COMM 40 Promotional Communication: Sales Pitches, Spin, and Everyday Life

These flashcards cover key vocabulary terms related to promotional communication, advertising strategies, and Cialdini's principles of influence as discussed in class.

Post-Digital Era

A period characterized by the convergence of media technologies and audience fragmentation, impacting advertising strategies.

Media Convergence

The process of previously distinct media technologies collapsing into one device, generating new forms of audience measurement. This has changed consumers’ encounters with brands by creating seamless, multi-platform experiences and altering product supply chains through integrated digital platforms for ordering, tracking, and delivery.

Audience Fragmentation

The phenomenon where there are many more media outlets, each drawing a smaller share of audiences. This is important to the advertising industry because it necessitates more targeted and diverse advertising strategies to reach specific niche audiences, moving away from mass media campaigns.

Hybrid Promotional Techniques

Advertising forms such as native advertising and content marketing that blend traditional marketing with engaging content.

Native Advertising

Promotional content designed to resemble editorial material but is ultimately a sales pitch.

Content Marketing

Marketing strategy that offers relevant and useful content to audiences while subtly integrating brand sponsorship.

Consumer Perspective

Focuses on how advertisements inform, entertain, and reflect cultural values for consumers, and how consumers interpret and use advertising messages.

Managerial Perspective

Concerned with how advertisements achieve business objectives, using tools like ads and paratexts to build brand meaning, drive sales, and create competitive advantage.

Sociocultural Perspective

Examines how advertising reflects and influences social and cultural values, shapes norms, and complicates the distinction between fact and fiction, often highlighting advertising's broader societal impact.

Cialdini's Principles of Influence

Seven strategies that increase the likelihood of compliance with requests: liking, reciprocity, social proof, consistency, authority, scarcity, and unity (Robson's seventh principle).

Two main schools of thought on human persuasion (O'Rourke)

1. Behaviorism: Emphasizes external stimuli and responses, viewing persuasion as a direct impact on behavior. 2. Cognitivism: Focuses on internal mental processes such as beliefs, attitudes, and reasoning as key to persuasion.

O'Rourke's three objectives of persuasion

1. To reinforce existing attitudes or behaviors. 2. To change attitudes or behaviors. 3. To induce a specific action or response.

The 'Airplane Game' (The Dream podcast)

A type of pyramid scheme disguised as a gifting circle, where participants paid money (bought a 'seat' on the 'plane') with the promise of a large return once the 'plane' was 'full' and they moved to the 'pilot' position. It relied on recruiting new participants to pay out earlier ones.

Persuasive storytelling in the 'Airplane Game'

Players used narratives of empowerment, community, and quick financial gain, often involving personal testimonials, social proof, and appeals to friendship and trust to convince new people to join.

The 'endless chain' (The Dream podcast)

A recruitment method in multi-level marketing where salespeople are encouraged to continuously recruit new distributors, who then recruit more, creating an ever-expanding downline. This model is often associated with pyramid schemes where growth is unsustainable.

Social media coaching pitches vs. MLM (Read)

Both rely on recruitment of new participants (coachees/distributors), emphasize personal transformation and financial freedom, use aspirational lifestyle marketing, and often leverage social networks for sales and recruitment, rather than selling a product directly to the general public.

The Rut, The Secret, and The Dream (Read's persuasive strategy)

1. The Rut: Describes the target's current dissatisfied or struggling situation. 2. The Secret: Presents the online coaching/MLM opportunity as the exclusive solution or hidden knowledge. 3. The Dream: Paints an aspirational future of success, freedom, and happiness. These combine to create a narrative arc where the audience is in a bad situation, finds an exclusive solution, and achieves an idealized future.

Importance of 'business opportunities' language (Read) & FTC definition

Read argues 'biz opps' language is important because it sidesteps the negative connotations of MLMs. The FTC defines 'business opportunities' as offerings where an investor pays money to a seller for goods/services that enable them to start a business, and the seller promises to assist in various ways. Unlike franchises, biz opps typically have fewer regulatory protections, making them prone to deceptive practices, hence the need for distinct legal definitions and consumer warnings.

