One Part Absolut. One Part Skyy. Topped with a PSA: Using PSA Appeals to Overcome Primed Messages (2011)

Undergraduate: Ashley Horton

Faculty Advisor: Sri Kalyanaraman
Department: Journalism & Mass Communication

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Media are prime sources of information about alcohol, especially television because of its ability to combine sight and sound and reach a broad audience. Product placement is a common way for advertisers to "break through the clutter" and reach consumers. Alcohol brands are frequently placed in television shows, activating positive messages about the products. PSAs compete with the presence of positive alcohol messages in popular television shows to get their messages disseminated and benefit society. A 2x2 factorial experiment was conducted to investigate how the type of PSA appeal (shock or humor) and positive messages of visual or verbal product placements impact attitudes of the behavior addressed in the PSA (drinking and driving), attitudes of the video clip, attitudes about the PSAs’ effectiveness and the emotional involvement with the PSA. Examining the impact has the potential to help social marketers effectively place their advertisements to overcome the activated positive messages primed through product placements. The results confirm some of the hypotheses and disprove others. Shock appeal PSAs were found to be effective regardless of the presence of alcohol product placement. The "only visual" product placement condition was not as strongly primed, and humor appeal PSAs are effective when placed during the same television show. The thesis concludes by discussed the implications of these findings, limitations and potential future research.