Introduction Advertisement are almost everywhere in our life, the poster on bus stops, the ratio advertisements, and the advertisements on television. Are these advertisements really work, and how effective they are, are really the questions raised among many people. This project is going to analysis one particular advertisement according to those questions. The brand’s target market will be discussed using demographics, values & lifestyles, psychographic attributes. The effectiveness of this advertisement’s strategy would also be illustrated by affecting buyer’s behaviour and the way the advertisement persuades the buyers.
Background This advertisement is to brand image Myer as the best place to shop for Christmas. Jennifer Hawkins as the main character of the advertisement is surrounded by colourful streamers hanging down from the ceiling. As she walks through the streamers, there is a little girl playing around with Hawkins. They walked around and found star shaped balloons. I saw this ad on television during Christmas time. Target Market The main target market of this advertisement is women mainly housewives. Housewives are definitely the potential buyers in the market trends for Myer.
The population of housewives are huge, that should be the most powerful buyers among all year. Christmas time is the busiest shopping period in the whole year. Housewives are the one to consider all the Christmas gifts and preparations. Hence, the advertisement does not just attract the housewives to shop for Christmas, but also to create a brand image for them to shop in Myer for the rest of their life. The advertisement showed on television, which is a brilliant approach for housewives to see it.
Housewives spend a long time on television at home while doing housework or even cooking. Showing ads on television would expose the message to housewives quickly and effectively, as they may could just gone shopping to Myer right after saw the ad since their time are flexible. This ad involves a little girl around age of 5, deeply arouses the motherhood of these housewives. Psycho-graphically, the housewives would immediately think about their own children while look at the girl in the ad. They might immediately put themselves in the position of Hawkins’s.
This behaviour is action-oriented (Target Market Selection & Demographic Trends in Australia, Slide 23) as they are guided by the desire for being in that situation or even shopping in Myer. This is definitely appropriate for Myer to attract customers into the advertisement and shopping in Myer in the future. Myer has a series of advertisements about their different sales seasons or events all with Jennifer Hawkins. The brand image has becoming strong and stable as sending the message to audiences that Myer is the best place to shop at anytime.
Ad Strategy Effectiveness Myer’s Christmas advertisement is effective as it successfully affects buyers’ behaviour by using signs, symbols, meaning transfer, rhetorical tropes and so on. The advertisement including verbal, graphic, musical and animation factors are the encoding part of the communication process element. (The Role of Persuasion I, Slide 4) The advertisement starts with Christmas ring bell style music and then a woman’s voice appears with gentle tone. These create a comfortable and happy environment for grabbing audiences’ attractions. This Christmas wish upon a star, we find each one is just a gift right for you. Find your Christmas wish at Myer” is the only sentence said through the entire advertisement by the woman’s voice. There are star shaped balloons in this advertisement, which are the symbols reflecting the same meaning as the sentence “This Christmas wish upon a star” does. At the end of the ad, a big word “ Wish” decorated with colourful streamers appears at the time the last “wish” word of the sentence is spoken and continued with the ordinary Myer logo as “Myer is my store”.
In order to affect consumer behaviour, consumer processing model (The Role of Persuasion I, Slide 4) must be analysed in order to illustrate the effectiveness of this advertisement. Stage one of the CPM is exposure to information of the ad. (The Role of Persuasion I, Slide 5) The stimuli of the ad to get attention from the audiences is the happiness and comfortableness of the environment the ad build for having Christmas soon, which is the hedonic appeal of creating life that consumer value highly. (The Role of Persuasion I, Slide 7) Comprehension is the second stage of CPM s audiences’ understanding or interpretation of stimuli. (The Role of Persuasion I, Slide 5) The colourful streamers used in the ad helps the ad in developing the features of being happy as to use streamers to decorate Christmas party or open Christmas gifts. The smiles on Hawkins and the little girls’ face really bring the mood of joy to audiences. The features and the mood all together with the context of the ad contributes to the understanding of the advertisement from the audiences’ perspectives. Buying Behaviour II, Slide 12) As a result, this advertisement successfully exposes the ideas and comprehends it clearly. The effectiveness of the advertisement strategy is also discussed by its power of persuasion. This Myer Christmas advertisement has guided consumers toward the acceptance of Myer as the best place to shop for Christmas. The reciprocation (The Role of Persuasion I, Slide 6) is used in this ad as mentioned as Myer has gift for everyone.
