Return On Involvement - A Consumer Perspective On Advertising

MA Corporate Communication, Aarhus University

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Abstract This thesis presents an explorative study of consumers’ perceptions of creative advertising and how this affects consumers’ motivation for brand involvement. Today’s consumers are bombarded with advertising. This information overload can be very overwhelming, and as a consequence advertising is often seen as a source of irritation. Instead, consumers expect tailored, personal and precise marketing messages (Bhalla, 2011). As a result, there has been a shift in the marketing paradigm from one-‐way transmissions of brand communication (Li & Bernhoff, 2008) to an interactive value chain of the brand message (Bilton, 2007). It is here hypothesised that consumers are no longer waiting passively to receive marketing messages. Instead, they demand to be an interactive part of marketers’ brand messages (Bhalla, 2011, Bilton, 2007). To date, the key role of marketing research has focused on helping companies forecast consumers’ acceptance of changes to the marketing mix from the perspective of the marketers. However, the practices of today’s empowered consumers endanger traditional marketing research in becoming out-‐dated for current and future practices (Maklan, Knox & Ryals, 2008:221). Instead, I suggest that research should focus on how to cultivate relationships between brand and consumer from the perspective of the consumers. Therefore, with this thesis, I wish to fill out the gab in research by answering the problem statement “How do consumers’ perceptions of creative advertising affect brand involvement”. As a contribution to advertising research and practice, a qualitative method was chosen to gain a rich and detailed understanding of consumers’ motivations for brand involvement. Hereof, my research consists of two focus group interviews with a total sample representative of 6 males and 6 women. To uncover the informants’ attitudes and involvement levels, the groups were presented to four cases of advertising which composed four different communication elements of brand involvement. To analyse the data, the approach of a thematic network analysis was applied. Here four global themes were found. The first and second theme, Ads Excite and Ads Interrupt, is related to my research question 1, and thus focus on informants’ perception of advertising. Afterwards, the third and fourth theme, Message and Purpose Affect Brand Involvement and Consumers are Sceptical, seek to uncover research question 2 by exploring informants’ motivations for brand involvement. Using a deductive research approach, the hypotheses of the thesis builds on the theories about new empowered consumers (Jenkings, 2994) where a Me-‐conomy generation has arisen (McDonald, 2013). Due to the new consumer behaviour, Bilton (2007) and Bhalla (2011) account for new communication modes to advertising, i.e. creativity, word of mouth and co-‐creation. To this, Smith, Chan & Yang (2008) hypothesised that the impact of creative advertising affect consumers’ attitude and brand involvement. The findings of my thesis confirmed this hypothesis. Here consumers’ perception of ads increased through novel, humorous or interest-‐related content. However, informants also revealed a high social awareness, where their motivations for brand communication were highly affected by their self-‐identity. Also, they expressed a great distrust in forced advertisement. As a result, informants’ avoid this kind of brand communication, and preferred information through their social networks. Therefore, the

Return On Involvement – A Consumer Perspective on Advertising

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findings of this thesis argue that future advertising practice should consider how their brand messages relates to consumers’ self, self with others and self with causes. Thus, in order for both advertiser and consumers to get return on involvement, brands should demonstrate an interest in the consumers where the licence to operate is through shared interests. Total characters of abstract: 3,322


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Table of Contents ABSTRACT ......................................................................................................................................... 1 LIST OF FIGURES ................................................................................................................................................. 5

1. INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................................... 6 1.1. THEORY AND STRUCTURE OF THE THESIS ............................................................................................ 8 1.2. DELIMITATIONS ......................................................................................................................................... 9

2. THE TRADITIONAL VIEW ....................................................................................................... 10 2.1. THE PERSUASIVE MESSAGE ................................................................................................................... 10 2.2. THE HOT MEDIUM ................................................................................................................................... 12

3. CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR ......................................................................................................... 14 3.1 THE ME-‐CONOMY GENERATION ............................................................................................................ 14 3.2. THE ME-‐CONOMY’S IMPACT ON BRAND COMMUNICATION ............................................................. 15

4. SHIFT IN MARKETING PARADIGM ...................................................................................... 18 4.1. CREATIVE ADVERTISING ......................................................................................................................... 20

5. BRAND COMMUNICATION ..................................................................................................... 22 5.1. BRAND ATTITUDE .................................................................................................................................... 22 5.2. BRAND INVOLVEMENT ............................................................................................................................ 23 5.2.1. Social Networking Sites (SNSs) ................................................................................................. 24 5.2.2. Word of Mouth ................................................................................................................................. 25 5.2.3. Consumer Co-‐creation .................................................................................................................. 27

