Emotional Ads: Which Efficiency Toward Older Persons?

Abstract

The aging population is an important phenomenon that characterizes our century. For years, seniors will represent the most important segment of the population, because of their demographic and economic potential (Lewis 2012). It is therefore necessary to identify the most effective factor that influences the beliefs, attitudes and behaviors of older consumers. It is clear that academic and managerial literature present little or no response regarding the preferred type of advertising to reach seniors: practitioners seem to recommend the use of informational messages in nature but with elements related to modes of presentation of more than 60 years and their families that may convey emotions (Tréguer 2002; Wydouw 1995). While researchers highlight the ambiguity of results contrasting the effectiveness of informational messages vs emotional messages,, it has been established that people of different ages respond differently to both emotional advertisements (Mroczek and Kolarz 1998) and for informational advertisements (Moore-Shay and Lutz 2000). In addition, several researchers in social psychology and gerontology have established different theories to better understand and explain the motivations and behaviors of the elderly as the “socio- emotional selectivity” (Carstensen and Charles 1998; Carstensen et al. 1999). This theory postulates that the more we approach the end of life, the more we reorganized the hierarchy of our goals to prioritize emotionally directed goals rather than those related to knowledge (Fung et al. 2005). Because chronological age is inversely correlated with the perceived time left to live, the theory of socio-emotional selectivity posits that emotional goals become more important with age. To better clarify the mechanisms of advertising persuasion and attitude formation process for seniors, we decided to select advertisements varying in their content (emotional vs. informational) for unknown brand. We created our own printed advertisements for an intergenerational product, namely the trip. 600 individuals participated in the study, 300 elderly (between 60 and 75 years old) recruited in Paris and 300 young adults (20–35 years old). Each individual was exposed to two ads and answer to some questions regarding their chronological age, their emotional reactions, beliefs and attitudes towards advertising and the advertised brand. The results of this research led to the conclusion that chronological age influences cognitive (memorization, beliefs) and affective (emotional reactions, attitudes) responses. At first, it was shown that older respond differently than younger individuals with regard to informational advertising. Indeed, cognitive responses, such as remembering the brand name, beliefs toward the ad and toward the brand, are less favorable among 60–75 year olds than in 20–35 years. Moreover, the positive influence of chronological age on affective responses of seniors to advertising is another interesting result of our research. In addition, our research show that, when being exposed to emotional ads, people more than 60 years memorize better emotional information, develop more favorable emotional reactions, attitudes toward the ad and toward the product than younger individuals. These results may help brands and advertisers better communicate with seniors mainly by creating emotional ads.