory

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Semiotics analyzes and explains the visuals and describes it as a system of different signs, relating to each other. Pictures can be used to pretense arguments, create questions, make fictions or build up a critique and are not proposed as faithful version of reality. The visual rhetoric are often misunderstood by researchers because a number of researcher belief that there should be a natural association between reality and a picture. The reality that an image can create the reality appearance or elements of this particular appearance, also prove that they may call onwards a range of pre-programmed emotional reactions such as delight, anger (Zamoiski, 2004). First poster has to interact with viewers in public space while it has to have a competition with other visually persuading advertisements which are shouting to grab an attention. In urban environment, audiences are less interested in these advertisements because the information in advertisements is quite repetitive, unrealistic and clustered (Richins, 1991). Many of these social campaign advertisements involve around different concepts and tension recognition and alienation (figure 3 given below). The alienated forms develop the process of process development. Alienation breaks into the habit, recognition of illustrated object grabs attention, attention is held by alienation and then motivates the conscious cognitive development in the viewer (Coumans, 2007). Alienation creates appeal and motivates a consumers mind to understand it. In the context of social psychology, the confusion between vision and cognitive processing result would be encouraging for the effect of a message.

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Figure 3:

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Belt Up: One can save his/her life using safety belt while driving. The image is an example of radiogram. The belt depicts the connection in neck. A safety belt can save a life in a car accident and keep you away of being paralyzed.

2.6

Influences of Images in Social Advertisements

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In a social campaigning, an advertisement tries to influence on an individual level with the help of different media. Social campaigns try to influence a consumer and focus on different aspects of the cognitive system of human beings, which are as follows: KNOWLEDGE- The transmitting new knowledge, expand or differentiate from already existed knowledge and then swapping or changing the old or incorrect knowledge. Example can be seen in Appendix 1 (advertisement 11), which illustrates the issue that a big number of people are dying in the world because of bad drinking water. This image shows the connection between the main cause and the worlds most horrific incidents. This social campaign works on knowledge and presents the fact that 2000 times more people than in illustrated incidents die because of having bad drinking water. Viewer can get an idea about number of people dying each year due to bad drinking water. ATTITUDE- Building up or reinforcement of present attitudes or replacement of unhealthy attitude with desired attitude. Attitude can be seen in the example image (figure 4 given below). BEHAVIOUR- Change in behavior or reinforcement of current behavior. Example of behaviour is the advertisement 12 (in Appendix 1), which depicts light bulb but the bulb is made by greenery which shows that the viewer can be more environment-friendly. A campaign focuses on one of these three elements or combines various concepts into single message. In the context of knowledge, information is there for audience. Direct influence may not be constructed on attitude or behavior.

Figure 4:

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Adopt: Image shows a positive reinforcement of attitude by showing a child adoption. The child is exaggerated and keeps the adopter closer in her arms. Adopt. You will receive more than you can ever give.

2.6.1 Impact on Attitude towards advertisements Lutz (1985: p.53) defines attitude towards advertising as a learned predisposition to respond in the consistently favorable or unfavorable manner to advertising in general. An attitude is basically an imaginary construction that signifies an individuals personal perception as like or dislike. Attitudes are in different modes such as negative, positive or neutral views directing to an attitude object: i.e. a person, event or a behavior. A strong attitude is quite defiant to change.

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(Perloff, 2003) To lessen the dissonance between real behavior and the existing attitudes People often reorganize their attitudes to a specific behavior. The theory of cognitive dissonance by Leon Festinger (1957) (Figure 1) states that contradicting cognitions work as a driving force, which makes the mind to be compelled to obtain or invent new beliefs or thoughts, or to the modifications of existing beliefs, so as to the reduction of the amount of dissonance (conflict) between cognitions. If we take somebody as an example who decides to quit smoking and he or she is also convinced about the negative effects of smoking, even than keeps on with it, this is a cognitive dissonance, which develops between what you think, your attitude (Smoking is bad for me) and the actual behaviour is still smoking. To reduce this dissonance you need to adapt your behaviour to your attitude, stopping with smoking, or adapt your beliefs and attitudes (I love smoking and I will stop after some time) to your behaviour. On the right side you see some examples of Anti-smoking campaigns which try to stimulate a dissonance in the viewer by arguing, when smoking, you smoke up yourself. The images on the bottom depict a lighter and two cigarettes as weapon which shows the statement that smoking is killing. Bullet is filled into a cigarette. This bullet is showing the fact that if you lit up the cigarette, it can kill you. In other advertisement 14 is example which shows the lighter is aiming at the viewer and which means, smoking kill others. Burning cigarette is held into fingers and the shadow depicts the gun (advertisements 13, 14 in appendix 1), although the lighter is not the object causing the death.

2.6.2 Behaviour Formation Any actions or reactions of a human being refer to the concept of behaviour, usually in relation to its environment. 5% of our behaviour is estimated as planned, 95% is considered as automatic, behaviour we are unaware of. The behavior which is planned and automatic comes in same category. Well reasoned Behaviour can become a habit or automatic behavior, whereas automatic behaviour can become planned again in a different situation. Planned behaviour as the one we think about
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intentionally and make considerations about. A high participation referring to the accessible information creates a good basis for planned behaviour. In this Theory (Ajzen,1991) the most significant forecaster of planned behaviour is the behavarioul intention, which is a sign of an individuals inclination to perform a given behaviour (Figure 6). This could be seen by three kinds of considerations. First is that, how people assess the behavior, which is suggested as positive (attitude) (How relevant is this attitude?), second is If they think that the others want them to perform the behavior (subjective norm) and the third is the perceived behavioural control, which refers to an individuals supposed ease or complexity of performing the particular behaviour. All these factors mentioned above play a vital role in the behavioural intention (motivation) to implement the behaviour in form of question question. The pictures on the previous page depict different approaches how smoking affects the smokers social environment. Smoking can be harmful to your breath (advertisement 21 in appendix 1) and can be deadly for your near loved ones (figure 5 given below). It asks the smoker to take responsibility for his/her environment.

Figure 5:

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Figure 5: people can get killed by passive smoking. Smoking hand creates the gun towards the dead girl in opposite side. As a smoker you kill people.

Figure 6: Theory of Planned Behaviour

Theory of Planned Behaviour (Ajzen, 1991: p.182)

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In thes behaviour, attitudes are not tending to play an important role for determining behaviour. Attempting to influence an automatic behaviour is more effectual, as people do not replicate critically on their behaviour. Influencing automatic behaviour is highly complicated. But some possibilities are still there of breaking through. At one side you have to try breaking through the routine behaviour, by breaking off an exact stimulus with a definite automatic reaction. This automatic behaviour pattern could be broken through by the use of negative and threatening information. Negative signals aware us of a potential danger. It is a kind of supervision mechanic; signals which are positive from our environment show us everything is normal, negative ones warn us to be more attentive (Dijksterhuis and Arts, 2003). The question is to what level these fear appeals can be shown explicitly? Research tells us that the use of people dead and bloody, additional extreme formats of threatening and danger of the body do not rouse the wished effect. With the disclosure to extreme threatening information our brains shut down, so that our behavior has no effect on it. Still fear appeals are used much in social campaigns. It can be more effective when making sure a behaviour that has already been changed by people. A person who has quit smoking for example can be visually confirmed in his/her decision, by seeing an extreme image of cancer caused by smoking. One example using fear is advertisement 16 (in appendix 1) which shows Dont drive while you are drunk, riding a car is more complex than playing guitar. Victim is shown after the accident. The picture is extreme threatening. It can be found as, Fear appeals are very often found in social campaigns and it seems to be an unconscious attention trigger as the use of sex appeals in advertising. The two basic, evolutional and existential requirements of human beings are addressed: the requirement of reproduction and survival. A public can be reached, which is unconsciously processing the message. Bodily sensations, which results from the disclosure to sexual cues or fear cues are understood as emotions and provide a different value to the interpretation of the message. One more interesting reality is the effect of repetition on the automatic information processing. Zajonic (1968) founded that a repetitive exposure to a stimulus (product, image and person) takes it to a more positive perception about this stimulus, even when we are unconscious about it. But in advance this stimulus
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should not be considered as negative. The recognition of a familiar environment which makes us feel safe comes through an explanation of this effect. Moreover the recurring re-presentation of a visual message by means of a poster in public space could have a positive effect on memorizing the message.

2.6.3 Attitude and behavior work together Is our behavior guided by our likes or dislikes, or it is followed by them? Do we rstly assess an object and behave constantly (e.g.Woody Allen is a great lm director! Lets watch his new movie), or do we rst behave in a positive or negative way towards an object, and assume our attitudes from that behaviour (e.g. I have seen nearly all his movies, so I guess I like Woody Allen)? Researchers divide attitudes into two categories weak and strong. Strong attitudes are constant over time, opposing to change, and inuence the processing of information and action (Krosnick and Petty, 1995). On the other side, if a specific attitude is weak and outof-the-reach, it will less likely to be guided by action. Supporting the moderating role of strength of the attitude in the relationship of attitude-behaviour, several studies have exposed that the strong attitudes are more prognostic of behaviour than the weak attitudes. Strong attitudes will be more impactful on behavior, while behaviour will be more influential on weak attitudes. Attitudes can also be more common or specific referring to behaviour. The attitudes, which are specific considered to be more interesting to influence because they are determinant for the behavior in question. 2.6.4 Information Processing After the presentation of a message the information first need to be processed by the audience. In the past and even in present some of the communication professionals tend to make use of basic linear models of persuasion. One of them is AIDA-reaction model (Strong, 1925), which particularly is used in the marketing context (Figure 7). First you draw attention, then the interest is created, the target group develops a wish and lastly they go over to action. The
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weak point of this theory is its simplification as well as the fact, that it does not take other mediating variables into the consideration.