5.3. CONSUMER ENGAGEMENT BEHAVIOURS (CEB) ................................................................................ 29 6. CASES ............................................................................................................................................ 31 6.1. CASE 1: #HAPPYBEERTIME, CARLSBERG ........................................................................................... 31 6.2. CASE 2: NUL PROCENT, NEUTRAL ........................................................................................................ 32 6.3. CASE 3: GAMING HELMET, FRIDGE RAIDERS ..................................................................................... 33 6.4. CASE 4: #BESTBUDS, BUDWEISER ....................................................................................................... 34 6.5. SUM UP OF CASES .................................................................................................................................... 35

7. RESEARCH METHOD ................................................................................................................ 36 7.1. SCIENTIFIC PERSPECTIVE ....................................................................................................................... 36 7.2. RESEARCH DESIGN .................................................................................................................................. 37 7.2.1. Qualitative Method ........................................................................................................................ 38 7.2.2. Selection criteria ............................................................................................................................. 40 7.2.3. Snowball Sampling ........................................................................................................................ 40

7.3. SCIENTIFIC IMPLICATIONS FOR RESEARCH AND FINDINGS .............................................................. 44 7.4. FOCUS GROUP PROCESS .......................................................................................................................... 45 7.4.1. Planning Phase: The Moderator Guide .................................................................................. 45 7.4.2. Conducting Phase: The Focus Group Sessions .................................................................... 47 7.4.3. Analysing and Reporting Phases .............................................................................................. 48

7.5. STEPS FOR ANALYSIS ............................................................................................................................... 49 7.5.1. Stage A: Breakdown of Text ....................................................................................................... 50

8. FINDINGS ..................................................................................................................................... 52 8.1. ADS EXCITE ............................................................................................................................................... 53 8.1.1. Can I Have Your Attention? ........................................................................................................ 54 8.1.2 Addressed to Me ................................................................................................................................ 57 8.1.2. Sub Conclusion 1 .............................................................................................................................. 59

8.2. ADS INTERRUPT ....................................................................................................................................... 60 8.2.1. Avoid Ads ............................................................................................................................................ 61 8.2.2. Forced Advertising ......................................................................................................................... 62


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8.2.3. Bombarded with ads ...................................................................................................................... 63 8.2.4. Distrust Advertisers ........................................................................................................................ 63 8.2.5. Sub conclusion 2 .............................................................................................................................. 65

8.3. MESSAGE AND PURPOSE OF BRAND COMMUNICATION .................................................................... 66 8.3.1. Unique or Extreme before sharing .......................................................................................... 67 8.3.2. Return on Involvement ................................................................................................................. 69 8.3.3. Social Aspect Is Important .......................................................................................................... 72 8.3.4. “A Real Problem” ............................................................................................................................. 74 8.3.5. Sub conclusion 3 .............................................................................................................................. 76

8.4. CONSUMERS ARE SCEPTICAL ................................................................................................................. 77 8.4.1. Aware of Self-‐Image ....................................................................................................................... 78 8.4.2. Avoid Self-‐Promotion ..................................................................................................................... 78 8.4.3. Reluctant to Share Ad ................................................................................................................... 79 8.4.4. Brand Behind affect Brand Communication ....................................................................... 82 8.4.4. Sub Conclusion 4 .............................................................................................................................. 82

9. DISCUSSION/CONCLUSION .................................................................................................... 83 9.1. CONTRIBUTION TO ADVERTISING RESEARCH .................................................................................... 83 9.2. CONTRIBUTION TO ADVERTISING PRACTICE ...................................................................................... 85 9.2.1. Self with Self ...................................................................................................................................... 85 9.2.2. Self with Others ................................................................................................................................ 86 9.2.3. Self with Cause ................................................................................................................................. 86

9.3. LIMITATIONS ............................................................................................................................................ 87 9.4. FUTURE OUTLOOK ................................................................................................................................... 88

REFERENCES ................................................................................................................................... 89 Total Characters: 176,134 APPENDICES Appendices 6-‐14 are enclosed at USB stick* Appendix 1 Case 1: HappyBeerTime Appendix 2 Case 2: Neutral Appendix 3 Case 3: Fridge Raiders Appendix 4 Case 4: #BestBuds Appendix 5 Moderator Guide Appendix 6 Transcript Focus Group 1* Appendix 7 Transcript Focus Group 2* Appendix 8 Consent Form, Focus Group 1* Appendix 9 Consent Form, Focus Group 2* Appendix 10 Interview, Focus Group 1* Appendix 11 Interview, Focus Group 2* Appendix 12 Colour Codes for Themes* Appendix 13 Transcript 1 with Colour Codes* Appendix 14 Transcript 2 with Colour Codes* Appendix 15 Theme 1 with I,C,A Coding Appendix 16 Theme 2 with I,C,A Coding Appendix 17 Theme 3 with I,C,A Coding Appendix 18 Theme 4 with I,C,A Coding Appendix 19 Themes referred to by Participants