Ideological function of sales pitches (Read)

These pitches promote an ideology of individual responsibility and entrepreneurialism, suggesting that anyone can achieve success through hard work within their system, thereby masking systemic issues and placing blame for failure on the individual rather than the program's structure.

Infomercial

A long-form television commercial (typically 30 minutes or longer) that provides extensive information about a product, often employing demonstrations, testimonials, and a direct response mechanism.

Infomercials reinvented for social media (Moss)

Infomercials have been reinvented as longer-form video content on platforms like YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram, often disguised as reviews, tutorials, or 'day in the life' videos. Social media creators 'carry the torch' by using personal branding, direct addresses to the audience, demonstrations, and emotional appeals, much like early infomercial hosts, to build trust and persuade viewers to purchase.

Federal regulation of infomercials (Moss)

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) have regulated infomercials. The FTC primarily addresses deceptive advertising claims, requiring honesty and substantiation. The FCC regulates broadcast content and ensures proper disclosure that infomercials are indeed paid advertisements, distinguishing them from editorial content.

Behaviorism

A school of thought in psychology that focuses on observable behaviors and their relationship to environmental stimuli, without reference to internal mental states.

Cognitivism

A school of thought in psychology that emphasizes the study of internal mental processes such as perception, memory, thinking, and problem-solving to understand behavior.

Social Proof

A psychological phenomenon where people assume the actions of others in an attempt to reflect correct behavior for a given situation, often seen in testimonials or popularity claims in advertising.

Multi-level marketing (MLM)

A marketing strategy in which the sales force is compensated not only for sales they personally generate, but also for the sales of other salespeople that they recruit. This recruited sales force is referred to as the participant's 'downline,' and can create multiple levels of compensation.

Business opportunity / biz opp

A commercial arrangement where an investor pays a seller for goods or services to start a business, and the seller promises to provide various forms of assistance (e.g., training, marketing plan, product supply). Distinct from franchises by having fewer regulatory requirements, potentially leading to higher risks of deception.

Spot advertising vs. Hybrid Promotional Communication

Spot advertising refers to traditional, discrete advertisements (e.g., 30-second TV commercials), clearly identifiable as ads and interrupting content. Hybrid promotional communication, such as native advertising and content marketing, blurs the line between editorial content and promotion, aiming for non-interruptive engagement, often integrating brand messages subtly within valuable or entertaining content.

Hackley and Hackley's 'What is advertising?'

1. Short Answer: Advertising is a paid, non-personal communication from an identified sponsor using mass media to persuade or inform an audience. 2. Longer Answer: Advertising is a complex, culturally embedded form of communication intertwined with consumer culture, impacting individuals, organizations, and society through its ability to construct meaning and influence behavior beyond simple product promotion.

Fact vs. Fiction in advertising (Sociocultural Perspective)

From a sociocultural perspective, advertising cannot easily be assessed as purely fact or fiction because it often operates by constructing culturally resonant narratives, creating brand meanings, and tapping into aspirations rather than solely presenting verifiable facts. It blurs these lines by reflecting existing cultural values while also attempting to shape new ones, making its truthfulness subjective and contextual.

Branded content / Sponsored content

Content produced by or funded by a brand, designed to engage an audience by offering entertainment or information, often subtly integrating brand messages rather than overtly selling.

Non-interruptive advertising

Advertising strategies that integrate promotional messages seamlessly into content or user experience, aiming to avoid interrupting the audience's engagement (e.g., native advertising, product placement, branded content).

Paratexts in advertising

Ancillary texts or elements that surround and frame a main piece of content, influencing its interpretation. In advertising, this could include logos, slogans, jingles, or even website design that adds to the overall brand meaning surrounding an ad.

Value proposition

A statement that defines the unique benefits a company's product or service offers to its customers, explaining why a consumer should choose it over competitors.

Tangible vs Intangible attributes

Tangible attributes: things we can observe and reproduce (ex: Nike- swoosh, “just do it”

Intangible attributes: an idea or feeling (ex: empowerment, victory, perseverance)