FIGURE 7:

ATTENTION

INTEREST

DESIRE

ACTION

Source: AIDA MODEL (Kotler, 2004)

Another theory of information processing is the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) developed by Petty and Cacioppo (1986), which is based on distinctiveness of the source, the audience and the message. Information can be processed on the surface level (peripheral route of processing) or more deep level (central route of processing) (Figure 8). Followers of the peripheral route are not included in the subject. They have a low necessity for cognition (ability to think, less intelligent) and do not get motivated to process the information; also being unfocused on the message can take them to a peripheral route. People who follow the peripheral route are more attracted toward messages which are filled with the cues as humor, sex appeal or the use of celebrities, which all are attention drawing. Moreover the use of prominent illustrations and stimulating graphics can be used as triggers for this type of audience. In this route a change in attitude or even behavioral change is difficult to achieve. But the attentiveness or interest created by superficial cues can maybe helpful to build up on this interest in future. People who follow the central route have in common a higher demand for cognition (intelligent), are more involved and motivated from the topic. They are better processors of information and are more influenced by the arguments, but still need the time and the chance to process this information intentionally. Change in attitude can take place in the long term if the arguments are perceived as controllable and strong enough.

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Figure 8:

Elaboration Likelihood Model (Petty and Cacioppo, 1986)

The Forth strategy would be considered as the experiential information processing (Meyers-Levy and Malaviya, 1999). This work of this strategy is to take the feelings experience into consideration. Peoples views or responses are formed by negative or positive feelings, which are elicited by processing advertising for example. Then these feelings get connected with the advertising, which then transferred onto the product or brand. This experimental strategy is particularly used again when people poorly motivated or of insufficient cognition to process the information. In general people tend to do as less as possible to process information especially in case of advertising. 2.7 Various Social Campaign Approaches In general there could be three different concepts for the development of social campaigns: cognitive, affective, and behavioral approach (Ohme, 2000). Cognitive campaigns are more toward young people, who try to change their beliefs about a subject. The description of the campaigns could be done as a kind of prevention. The real behaviour (for example smoking) is still not developed but an
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attempt has been made to influence the cognitions of the young people, therefore they will not engage in this behaviour even in future. Suggested by the theory of reasoned action, for example researchers recognize interpreted drawbacks of smoking (it smells, its a gross habit) and developed print ads, which played with these themes. The state of Minnesota in the middle eighties started an antismoking campaign targeting at teenagers (12-13 years) who have still not become addicted. The image in campaign was presenting a variety of animals smoking cigarettes supported by the slogan: It looks just as stupid when you do it. The campaign proved to be a big success; it was loved and remembered by children. But the question is how this type of campaign was effective on a long term. While smoking the animals look quite happy. Does a teenager actually think by considering this campaign, smoking is not a natural or dangerous behiour? Will it be discouraging for the young people to commit smoking at a future point? By presenting animals smoking, the undesired behaviour is taken in focus again, confirming a norm. The campaigns focused effectively on the feelings associated with smoking. Advertising of tobacco has been successful in connecting smoking with relaxation, pleasant effects, and popularity (Romer and Jamiesson, 2001). Anti-smoking campaigns try to oppose this in applying classical conditioning and relating a negative imagery referring to smoking. Other ads play very obviously on fear appeals. Another class is referring to behavioural interventions, based on Albert Banduras social theory of learning. The theory of social learning explains how people learn behaviour by observing behaviour of others. When people monitor positive, desired results in the observed behaviour, they are more likely to model, copy, and accept the behavior by themselves. Banduras points out that people do not have to be content, like rats or pigeons, to learn new behaviour. He called more attention to the influential role that observing role models perform in social influence. Joly (2008) found also just thinking about somebody, a friend or family member, can add to the norm consciousness and this effect can even be transferred temporarily to the other norms.

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CHAPTER THREE
Research Methodology

3.1

Introduction: Chapter three explains the methods of conducting research, primary and

secondary data collection through qualitative research methods and various techniques. A research methodology consists of different methods, processes and tools which are used in practicing the research in any research field (Nunamaker, Chen and Purdin, 1991). It also explains the reason, why a certain methodology was adopted and other methods were discarded. Advantages and disadvantages in each research method were examined and the basis of aim and objectives of research. Research methods provide enormous knowledge and new theories (Collis and Hussey, 2009) Research methodology is a systematic collection and interpretation of information with a clear purpose, to find things out (Saunders et al., 2007: p.612).

3.2

Perspective of Research: Saunders et al. (2007) has categorized the research purpose as descriptive,

exploratory and explanatory research. Descriptive research supposes to portray a precise profile of events, persons or situations. Descriptive research relies on observation as a means of collecting data. It attempts to examine situations in order to establish what is the norm, that is what can be predicted to happen again under the same circumstances (Walliman, 2006. p.38). While, studies that set up casual connection between variables can be termed explanatory studies. The prominence here is on studying a situation in order to clarifying the relationship amongst variables. Exploratory study is useful when a researcher wishes to simplify his understanding of a problem. Here
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researcher intent to investigate, how social campaigns visual make their place in consumers mind and consumers perception and attitude towards the visual persuasion of social campaign advertisements. In view of the fact that the question is exploratory, thus researcher has used exploratory study as a nature of research study.

3.3

research process The research process is a five stages process:

PROBLEM DEFINITION RESEARCH METHODOLGY DATA COLLECTION ANALYSIS OF DATA REPORT PREPARATION AND PRESENTATION FIGURE 9: THE RESEARCH PROCESS; SOURCE: ADAPTED AFTER CRESWELL (2003: P.138)

As this study analyses the social advertisement imagerys impact on the perception and attitude of consumer, four research questions in form of propositions were developed: P1: The overall attitude and perception of the targeted audience towards images in social advertising campaigns is positive. P2: Visuals always conveys the social message more effectively with a verbal notification or tagline in a social advertisement.

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P3: Advertisements with social cause doesnt often influence directly action taking intension towards the social issue. P4: Males and females have different perception and attitude towards different social campaigning advertisement. 3.4 Research approach There are two kind of research approaches; Deductive approach and Inductive approach.

3.4.1 Inductive Approach: Inductive Approach is when you collect data and develop a theory from those results. (Creswell, 2002: p. 243) 3.4.2 Deductive Approach: Deductive research is that which begins with clear assumptions or previous knowledge in order to understand a particular problem or find the answer to a problem. (Grix, 2004: p. 164) Theory has been well developed by researcher and the knowledge of visual persuasion, semiotics and consumer behavior as well. New and detailed themes rose regarding the power of social campaigns advertising and consumers attitude towards it.

3.5

Types of Research Methods There are three types of research methods:

3.5.1 Quantitative Approach: According to Bell (2005: p.7), Quantitative researchers collect facts and study the relationship of one set of facts to another. They use techniques that are likely to produce quantified and, if possible, generalize conclusions. Researchers
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adopting a qualitative perspective are more concerned to understand individuals' perceptions of the world. Quantitative approach presents numerical data for statistical analysis (Collis and Hussey, 2009). Quantitative research tends to involve relatively large-scale and representative sets of data, and is often, falsely in our view, presented or perceived as being about the gathering of facts (Blaxter, Hughes and Tight, 2006: p.64). The negative aspect of quantitative approach is that it gets a snapshot and it may cause difficulties with categorization, presenting only wide generalizations (Cartherine, 2007). Furthermore, quantitative analysis are quite suitable for question involving numerical such as how much and how many; questions of measurement and incidence. Quantitative analyses are the best when the main focus is on theoretical calculations with accurate measures of variables (Donohue, Cooper and Tharenou, 2007). 3.5.2 Qualitative Approach: Researcher gathers open-ended, rising data with primary aim of constructing themes from data. To investigate the consumer perception and attitude, researcher exercises a qualitative approach to inquire. The data collection in an innate setting sensitive towards people and sets under study, and analysis of data which is inductive and sets up the themes or patterns is a qualitative research method. The information generated from qualitative research is talking directly and studying the individuals. There are non-numerical data and analysis approached by qualitative researches via interpretative methods (Blaxter, Hughes and Tight, 2006). Furthermore, qualitative analysis presents richness, description and sensitivity to the context. Qualitative approaches are appropriate if the research is intended to understand the meaning and construct theoretical justification from participant understanding (Donohue, Cooper and Tharenou, 2007). After considering all approaches, qualitative methodology of research has been used to satisfy the following objects:

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1) To critically evaluate the visual power of social campaigns advertisements. 2) To critically evaluate the consumer perception of social campaigns. 3) Critically examine the attitude, opinions and emotions influenced by social advertising. 4) To critically compare the effectiveness of social campaigns on male and female.

