Communication of values in advertising during the fifth wave of COVID-19 in Spain

Abstract

This article measures the values communicated in the wave of advertising launched during the first critical stage of the COVID-19 pandemic in Spain. The research is based on 45,000 on-line responses to 1,880 reception tests by 470 Spanish and Latin American recipients. Each of the receivers evaluated 25 values, after being exposed to a sample of five ads broadcast on TV during the period studied. The methodology is based on four research objectives and is supported by a new scientific measurement instrument: Proto-coloEva®. Its conclusions reveal a very similar communication strategy in the four sources studied. The values cooperation, well-being, effort, family, health, respect and responsibility were strongly conveyed, and are strongly homogeneous in all the ads studied. In contrast, the values rights, justice-equity, dignity and freedom were perceived with a much lower intensity, and heterogeneously. There was a higher transmission of values among religious people and Latin American people, and a very weak reception of values in people who have suffered COVID-19 directly or closely.