Although Myer may not mean that they would give out free gifts, but at least they said so, which uses favours to encourage the consumer to reciprocate by buying the product in order to affect people’s shopping behaviour. The Liking (The Role of Persuasion I, Slide 9) tool of persuasion is also used here and it most likely to adopt an attitude or undertake an action when a likeable person promotes that action. In the advertisement, Jennifer Hawkins is the main character who is of course the likeable person who is having fun in the ad and making Christmas wishes with the girl.
Hence, the audiences who like Hawkins would go shopping in Myer, feel being closer to Hawkins. Using Hawkins as the main character of the ad is also another tool of persuasion as authority (The Role of Persuasion I, Slide 11) that is typical endorsements come from beauticians, entertainers and athletes. Jennifer Hawkins as one of the Australian top models obviously is popular among Australians. Because of the sound of her, audiences would pay more attentions on her advertisement; at least they would not switch the TV channel while hers is on.
This is the attractiveness of the source attributes to the persuasion of the advertisement (The Role of Persuasion I, Slide 19). With the huge fan clubs, the fans are the definite customers for Myer as the ad receiver seeks a type of relationship with the source. (The Role of Persuasion I, Slide 19)With the good appearance of Hawkins, all women want to be like her as they would shop in Myer. As a result, Hawkins by herself would have already contributed to the effect of the buyer’s behaviour for ad audiences.
Elaboration likelihood model (ElM) focuses the way consumers respond to persuasive message based on the amount and nature of elaboration or processing of information. This advertisement uses central route to persuasion as the ability and motivation to process a message is high and close attention is paid to message content. The central route leads the receiver acquire more information and it is more likely to lead to permanent attitude change because it uses an emotion-based, message-based form of persuasion. The Role of Persuasion II, Slides 4-30) Christmas is the time for making a wish especially for kids, which Santa would give out the gifts on Christmas day. This ad put Myer as being Santa who has gifts for every one of the ad audiences. Adults would know that there are no real Santa in the world, but by arousing the childhood happiness of adults effective create the joy and happiness that Christmas would bring to everyone. As a result, adults would still go to Myer to find their own unique gifts as shopping there as to really find out their childhood memories and happiness while received gifts on Christmas day.
The housewives as Myer’s target customers would also put Myer as their first preference of buying the gifts for their families especially their children since this ad also involves the little girl as the other source. Conclusion This advertisement for Myer’s Christmas shopping has appropriate target market as women mainly housewives. Its Ad strategy is effective in both affecting buyer behaviour and strong persuasion power, which as a whole builds on Myer’s brand image that Myer is the best place to shop for Christmas and eventually the best place to shop for every occasion.
References: “Target Market Selevtion& Demographic Trends in Australia” Dr Danielle Chmielewski-Raimondo,2010, “Advertisement and Promotion Lecture notes” “Buyer Behaviour I” Dr Danielle Chmielewski-Raimondo,2010, “Advertisement and Promotion Lecture notes”. “Buyer Behaviour II” Dr Danielle Chmielewski-Raimondo,2010, “Advertisement and Promotion Lecture notes”. “The Role of Persuasion I” Dr Danielle Chmielewski-Raimondo,2010, “Advertisement and Promotion Lecture notes”. “The Role of Persuasion II” Dr Danielle Chmielewski-Raimondo,2010, “Advertisement and Promotion Lecture notes”.