3.5.3 Mixed Methods Approach: In mixed method approach, researcher tends to place base knowledge asserts on practical grounds. Quantitative and qualitative methods are quite often used methods of collecting data for researches. These techniques can be used as single technique or these can form a part of a big mixed method, such as case studies, to attain triangulation (Donohue, Cooper and Tharenou, 2007). The benefit of practicing mixed method approach is that it allows triangulation to happen. For an instance, semi-structured group interview can be a valuable technique of triangulating data collection by different manners like a questionnaire (Blaxter, Hughes and Tight, 2006). Triangulation is a use of two or more independent sources of data or data collection methods to corroborate research findings within a study (Saunders et al., 2007: p.154) In mixed method, qualitative and quantitative method data collection analysis and technique are used either in parallel manner or in sequential manner. 3.6 Types of Data Collection: There are two types of data; Secondary data collection and Primary data collection.

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3.6.1 Secondary Data collection Secondary data is just opposite to primary data. It includes the research collection from different studies that has been done by other researchers for a subject (Catherine, 2007). The motive of secondary research is to the base for primary research and to have a look insight of the topic by reviewing the topic which already exists (Kent, 2007). Secondary data is useful for reviewing and critically analyzing previously formulated applicable theoretical models and principles that help in creating the research questions and to design the content and conduct of primary research (Kumar, Aaker and Day, 1999). 3.6.2 Primary Data collection According to Kent (2007), data collected from primary research which involves the study of particular subject through first hand investigation and observation. Primary research referred as a field research, carried out to collect new information according to research objectives. Source which are created at the time of event, are called primary source (Walliman, 2003). There are many different methods for primary data collection such as experiments, direct observation, ethnography, survey methods (questionnaire or interviews) and focus groups. Though, there are some disadvantages in primary data such as it needs time, it needs money to collect it and moreover the quality of data is totally dependent on the willingness and ability of respondents (Ghauri and Gronhaug, 2005). a) Qualitative data collection: Any search has a crucial and major element, called data collection. A careful consideration on data collection is required by all three approaches in research methodology. Facts, opinions and statistics that have been collected together and recorded for reference or analysis (Saunders et al., 2003: p.476). Saunders et al. (2007: p.608) has defined qualitative data as, Qualitative data refers to non-numerical data or data that have not been quantified and can be
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a product of all research strategies. Qualitative data is quite open to interpretation and also deal with a wide range of subjective facts such as social and cultural meaning (Greenwood and Levin, 2003). One more reason to implement the qualitative research method is that, it can allow having a deep understanding of social facts. Qualitative research methodology is practiced in the situation of research when an issue requires to be investigated with detailed understanding. This methodology presents a complex picture with analyzing reports of detailed notion of informants and performs the study in a natural situation. Furthermore, according to Blaxter, Huges and Tight (2006), qualitative data more often involves quantification, such as statements like most, less than, more than and sometimes specific numbers as well. There are different qualitative research techniques such as focus groups, interviews, participant observation, case study, ethnographic field research and textual analysis (Shrumer, 2002). The data consists of some form of primary data, gathered particularly for the research (such as case studies, participant observation, interviews) and may also consist of some secondary data, which has not been gathered for the research purpose (such as archives, company documentation) (Donohue, Cooper and Tharenou, 2007). According to Redmond and Griffith (2003), when issue is known about as simple and definite, quantitative methods are used. Qualitative allows a natural study of people with genuine social setting and is very necessary for investigation some new topics and gaining an insight of complex issues.

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Table 1: Difference between Primary data and Secondary data Primary Data Researcher Observation Researcher Experience Film/Video Laboratory Experiments Secondary Data Research Books Research Journals/Articles Articles Reproduced Online Critiques of Literary Works Analysis of Historical Events Conference Papers Source: (Catherine, 2007: p.47) 3.7 Sources of Data:

3.7.1 Sources of Secondary Data According to Blaxter, Hughes and Tight (2006), secondary data is the data which is already been collected and analyzed by some other researchers. Primary data of another entity becomes another individuals secondary data (Rabianski, 2003). The widely used sources of secondary data are industrial reports, Government reports, industrial studies, archived data sets, syndicated information services, books and journals as well. There are number of secondary data has been used for this research paper to sustain the argument and accomplish the research objectives. Researcher made an effort to use the most recent secondary data but there are few times some justified and well written old researches have been used as well. The list of secondary research sources used as follows: 4 5 Text books and journals by Robert Gordon University (Georgina Scott Sutherland Library, Francis and Wiley & Taylor online library. Online Databasea) Emerald
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b) Science Direct c) Business Source Premier d) Sage journals Online 6 Google Scholar

3.7.2 Sources of Primary Data The researcher has used focus groups as a primary data collection source. Justification of using this methodology is discussed later in this chapter.

3.8

Exploratory Study: An exploratory study is an important mean of finding out; to look for new

insights; what is going on; to ask some questions and to evaluate the fact in a new light (Saunders et al., 2007). Exploratory study is mainly useful if a researcher wants to simplify the understanding of a problem, such as if researcher is uncertain of the certain nature of the problem. In the nature of exploratory research, interview is the appropriate technique to investigate the problems.

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Table 2: Advantages and disadvantages of Focus Group.

Main qualitative methods Focus group

Definition

Advantages

Disadvantages

A pre-selected group of people being involved in conversations that are steered by the moderator

- Respondents speak their minds - Probe deeply more

- Can be expensive - Certain participants may dominate others - Answers may be biased - People are not equally perceptive - Researchers presence may prejudice responses - Expensive - Time consuming - Perceived anonymity is low - Analysis is time consuming

- Other issues may arise

Interviews

A face-to-face situation where the researcher asks the respondent questions about a particular product Recording consumer behaviour without having contact with the respondents

- Allows probing and follow-up questions

Participant observation

- Gives opportunity to make observations more deliberate, therefore reduces errors

-over generalization -selective observation -Illogical reasoning

Source: (Donohue, Cooper and Tharenou, 2007; Creswell, 2009; Creswell, 2007; Saunders et al., 2007).

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3.9

Qualitative Approach of Inquiry Five qualitative approaches for inquiry can be adopted. In grounded theory,

the main focus is to generate a new theory by analysis. Ethnography is a systematic study of a particular cultural group or phenomenon, based upon extensive fieldwork in one or more selected locals (Riemer, 2008: p.203). While a case study uses a particular case to be examined, regularly with the intention of investigating an issue with a case showing the complexity of an issue. In the narrative research, the experience of a person is narrated by researcher in the form of story and re-establishes them in a frame which makes sense (Creswell, 2007).

3.10 The Chosen Method (Focus Group)

Focus groups have been described as a carefully planned discussion designed to obtain perceptions on a defined area of interest in a permissive, nonthreatening environment (Krueger, 1994: p.6). According to Massey (2011: p.21) They combine elements of both interviewing and participant observation, and provide an opportunity to probe the participants cognitive and emotional responses while also observing underlying group dynamics. Focus group method is very helpful when research needs to understand how a person regards specific experiences or incidents, filling in the gaps of meaning and understand the why behind behavior and attitude (Greenbaum, 2000; Massey, 2011). A focus group with a semi-structured questionnaire, was discovered the best suitable approach for data collection to investigate the involved issues in research. The method was felt to give the best result, as they could explore the attitude of respondents and the interaction among participants. In order to attain the research aim, author decided to sample a group of 6 participants of both sexes, aged between 18-40 years. The study was carried out in Aberdeen and the participants were selected from the Robert Gordon University. Total two focus groups were carried out with 12 participants, representing mixed aged groups. The reason
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behind the selecting a minimum and maximum age is that, most of the unsocial activists are more than 18 and these are the people, social advertisements are created for. Maximum age is selected for the reason is that participants over 40 might felt bit uncomfortable with the topic and with the moderators age. Participants table is included in Appendix 1. This is a bit sensitive area of research and care has to be taken to make sure that participants of focus groups should be aware of that how many people would be there in the group which they were participating in and their genders. Each participant of a focus group was briefed about the subject content earlier and they were advised to have a liberty to say no, if they feel uncomfortable with any of the images they were shown. Confidentiality was assured to all respondents and everyone was given a pseudonyms. Small group sizes were small consisting 6 respondents, as suggested by Krueger and Casey (2000), to make sure that respondents were not intimidated with the social advertisements images or shock advertising images. Participants were made sure that they were not uncomfortable while talking about different advertising images between numbers of strangers and also made sure that every member had equal opportunity to convey their opinion. Beforehand in the pilot test, the whole discussion took approximately 45 minutes and it was felt to be a contented time length. Though in the practice, up to 75 minutes were taken by groups, because they were permitted to keep their discussion continue until respondents felt that everyone has covered all issues and given best possible opinions with each social campaign advertisement. Each session was divided into two parts. At first, participants were shown some particular advertisements and then they answered questions about those advertisements. They were asked to give a name to the first impression generated after viewing the advertisement and to assess it. It enables an instantaneous uninfluenced answer. Participants also answered some questions on the cause of advertising image (which it was created for), contents of advertisement, different purposes present in advertisement and the different possibilities, which could occur

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in a social advertising image. The procedure was repeated for each social advertisement. In the second part, there was a general deep discussion, in order to get the participants outlook on the matter of social advertising images in general, its use in different category of social advertising and to discuss the concerns of ethics and view in general. All sessions are transcribed. Moderation was low level moderation, which was considered most

appropriate moderation considering two reasons. Firstly, it allows participants to reveal and explain their response to each social advertisement fully and the second reason, which is suggested by Merton, Fiske and Kendall (1990), low level moderation, allows respondents to introduce new ideas which researcher had not considered previously. In order to investigate the attitude and perception of consumers in social advertising, a series of social advertisements were assembled to make discussion possible. While preparing the social advertisements to be used in focus group, researcher has taken two issues in consideration; content in the advertisements and the cause of the image. The classification made by Lambiase and Reichert (2003) was taken into consideration, the author included any advertisement which presents a social cause such as prevent alcohol, quit smoking and say no to violence. While creating the portfolio of social advertisements, all advertisements were collected from different online sources, magazines and news papers. A set of five social advertisements was chosen by author. Justification of using specific images in focus group can be seen in appendix 2. All social advertisements images were shown in a folder to imitate, how do they appear in magazines or news paper in terms of size and colours. The social advertisements in the portfolio were chosen on the basis of low and high levels of shocking and appealing feel. The table consists of chosen advertisements description can be found in Appendix 2.

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3.11 Analysis of Qualitative data The qualitative data analysis process focuses to bring meaning towards a situation rather than investigating the truth aimed on by quantitative research. According to Strauss and Corbin (1998), qualitative analysis is the interplay among the data and the researcher. It was very time consuming to analysis the data gathered by focus groups. According to Creswell (2003: p.190), It involves preparing the data for the analysis, data. There was a big quantity of received data from focus groups which needed to be analysed. Removal of any irrelevant data was important as well. Researcher continued with steps to make an analysis the qualitative data as described by Creswell (2003): conducting different analyses, moving deeper and deeper into understanding the data, and making an interpretation of the larger meaning of the

1. systematise the data collected and set up the data to be analysed 2. construct transcripts from the focus-groups 3. Reading through all the data and gaining general idea of the information 4. commence comprehensive analysis through a coding process which involves systemising the data into portion which can be categorized 5. Using the coded data to recognize appropriate themes 6. At last making an understanding of the data

The ultimate interpretation of data obtained from the coding procedure of focus groups, allowed the author to conclude answers to the research objectives mentioned in the introduction chapter (at the beginning of the study).

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3.11.1 Coding the Responses Assigning a code is usually a number, to each possible response to each question. The code includes an indication of the column position (field) and data recorded it will occupy (Malhotra, 2007: p.431). Furthermore, if the data research consists of only prearranged questions and questions are pre-coded, and then codes can be assigned before the conduction of research (Malhotra, 2007). Bradley (2007: p.329) precisely describes the coding as the name given to the procedure whereby complex descriptions are broken into simpler meanings and are allocated a code, usually a number.

3.12 Pilot Testing Saunders et al. (2007: p.206) defines pilot testing as, a small-scale study to test a questionnaire, interview checklist or observation schedule, to minimise the likelihood of respondents having problems in answering the questions and of data recording problems as well as to allow some assessment of the questions: validity and the reliability of the data that will be collected. Pilot testing is to make sure that participants have no issues or problems while understanding or answering the questions and all the instructions were followed correctly which participants narrated. Furthermore, pilot has been used to develop, adapt and ensure the viability of techniques, to establish the measures reliability and to measure how big the finishing sample needs to be (Dewalt and Dewalt, 2002). Questions for focus group were tested during pilot testing as soon as they were designed. 2 pilot tests had been conducted to make sure that respondents understand the questions and topic clearly. The responses in pilot testing provide an idea of suitability and reliability of the questions (Saunders et al., 2007).

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3.13 Limitations of Research As discussed in previous sections, adopted approach lead to important insights and facilitated in conducting the research and in identifying the attitude and perception of a consumer towards social advertisements and what drives these attitude and perception in the mind. Though, the primary research scope is limited as no concrete item analysis was conducted for the questions used in research, thus it cant be proved with statistical proof that the questions are valid. Though researcher develop intellectual potency to discover the presence of a peripheral occurrence which is existing in the environment, still being a researcher, report is accompanied by the own understanding of researcher and outlook. Distinct to positivism that is stood on the premise that natural sciences methods should be utilized for sociological research as well, and research should be totally objective also (Bryman and Bell, 2003). Approach of researcher is based on a innovative experimentally notion in terms of collection of data and its interpretation. Researcher supposes that it is difficult to take all the prevailing factors in consideration, thus there are some limitations to conduct this research. The major constraint would be the selecting and finding the interested people who can give enough time to conduct focus group discussion. Researcher is new in the city therefore the participants were selected from population of one particular location, which is Aberdeen city. It gives a narrow sample and findings, so the results may not be pertinent to other places in UK. 3.13.1 Limitation of chosen research method Respondents may rephrase the question with their own interpretation and offer the answer to their new rephrased version of question. It can lead the topic towards a different direction (Massey, 2011).

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While the focus group method is widely used, a common critique of this method is the lack of detail regarding techniques for data analysis and interpretation (Massey, 2011: p.23).

In discussion, there can be irrelevant discussion which can distract the topic. Participants can be hard to manage and their views can be hard to analyse. Some respondents may feel dominated by some dominant participants and they may not feel confident enough to present their own views. An open ended focus group discussion cannot be pre determined.

3.14 Ethical Considerations

According to Blumberg et al. (2006), Ethics are norms or standards of behaviour that guide moral choices about our behaviour and our relationships with others. Ethics differ from legal constraints, in which generally accepted standards have defined penalties that are universally enforced. The goal ethics in research is to ensure that no one is harmed or suffers adverse consequences from research activities. According to Saunders et.al (2007: p.610), The appropriateness of the researchers behaviour is in relation to the rights of those who become the subject of a research project, or who are affected by it. In a good study, the qualitative research is precisely ethical. A research is ethical means; the researcher is looking for and attaining the permission of institutional review boards or committees. It shows that the research is conscious and addressing all the ethical issues all the way through the phases of the research (Creswell, 2007). There are some ethical considerations that were made before research, are as follows: 1. Rights protection of the respondents: The research design was created in such a manner that participants would not feel any uneasiness while

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participating in focus group. While conducting the adopted research method, any physical harm, embarrassment or humiliation, any forced act and any loss of privacy to the participants wont take place. Before building a direct contact to participant, a concise introduction was given about the research nature (nature, name and researchs motive) and the researcher (Blumberg et al., 2006). Focus group was only started once participants become comfortable with the description provided and once ready to respond genuinely. Furthermore, it was all participants willingness to participate in the research. 2. Avoiding Deception: When the researcher veils the truth behind the research motive from participants, deception occurs (Blumberg et al., 2006). In this research, there was no deception occurred by sustaining transparency by mentioning every essential information such as university name and concise academic research motive on the top of focus group question. 3. Informed Consent: Oral approval was made by informing the participants that, this is a voluntary participation. Participants were informed about the time estimation to complete the focus group and the resulting transcript before they were asked to join the group. Wherever it seemed appropriate, promise for confidentiality and anonymity was made. There were no further interviews, questions or favours asked once the focus group was done (Blumberg et al., 2006). 4. While performing the stages of research, Robert Gordon University research ethic policy was considered such as collection of data, data analysis and report writing. Focus group question were carefully created (Blaxter, Hughes and Tight, 2006). Questions were asked clearly with standard professional pronunciation so that the participant wouldnt antagonise (Bell, 2005)

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5. Data analysis was made attentively and results were presented accurately with no biased intentions. In secondary data research, data is honestly sourced, referred and cited in the report. Plagiarism is thoroughly avoided.

3.15 Summary/Conclusion This chapter rationalizes the selected methodology of research and used by researcher to accomplish the research objectives. There are several techniques, methods and approaches of data collection. Research has used the qualitative research approach for primary data collection which is a ideal method to investigate the issues and understand the phenomenon. In this study, a group of individual with various backgrounds, age and gender were taken as participants for focus group, to know about their attitude, perception and experience on the specific phenomenon. Focus group has been selected as the method of data collection from different individuals as a social campaign advertisements consumer. Semistructured open ended questions were asked in focus group session and a group discussion was made to obtain the consumers attitude and perception towards the imagery advertisements of social campaigns. To make sure the reliability and validity, pilot testing has been performed before conducting the research. Furthermore, updated and latest resources from RGU online database, journals, textbooks, Google scholar have been used in research. Like a proper research, ethical consideration has been considered with high priority in the course of data collection, data analysis and data interpretation.

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CHAPTER FOUR
Data Analysis & Findings

4.1

Introduction: This chapter reflects the analysis of data collected by using qualitative

research method. Objectives of research are fulfilled by using focus group method. Focus groups and semi-structured open-ended questionnaire are used in order to conduct this research with randomly selected twelve participants divided into six male and six female. The study to explores and explains the consumer attitude and perception towards the images of social campaign advertising in the context of different social causes. Two focus groups were conducted, both of them having three male and three female participants each. Data is presented in a manner that information can be easily interpreted. Findings have been fully examined and discussed and a conclusion will be drawn in respect to the aim of this thesis. The findings are divided into perception towards images of social advertising, emotions towards images of social advertising, attitude towards social advertising and male & female attitude towards images of social advertising. The social campaign advertisements are included, justified and described in a table in Appendix 2. 4.2 Perception towards social advertising: As a result of evaluating picture 1 (Appendix 3), the study revealed that consumers respond to different social campaigns in different ways. In this context, there is an argument made by La Tour (1990) that men are more likely to approve of social advertisements containing different shock elements like nudity, violence or weird situations because nudity can be sexually attractive, violence can be action and weirdness can be something different for them because these elements are very subjective. This study seeks to explore this issue in greater depth. Table (3) summarizes different positive or negative views on social advertisements expressed
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by the subjects. These all views given are subjects personal views about social advertising images. For social advertisement 1 (picture 1), all respondents agreed that it was really vulgar and unworthy. They felt nudity was exaggerated and more focused on nude girl. It provoked similar feeling in male and female respondents. There was a response with question that: Why is the girl nude and having no cigarette while it is an anti-smoking advertisement? and expressed a loud attitude for the type of nudity used. Debi (female) even said: I dont understand why the girl is nude while the advertisement contains a social message. Focus should be more on cause. Nudity is diverting the focus from antismoking message. It is shocking for me. But another female Sana answered her in a different way with a different context. She expressed her personal view for this advertisement and said: although I dont see the nudity relevant to the cause of advertisement and the visual is not enough catchy in the context of social cause [persona appraisal], I see this advertisement bit effective because there wouldnt be any space of showing burning internal organs if there was no nudity, which indeed catches my eyes [effectiveness]. The model is quite sexy [personal appraisal] and the fact that model is in the gesture of smoking which looks like she is smoking, you cannot miss the message portrayed and this makes it a good social advertisement [effectiveness]. For advertisement 2 (picture 2, appendix 3) all respondents felt it was an impressive advertisement. Some of them felt it contains a bit gore and shock element but it is very convincing in the context of delivering the social cause. Female respondents also expressed the similar views towards the advertisement with the views such as shocking, brutal, convincing and informative. There were mixed views towards this advertisement. At the first instance advertisement felt like brutal, gore and unoriginal but as participants are exposed to the advertisement,
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and they understood it and see it as an excellent piece of advertising. There was a small difference between the opinions of male and female respondents, as male respondents liked the advertisement from the first instance and did not expressed any negative views for this advertisement compared to female respondents, who felt uncomfortable initially with this advertisement. At the end of the discussion almost all participants agreed that this advertisement was smartly done. Johanna (female) and Sarah (female) explained the advertisement with favourable adjectives. Johanna: This advertisement passes on the correct message and its magnitude instantaneously [effectiveness]. I am a smoker and Ive rarely come across a campaign that would make me consider the idea of quitting smoking [effectiveness]. The message put across made me think about the monetary as well the physical loss. The message and image have been put across brilliantly [personal appraisal]. Sarah: Message has come across impressively. Though initially it felt like a bit disturbing image, it impresses me with a long lasting impact [personal appraisal]. Being a non-smoker I cant start smoking after watching this image and of course I would be able to save money as suggested by advertisement [effectiveness]. While discussing about the advertisement 3 (picture 3 in appendix 3) respondents were quite confused initially but later they found it an excellent piece of work. Respondents argued that the impact is quite gentle in a complex manner. Respondents shared four main positive expressions for this advertisement are: excellent, powerful, effective and horrific. Initially female respondents had different perceptions such as horrific, skull, dark and weird but after discussion they all ended up supporting the advertisement strongly. Surprisingly almost all male respondents were impressed with the image initially and concluded with the same perception. Male respondents were quite capable of assessing the connection between the illustrated belt and the skull. They were not tempered by the lack of practical content in advertisement.

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Saan (male): I think it is an amazing visual. It sends shiver to the spines. It is simply stunning and conveying message to the point. It is giving a direct impact at the very first instance [personal appraisal]. I am simply stunned by visual the way it is created and of course, I would never forget to fasten the seatbelt [effectiveness]. I will insist other people to fasten the belt in their car [effectiveness]. The fourth advertisement (picture 4, appendix 3) was felt to be an unappealing advertisement. Female respondents expressed views towards this advertisement such as crime, murder, vague and dead. This advertisement revealed a great difference in the perception towards the image in social advertisement used among the male and female respondents. While both the male and the female respondents agreed that the advertisement was different, they used the nice imagery but message is not clear in the context of social cause. Image was more like an action movie scene rather being a social advertisement. Female respondents expressed more negative views. Many of male respondents (Sanj, Phil, Somi, Andrew) expressed their views more positively than female respondents such as striking, meaningful, thought provoking and bold but confusing. But as the discussion went towards end, almost all male and female respondents stated that this advertisement could have been much better and there is lots of space of improving image in terms of message conveying. Phil (male): It makes me think about how smokers have an effect on the people around [effectiveness]. The issue of passive smoking has been highlighted in the image. But the image does not do much to persuade you to give it a second thought [personal appraisal]. Andrew (male): I am confused; the advertisement is for dead person or about the one who is killing. If there was a tagline for this image, I could have understood it immediately with better impact [personal appraisal]. I know it is for passive smoking but still not impressed much [effectiveness]. While discussing about advertisement five (picture 5 in appendix 5), all respondents viewed positively and found this advertisement beautifully made
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message in form of image. All male and the female respondents argued positively towards the image more in this advertisement. images nature Female and respondents male saw this saw advertisement towards respondents

advertisement more towards its cause, but eventually male and female respondents found it positive as it gives a beautiful feeling. Male and female respondents shared similar views but in different way. Female respondents shared views such as: cute, nice, beautiful and lovely. While male respondents shared views such as: sensible, emotional, sensitive and effective. Merely one or two respondents considered the size of child and man depicted in the advertisement and they said initially weird. According to views given by respondents, advertisement has a beauty as it depicts a cute child and conveys the message beautifully. Debi (female): The image is successful in making you realize how beautiful parenthood is. This is a subtle message, which has been beautifully done [personal appraisal]. It makes me think about the cause instantly as tagline of the image suggested [effectiveness]. Saan (male): This image is the most impressive as it has an emotional touch to it [personal appraisal]. I feel that advertisements do make a strong impact in the minds of the public through if they are backed by emotional elements and representation [effectiveness]. Bali (male): I found this advertising very interestingly presented [personal appraisal]. It grabs the emotional nerve. As I am a married person, I can discuss with my wife about this cause [effectiveness].

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Table 3: Different Views immediately Expressed (negative and positive) by male and female respondents.

FEMALE Ad 1 Nudity EyeCatchy Flashy Irrelevant vague Nudity Ad 2 Brutal Horrible Shock Relevant Informative Painful Ad 3 Horrifying Creative Scary Excellent Fatal Dark Ad 4 Crime Murder Moviescene Vague Dead Interesting Ad 5 Cute Nice Subtle Beautiful Cute Lovely Ad 1 Sexy Nudity Vulgar Hot Over-done Irrelevant Ad 2 Informative Eyecatching Scary Powerful Effective Unrealistic

MALE Ad 3 Interesting Excellent Confusing Horrific Impactful Effective Ad 4 Striking Meaningful Thoughtprovoking Depressing Gothic Bold Ad 5 Weird Beautiful Sensitive Emotional Sensible Adorable

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Results indicate the perception towards social campaign advertisements differed quite significantly between male and female respondents. Both male and female evaluate the depiction of different elements in an image more favourably (Reichert, 2002). When analyzing the sexual content in social advertisement, it appears that female evaluate nudity more favourably than male evaluate it. Apart from nudity females are more sensitive towards the content of image whether it is a gore, shocking elements or emotional elements. Males are more sensitive towards the cause behind the social advertising image. This study revealed that men perception of social advertising used in Image one and Image 4 is not positively impressing; while the female respondents found Image 2 and Image 3 (picture 2 and 3 in appendix 3) more shocking. Overall both male and female respondents found image 2 and image 5 impacting positively. Data analysis suggests that female respondents have a more positive perception towards the images compare to male respondents. However, when analyzing the full transcripts of respondent groups, the female respondents were clearly less impressed by many of the social advertisements featured. Because according to them, advertisements were quite complex and indirect towards the cause of advertising. It took them some time to explore the cause in some images. I feel confusing when I look this picture. I dont really get the message, what is the skull trying to convey [Birgit, female; discussing about the Image 3 (picture 3 in appendix 3)]. Clearly, females respondents struggled a bit to find out the basic cause of the image. Male respondents were quite impressed with the way image were created and they were not affected by the content which was used to create the social advertisement. Although, all male had similar perception towards the Image one that the nudity in the picture is unnecessary element and it could have been retreated by clothes. Overall, data analysis demonstrates that consumers perception towards the imagery in social advertisements is positive. This finding supports P1 (proposition 1 in chapter 3, p.32). Moreover the transcripts revealed that there is a bit difference in perception towards the social advertisements used among the male and the female respondents. Saan (male) captured this aspect: Saan: the theory is very simple, the male respondents need a graphical exploration way in order to receive the desired response; but the female have a
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different way. They are more complex, they need subtle stuff, something that will intrigue them, something that can put their brain in action, something that can make them to think about in order to come to the idea of cause behind the image of social advertising. Furthermore, the analysis of data revealed that the male and the female respondents have different views and opinions about the imagery in social advertisements. Female respondents were quite convinced once they got the proper social message behind the advertisements. They were very enthusiastic after having the essence of image towards the future actions. While male respondents were quite impressed but they seemed more careless about taking actions than being influenced. Male respondents found the social advertising images more towards knowledge than convincing. Though male and female respondents found these social advertisings impressive and they were positive towards them but all respondents had their different process of assessing the social image contents and image presentation. This finding supports P4 (proposition 4 in chapter 3, p.33). 4.3 Congruence Analysis of the data led to congruence developing as a key theme. Although congruence is where the respondents showed greater approval of an social advertisement because they felt that the content used in social advertising image was justified; they also admitted that advertisements using different contents and shocking elements purely to attract attention with no clear congruence with the product are more effective in capturing their attention and in achieving social cause recall. Congruence was found to be highly subjective, and respondents were able to find demonstrations of congruencies in different forms including social message. Within the advertising portfolio there were a number of advertisements that specifically used shocking themes and complex medium of conveying message in terms of message especially the advertisement two (picture 2 in appendix 3) which even used the image of a girl and her cheek is hooked with a hook; probably to make sure that the viewers interpret the advertisement as the messenger intended.

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When discussion the advertisement one (picture 1 in appendix 3) all groups came to the conclusion that there was no congruence between the social message and the use of nude girl image. The group containing Bali (male), Andrew (male) and Katie (female), suggested that a clothed female or a seminude female model would be more appropriate for the social advertisement. Bali (male): I think that it would have been more appropriate if the model was wearing jeans or some shorts or some beautiful clothes. The most important part of her body in the advertisement is her waist which depicts the burning internal organs as she smokes. Thus she could have covered other parts of her body. Andrew (male): yes, I think they could have used some male model or athlete instead of nudity. Katie (female): For me the fact is, they are using the nudity to convey the social message. It doesnt make me give a thought about the social message. But they also admitted that the use of nudity in this advertisement made them to take more time when looking to the advertisement and as a consequence to pay more attention to it. Katie (female): Still I have to admit that the social advertisement catches your eyes, and somehow it provokes you to study it, to take good look at it and even to show it and discuss it with your friends; it makes you remember it. Developing the outlook of congruence Bali (male) stated that in the advertisement two (picture 2 in appendix 3), the shocking element (gore) represented the social cause in a particular way; Bali (male): To me, though it is bit shocking towards the acceptance but it is the real knowledge and connection to the social cause which is the key thing. The viewer is not specifically felt badly about the social advertisement.

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4.4

Attention, Interest and Attitude P3 (proposition 3 in chapter 3) suggests that advertisements with social

cause dont often influence directly action taking intension towards the social desired social issue. The extant literature suggests that People often rearrange their attitudes to a specific behaviour to minimize a kind of dissonance (tension) between an actual behaviour and the existing attitudes (Perloff, 2003). In this study, this aspect was common between young respondents. Sanj (age 25; male) described his reaction to the social advertisements: Sanj: I felt these advertisements quite impressive but as I wont be exposed to these social advertisements every time, so I think, impact wouldnt be with me for long time. These advertisements would not even come in my mind when I will smoke. Interestingly, in the discussion female respondents had a different reaction. According to them, they will at least consider the message once before pursuing any anti-social activity. Furthermore, the levels of social message recall with shock elements with social cause themes being advertised higher than the level of social cause recall without shock elements. Sarah (female): I was most impressed with the advertisement two and the advertisement three (Image 2 & 3). But I doubt, how long can these be with me in my general life? Johanna (female): For me, the most impressive advertisement is advertisement two (Image 2). This is a clever one. The use of shock element catches my eyes, while the written information about the social issue makes you pay attention to the social issue and gives the right message. I can leave smoking for some time but after some time, I think I will forget that I had even seen something which tried to convince me to quit smoking or I will think that I love smoking, I will stop it later. In addition, after analyzing the full transcripts, the researcher discovered that consumers are perceptive towards advertising with social cause, they remember advertisements for a long time but these unsocial and unhealthy

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activities have become the part of their general life. Consumers dont feel like to leave them or adopt any good social cause. For example Somi (male) offered a good graphic social campaigning advertisement to describe: Somi (male): I remember a few months ago, I saw a social advertisement about keep environment clean. There is boy at the beach and he picks up the water like a cloth and there is a lot waste beneath it. This social campaigning advertisement was very impressive and I thought, we really should do something to keep environment clean. But I always ask a question to myself that do I really care about the environment? Am I really doing anything towards it? I still remember this advertisement because of the presentation of the image not because of the cause behind it. Here Somis statement demonstrates the real impact of image of social advertisements. It proves the use of different ways of presenting images in social advertisements make them interesting but these are not the guaranty of changing attitude of a consumer. Somi remembered the advertisement, which he saw month ago. It means, the advertisement has achieved high level of recall but he also added the fact that he could remember it because of the way it was presented. This study also tried to establish which type of social advertising captured the most attention and interest. As a result of contrasting five different social advertisements, the researcher came to the conclusion that the shock advertising and nudity themes are most effective in capturing attention and interest. In addition, female respondents also demonstrates the same outcomes but with lower level of convincing capability. Phil (male): I liked the advertisement one, it is interesting and catching my eyes because the female model is nude but it is not impressive for me. Overall, for P3, analysis appeared to be explaining the negative attitude towards the social advertisements. Consumers want to enjoy watching these social advertisements, they think about the cause but at the end, social advertisements are not capable of changing their attitude. This analysis supports P3 (proposition 3 in chapter 3, p.33).

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4.5

Visual vs. Verbal After analyzing the data and answers of semi-structured questionnaire,

visual contents are found to be stronger and more effective than verbal in a social advertisement. While showing the social advertising images to respondents, the verbal part of advertisement was removed from image and all respondents were asked to present their opinion about it. Quite a few times, they were confused and struggling to find out the basic cause behind the advertisement. There was difference of opinions between male and female respondents. Male respondents were trying to connect signs and elements in order to find out the significance of the image and later they were forming relevant perceptions. Female respondents were more towards making their perceptions immediately and struggling to get the logic behind the image. Debi (female): I am confused to see the skull. What is it for? After reading the verbal part she said: oh! It is about fasten the seat belt. I couldnt really see the belt sign in the image. Now I know the logic, I can say that this image is a piece of brilliant work (Discussing about the image 3 included in appendix 3). Saan (male): It is difficult to get through images without a tagline. I think, verbal part always complete a social advertisement. Furthermore, when they were exposed to the verbal taglines, they could really felt effectiveness towards social advertisements. Phil (male) stated that No doubt that image is the main part of a social advertisement and image says everything itself, but an image needs support of verbal announcement. Overall, all male and female respondents concluded the discussion with agreeing on the fact that without a verbal or tagline, a social advertisement is less effective. Verbal enhance the effectiveness of visual social advertisement. Thus, analysis of discussion and questionnaire result support P2 (proposition 2 in chapter 3, p.32).

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4.5

Authorial Intent and Reader Response In studying social advertising material, both authorial and reader response

need to be taken into consideration. After analyzing the data, the researcher discovered that participants were concerned and even confused about the intentions of the creator of the advertisements. There were often comments made by groups that they wondered what the social advertisers were trying to do in creating social advertising campaigns. However responses were not specific in any of the focus groups, but there was considerable variation in reader response and interpretations of social advertisements. Analysis of the data revealed that there were clear differences between the ways in which This the was participants particularly chose to read for and interpret the one, advertisements. evident advertisement

advertisement three and advertisement four. Within the social advertising portfolio there was the quit smoking advertisement (2) that specifically used verbal content as an important part of advertisement. Also in terms of message they have used the logo: The average smoker needs over five thousand cigarettes a year, get unhooked. When discussing the advertisement the groups seemed to read the piece in accordance with the authorial intent: Bali (male): when you become a chain smoker, it is almost impossible to get rid of smoking so I guess the advertisement transmits the idea of negative aspects of being habitual of cigarettes. When confronted with advertisement five, Saan (male) and Andrew (male) evaluate the aesthetic value of the child girl and the congruence between the cause and the image contents. They commented on her cuteness, the way of exaggerating the size of child. As the discussion on this advertisement was coming towards end Andrew concluded: What can I say, the child is so beautiful and cute. Female respondents assessed the social advertisement in a similar way. When discussing about the colours used in image, they came up with interesting remarks:
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Sana (female): It is interesting how they have chosen the whitish colour shade in image. This colour shade gives an elegant presentation to the advertisement. Consistent with extant theory, data analysis demonstrated that the readings of the advertisements differed quite significantly between the male and the female respondents. Stern (2000) argues that men are likely to be more disengaged readers. However when analyzing the transcript of the group containing Saan (male), Debi (female) and Johanna (female), there were clearly contradictions with the extant literature. Saan made some contextual references with regard to the advertisement two. This was possible also due to the fact that the group was a mix one, and therefore Saam had the chance to slot in himself in a discussion led by Debi and Johanna. Other group offered similar responses to the advertisements. In this research study, there was a strong indication of greater engagement with the advertisements from female participants then male participants. Generally the contextual interpretations came from women, while the male respondents offered the least commentary with regard to attitude towards the social advertisements. from the advertising text, while women are seeking more information than the advertisement provides; making them a more expert

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CHAPTER FIVE
Conclusion, Implications & Recommendations

5.1

Introduction

This study was designed to describe and explore perception and attitudes towards images in social campaigning advertisements in previously overlooked framework. Researcher conducted his research taking and aspect into consideration that the existing literature has not investigated. Because there were not much previous researches have done, especially consumer attitude including research on male and female attitude and perception. Social advertisers feels the dilemma whether their advertisement will be noticed or not. This study makes contributions to academic research on images in social campaigning advertisements in the key areas of perception and attitude towards social advertising, attention and interest, congruence and gendered study.

5.2

Perception towards Social Advertising An important contribution of this research is in building insights in to the

understanding of consumers perception towards images in social advertising campaign. In support with P1, there is powerful evidence to suggest that the overall perception of targeted audience towards image in social advertising campaigns is positive. It is important to remember as well that differences in opinion still existed inside the groups, as extreme negative and positive views were expressed on the issue between the female and the male respondents. All the way through the study, the gender of respondents has seen as a evidence to be an important determining factor of evaluations and interpretations of different elements in

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social advertising image. Regarding study specific to respondents gender difference and different elements, a consistent finding is that both males and female evaluate the depiction of image very subjectively. Data analysis explained that although respondents evaluate the image more subjectively, it appears that female evaluate images with a similar way but male respondents gave random views even they were in a group. This was specifically proved when contrasting and comparing advertisement one and three. There was a clear perception that nudity and complexity was unnecessary. This was primarily because of the respondents feeling that the connection between nudity and smoking and x-ray and belt was just created by advertisers. Still the female respondents were more positive towards expressing the views when analyzing the advertisement three, which depicted a skull x-ray and had negative views while assessing the advertisement one. While male respondents were bit more towards advertisement one which depicted nude model, they found it interesting. This analysis achieves the objective 1 and objective 3.

5.3

Attitude, Interest and Attention Another contribution of this research focuses on the provision of main

evidence regarding existing research theories which claims that shock imagery and sexual contents in social advertisements is noticed and afterward remembered. Reichert (2002: p.252) states that sexual imagery attracts a viewers attention and processing resources, leaving few resources available for processing of other ad information and as a result cause remains unnoticed sometimes and doesnt get processed with same intensity. There is strong evidence that shocking elements attracts attention and interest of consumers. As a result of analysis of findings, the researcher came to the conclusion that sexual and shocking content theme are the most effective in attracting respondents eye in terms of attention and interest. Although, there was no clear connection between cause and the elements used in advertisement two: shock element of image did not deviate respondents from the main cause of the social advertisement. Most participants remembered the cause behind social advertisement and they admitted about advertisement that it is a clever

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composition of elements in advertising because of the justification of its tagline through imagery of advertisement. The finding of research also show that respondents were more engaging, interesting and involving once they started to get the logic behind the social advertising images. The social advertisements used in portfolio were enough interesting but perhaps couldnt be as effective as with more shocking themes. This aspect was stated out by Saan (male) when he shared his point of view about the elements in social advertisements. Saan (male): advertisers should keep shocking elements as more as possible because it is very eye-catching and noticeable and there should be some humor as these images felt like serious deal. The finding of this section achieves the objective 2.

5.4

Congruence This research contributes in building insights into significance of

congruence. Extant theories claim that consumers are more accepting different elements such as nudity and shock element in social advertising when they can see a clear congruence between the content of image and the cause behind social advertisement (Tissier-Desborodes, 2006). Research findings are in accordance with these theories, in that, consumer distinguish a clear link between the social issue advertised and content in image, consumers are more likely to interpret the social advertisement favourably. But, interestingly, respondents felt that their attention can be better captured when no much congruence can be seen between the social issue and the content of image used. This is because it builds a controversial feeling; such social advertisements establish the consumer to study it, remember it and discuss it with friends, the social cause and the content used in advertisement. This study also presents observed support and suggestion that the viewer seeks out congruencies not only with the social cause and content but also with the message. For example in the advertisement five, respondents note that the advertisement was not containing much shocking elements and the contents present in the social advertisement represent the social cause somehow.

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5.5

Gendered Reading This research contributes experiential insights into a number of research

theories of gendered reading of social advertising text. Unswerving with existing theory, data analysis explained that the reading of social advertisements differed much significantly and subjectively between the female and the respondents. With observe to the heterosexual respondents, this study supports extant theories, such as suggested by Sterns (2000) that the female respondents responses are more elaborate often, creating stories related to images presented to them. In analysis, it was found that the male respondents are more likely to be disengaged from the social advertising text. Still there were some contextual comments made by male respondents too. Evidences are strongly suggesting that other individual differences variables can make difference with influence reactions to stimuli. Although the age difference was not too much between respondents and all respondents were students, it felt to be important that the age of the participant is very important factor, as it can influence responses. This research study revealed that although all respondents responded very subjectively to the use of different elements in images of social advertisement, elder respondents paid more attention towards the image and the social cause behind the advertisement than the younger respondents. This analysis achieves the objective 4. Additional research study is needed to explore generalization of these research findings. Thus, it is concluded that consumers culture, gender and age have a massive influence on how a consumer perceives a social advertisement and subjectivity. An important implication is that social advertisers should not ignore these aspects while designing a social advertising campaign, and should design according to culture and environment of the target consumers because it is the major determinant influencing consumers perception. Consumers values and attitudes are developed from the background and culture one lives in, therefore it must be analyzed by social advertising creator who want to create a social advertisement to create positive perception of social advertising. Social advertisers, in order to capitulate the positive attitude and perception which they

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want, must consider and adapt to their consumers culture to for creating effective positive impact, when finalizing on whether to utilize a standardized or a localized approach.

5.6

Limitations of Thesis and Further Research The major limitation of this research is its scale of respondents. Due to

time and resource restrictions, this study offers a small sample of a total of 12 subjects (6 per sample focus group). Furthermore, the collection of data involved young Robert Gordon University students living in Aberdeen city (UK) alone. Thus, the sample is not necessarily representative of wide range of consumers. Therefore the analyzed finding, analysis and implications of this research should be generalized and implied with caution. The focus groups were moderated by a male researcher which might have affected the respondents responses and views. Some respondents may have felt a discomfort and been embarrassed about discussing some sexual content or shocking contents in social advertising. Future research studies may like to consider a larger number of respondents using both female and male moderators, or using quantitative methods that allows an anonymous participation by participants. Many aspects emerged from analyzing the data which are clearly significant in understanding the consumers attitudes and perception towards image contents in social advertising campaigns. Nevertheless, because of the time restriction, these aspects could not be explored in such a greater depth within this research study. Future research work may construct on these findings with a larger scale study. It will be interesting to examine the overall perceived attitude against the real action further, to make sure whether perceived and real perception differs. Investigation on different consumers culture and population can provide an interesting topic for further research studies. Different age groups and consumer population have their different influences, thus it would be interesting to contrast and compare the effect of images on consumers attitude and perception in social advertisements.
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APPENDICES
Appendix 1: Images
Advertisement 1:

Stop Smoking

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Advertisement 2:

Smoking Kills: This Social advertisement image illustrates the sign of killing. Image shows a cigarette as a part of time bomb. The meaning of bomb connects cigarette towards its meaning. This advertisement argues when smoking kills you with the sign of clock. Small additional text argument SMOKING KILLS apparently confirms the visual argument.

Advertisement 3:

Advertisement 4:

Save Environment

Right to Play

Image 3 represents as an icon for a polar bear, which is in dangerous situation because oceans are rising. Here clearly signifier represents the signified. Image 4 shows two different signs (indexical); football print and bullet holes. The object is not depicted which have caused holes and prints on wall. Indexical signs are supporting the narrative elements in the image. This image represents the rights for children that even in the war zone, children should have the right to play.
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Advertisement 5:

These two campaigns are basically using symbols like the yin yang and somebodys personal signature. Yin yang emphasizes the fact of balance of natural resources on earth, water and greenery should be there on earth naturally. The signature illustrates the human rights as a personal matter for a human being.

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Advertisement 6:

Silence hurts. In this image, the text is operating on denotation level. It depicts what the picture shows. The text is leading the meaning of the advertisement image, which leaves very less scope to be interpreted in other way by consumer. In this advertisement, a child is a victim of violence and told to keep quite. Advertisement 7:

Was it really worth? context is home where protagonist, a married man drank too much the night before, locked up in a big wine glass (drinking sign). There is his family nearby him waiting for him on breakfast. This social campaign
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slogan at bottom left puts a question and advising. At the bottom right, there is logo of sender of this social advertisement message. Advertisement 8:

This social campaigns advertisement was made for bill-boards. This image represents the top-bottom structure. This advertisement contains two images. The image on top represents the ideal and the image on bottom is the real. Advertisement 9:

This advertisement is showing the exaggerated picture of Syphilis virus. Thus the main information is in center. Syphilis virus is the information here. With the exaggeration of the virus depiction represents a threat from outer space.

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Advertisement 10:

This is an example of left-right information. At the left side earth which we know, how it is and at the right side earth which is flooded, which could develop into. Advertisement 11: Advertisement 12:

Image 11 depicts the issue that a big number of people are dying in the world because of bad drinking water. This image shows the connection between the main cause and the worlds most horrific incidents. This social campaign works on knowledge and presents the fact that 2000 times more people than in illustrated incidents die because of having bad drinking water. Viewer can get an idea about number of people dying each year due to bad drinking water. Image 12 has an image of light bulb but the bulb is made by greenery which shows that the viewer can be more environment-friendly.

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Advertisement 13:

Advertisement 14:

Image 13 shows the statement that smoking is killing. Bullet is filled into a cigarette. This bullet is showing the fact that if you lit up the cigarette, it can kill you. Image 14 shows, smoking kill others. Burning cigarette is held into fingers and the shadow depicts the gun.
Advertisement 15:

Smoking is bad for breath. Smoking is turning the smoker into a female dog in the context of bad breath. Nobody would like her boy-friend to kiss a female dog.

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Advertisement 16:

Dont drive while you are drunk. Riding a car is more complex than playing guitar. Victim is shown after the accident. The picture is extreme threatening.

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Appendix 2: Participants in Focus Group

NR. CTR. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

PSEUDONYM Debi Sana Johanna Saan Phil Sanj Sarah Birgit Katie Somi Bali Andrew

AGE 28-35 28-35 18-22 18-22 22-27 18-22 22-27 28-35 18-22 28-35 22-27 18-22

SEX female female female male male male female female female male male male

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Appendix 3: Descriptions of the Advertising Portfolio

PICTURE IMAGE CONTENT No. Ad. 1 Nudity DESCRIPTION CAUSE ADVERTISMENT DESCRIPTION Naked women body. There is a girl, who has kept her hand on her mouth depicted as she is smoking. As she is smoking her internal organs are burning like cigarette tip. ADVERTISMENT

Unclothed Side shot Shower scenes Revealing Burning internal organs

Cigarettes smoke you.

Ad. 2

Gore, shock

Cheek hooked knowledge gore

Get unhooked from smoking.

Shock image. A girl is hooked by her cheek. Hook is pulling her towards itself. This is looking like a gore and verbal tagline supporting it with knowledge.

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PICTURE IMAGE CONTENT No. Ad. 3 Scary (skull)

DESCRIPTION

CAUSE

ADVERTISMENT DESCRIPTION Scary message. Skull x-ray is showing a man skull having a belt illustrated on the neck, which shows if you belt up, you will be safe. If you dont, you are dead.

ADVERTISMENT

Scary Skull x-ray Belt

Belt up your seatbelt.

Ad. 4

Action, shock

Illusion a gun. Gun action. Dead girl Smoke

of

shooting a girl by shooting

Passive smoking kills others.

Smoking illustrated like shooting. A man smoking a cigarette, depicting like shooting a girl nearby him.

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PICTURE IMAGE CONTENT No. Ad. 5 Shock, beautifulness

DESCRIPTION

CAUSE

ADVERTISMENT DESCRIPTION Child hugging a man. Small child has been illustrated exaggerated while she is hugging a man, who adopted her and loving here.

ADVERTISMENT

Cuteness Small child (exaggerated) Man (depicted small) beautifulness

Adopt a child.

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Appendix 4: Semi-structured Questionnaire for Focus Group

Consumers perception and attitude towards the visuals in

advertisements of social campaigns.

Moderators introduction: Good afternoon. My name is Brijesh, and I would like to thank you all for coming. We are here today to talk about the visual persuasion created by the images in social campaign advertisements and consumers perception and attitude towards social advertising. The purpose is to get your perceptions on advertisements with social cause and whether and how social advertisements create a specific perception, attitude and emotion in consumers mind specifically in gender bases (what is the perception of male and female distinguish). I am not here to share information, or to give you my opinions; also there is no right or wrong; desirable or undesirable answers. You can disagree with each other and you can change your opinions. I would like you to feel comfortable saying what you really think and how you really feel. For storage purpose, I will be recording and transcribing the whole discussion to use the data in research thesis. As you know everything is confidential. No one will know who said what. I would like this to be a group discussion, so feel free to respond to me and other members in the group without waiting to be called on. However, I would appreciate it if only one person speak at a time. The discussion will last approximately one hour. 1. General informationa) What social messages in advertising you are aware of in general? b) According to you, which of the following examples are most effective visual imagery source in terms of conveying the message? Why?

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2. Understandinga) At the very first instance, is the message of the visual used, clear in print advertisements? How? b) Should social campaigns advertisements focus more on its visuals or its verbal? Suggest with reasoning. 3. Emotionsa) How do you feel looking at each of these pictures? b) How do you feel about the social issues promoted through these five advertisements in general? 4. Perceptiona) Which of the images is the most impressive? Why? b) Do you like the visual used in presented social advertisement? If you could, what would you like to change in it? 5. Attitudea) Do visual images used in the social advertising campaigns, directly persuades you or it just creates the attitude or it only creates the interest towards the issue? Explain. b) Do these social advertisements make you interested in the message sent across? Does it grab your attention?

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QUESTIONS

PICTURES

REASON FOR ASKING The purpose of this question is to get a brief knowledge of awareness of consumers towards social advertisements.

Q1

What social messages in advertising you are aware of in general? According to you, which of the following
Questions were

asked in general.

Q2

examples

are

most

effective

visual

This question is basically put forward to know the media form where consumers generally come across with social advertisements.

imagery source in terms of conveying the message? Why? At the very first instance, is the message

Q3

of

the

visual

used,

clear

in

print

The purpose of this question is to get the idea that what is in the image defines the cause behind it.

advertisements? How? Should social campaigns advertisements Showed

Q4 pictures

focus more on its visuals or its verbal? Suggest with reasoning.

How do you feel looking at each of these pictures?

1,2,3,4 and 5 for 20 seconds each then question was asked.

The aim of this question is to investigate the power of visual and verbal in the social advertising.

Q5

This question tends to describe the emotion generated because of social advertisements. The aim of this question is to investigate the

Q6

How do you feel about the social issues promoted through these five

impression and impact of social cause presented by

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QUESTIONS

PICTURES

REASON FOR ASKING the social advertisements.

advertisements in general?

Images Q7 Which of the images is the most impressive? Why? shown asked. Q8 Do you like the visual used in presented social advertisement? If you could, what would you like to change in it?

were properly

The aim of this question is to examine the impression of the content of the images of social advertising and the consumers perception towards it.

and question was

The purpose of the question is to investigate the perception of consumer towards the images of social advertisements, whether they are effective or not. If not, then what do consumers want to see instead.

Q9

Do

visual

images

used

in

the

social

advertising creates Explain. Q10 the

campaigns, interest

directly towards

persuades the issue?

you or it just creates the attitude or it only

Images were shown properly and question was asked.

The purpose of this question is to examine the attitude of the consumer towards social advertising.

Do these social advertisements make you interested in the message sent across? Does it grab your attention?

The question is asked to find out the element which changes the attitude of consumer.

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Appendix 5: Focus Group sample

Moderators introduction: Good afternoon. My name is Brijesh, and I would like to thank you all for coming. We are here today to talk about the visual persuasion created by the images in social campaign advertisements and consumers perception and attitude towards social advertising. The purpose is to get your perceptions on advertisements with social cause and whether and how social advertisements create a specific perception, attitude and emotion in consumers mind specifically in gender bases (what is the perception of male and female distinguish). I am not here to share information, or to give you my opinions; also there is no right or wrong; desirable or undesirable answers. You can disagree with each other and you can change your opinions. I would like you to feel comfortable saying what you really think and how you really feel. For storage purpose, I will be recording and transcribing the whole discussion to use the data in research thesis. As you know everything is confidential. No one will know who said what. I would like this to be a group discussion, so feel free to respond to me and other members in the group without waiting to be called on. However, I would appreciate it if only one person speak at a time. The discussion will last approximately one hour. A small paragraph is presented below from the focus group discussion.

Moderator: How do you feel looking at each of these pictures? Debbi (female, 28-35): These pictures are very interesting. I am not a person, who usually comes across social advertisements every day. I rarely came across these types of advertisements. Some of these pictures are very interesting but some are bit shocking such as Picture 2 and Picture 3 are quite disturbing in the start but were successful in making their point. Picture 1 is too flashy and didnt convey a great message. Picture 4 is clear in passing on the intended message but

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does not make you ponder further on that issue. Picture 5 makes me smile the very next moment. I feel it a beautifully done picture. Sanj (male, 18-22): I think these pictures are interesting of course but I have a different perception about them. The ads do have a deep impact. They force me to think about my smoking habit and what effect it is having on me. The second ad in particular, shows how smoking not only affects me physically, but monetarily as well. I mean 5000 cigarettes a year would cost a lot! The fourth ad is still a bit confusing since it looks more like a drug abuse ad than a quit smoking ad. There should be a strong way to present the cause behind these unsocial activities in social advertisements. Phil (male, 22-27): I feel most of the time social advertisements dont work because people dont have enough time to spend on them. Even if they look at them, they just forget them in a moment. Everybody knows that showed causes are absolutely right. Anybody can die because of smoking but smoking doesnt affect instantly and that is why people most of the time ignore the cause because they dont have practical prove in front of them. So people just see those social advertisements and just forget them. Johanna (female, 18-22): I am not agreed with phil. Social advertisements are there to let people know that what are the injuries or bad incidents can happen because of smoking or any other unsocial activity. There are so many ethical and moral issues in society where they have practical evidences at the moment such as violence, child labour in many countries and orphan children. There are number of children orphan, people see them but nobody raises hands to adopt even single child. Many husbands beat their wives, people see them but nobody wants to interfere. Sana (female, 28-35): I have a different opinion that every advertisement is basically selling a product so social advertisement is selling a cause by changing your behaviour. So basically, advertisement has to be interesting to catch eyes first and then effective to change the consumers behaviour. Saan (male, 18-22): Sana put forward a good point. An advertisement has to be interesting to grab attention of consumer and different elements such as nudity,
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gore and shocking elements can make an advertisement eye-catcher. As I can see picture 1 has nudity, picture 2 has gore and picture 3 has a scary feel which are making people to have a look on them at least twice.

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