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List of Figures Figure 1: Structure of Thesis Figure 2: Traditional Definition of a Strong Brand Figure 3: Traditional Brand Communication Figure 4: Contemporary View of Strong Brands Figure 5: Interactive Value Chain of the Message Figure 6: Consumer Attitude affects Brand Behaviour Figure 7: Positive Effects of Brand Communication Figure 8: Research Process Figure 9: Snowball Stemma, Focus Group 1 Figure 10: Snowball Stemma, Focus Group 2 Figure 11: The Three Phases Focus Group Process Figure 12: Theme 1, Ads Excite Figure 13: Theme 2, Ads Interrupt Figure 14: Theme 3, Message & Purpose of Brand Communication affect Brand

Involvement Figure 15: Theme 4, Consumers are Sceptical


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1. Introduction There is a saying: “If you talked to people the way advertising do, they’d punch you in the face”. Thus, companies wondering why consumers don't want to talk to them should take a closer look at their communication efforts. As a consumer, the current media landscape bombards me with invasive advertising that all competes for my attention. This massive exposure and information overload can be very overwhelming, and personally, I often see advertising as a source of irritation. And I am not alone, a recent research among 47,000 Nordic consumers, by Buzzador, revealed that 8 out of 10 consumers avoid TV-advertisements, and instead turn to their smart phones when the advertising spots appear during TV-breaks (Business.dk, 2014). Based on my own personal experiences and consumer research, the former push strategy from traditional advertisements therefore no longer seems sufficient for brand engagement. Instead, consumers expect tailored, personal and precise marketing messages (Bhalla, 2011). Many companies are thus now struggling for the perfect recipe that will make consumers engaged in their brand communication. This can be difficult as the ingredients from marketing communications need to balance with new consumer theory where just the exact right amount of creative messaging must be added to fit the taste of the hungered consumers. For the last decade, books and articles have been preaching about today’s consumers reversing and scattering the traditional one-‐way flow of communication (Dahlén, Granlund, and Grenros, 2009). Consequently, consumers are no longer waiting passively to receive marketing messages; they are actively creating their own messages, and share them with anyone interested in listening (Bhalla, 2011:130). The notion of the empowered consumer and new demands to brand communication should therefore not come as a surprise for companies. However, even though theoreticians for a long time have urged for two-‐way communication and interactivity between the brand and consumers, the application of these new marketing standards is not as straightforward as companies might assume. The rate of marketing failures continues to be high despite the fact that efforts for innovative marketing have become increasingly important to brands’ profitability (Boier, 2013:289). Here, the primary reason for failure is still poor understanding of the complex nature of consumer needs, values and behaviours (Ibid). As a corporate communication student, I find it striking that many brands that are still managed like they are stuck in the earlier era of mass markets, mass media and impersonal transactions (Bhalla, 2011:130). Here, companies target their consumers with one-‐way communications flowing outward from the perspective of the brand to the consumer. However, with this thesis, I argue that the era of publishing, interrupting, telling and selling is over. Instead, the paper wishes to investigate new ways of communicating brand messages, and how to cultivate relationships between brand and consumer from the perspective of the consumers. Earlier, the key role of marketing research has focused on helping companies forecast consumers’ acceptance of changes to the marketing mix. However, new marketing practices endanger traditional


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marketing research in becoming out-‐dated for current and future practices (Maklan, Knox & Ryals, 2008:221). Thus, an update is needed to the field of brand communication seen from the new centre of rotation; The consumers. With today’s advertising-‐savvy consumers and technological advances, i.e. ad-‐free net streaming services or ad-‐blocking software, advertising is becoming more dependent on consumers voluntarily exposing themselves to advertising (Johnson, 2013:128; Rosengren, Dahlén, & Modig, 2013:328). To unlock ad persistence, Creative advertising has been seen as key to consumer attention, which thus opens for competitive advantage. As a fairly new concept, the research within creative advertising still remains in its infancy. Even though creativity is now acknowledged as a central component to many advertising successes, only a few studies have investigated the topic, and even fewer have attempted to explain how its effects are perceived by consumers (Yang & Smith, 2009:935). Therefore, what is needed in marketing literature is an understanding of how and when ad creativity exerts its effects and encourages consumer engagement. The thesis therefore wishes to put emphasis on consumers’ attitude construct towards new methods of advertisement, and how brands can trigger high consumer involvement in their marketing process. In light of the problem concerning the gap in research focusing on the effect of ad creativity on consumer engagement, I intend to answer the following problem statement: How do consumers’ perceptions of creative advertising affect brand involvement? In order to answer the problem statement, the following research questions will be investigated: Research Questions:

! RQ1: How do consumers perceive advertising and creative marketing? ! RQ2: What motivates consumers to take part in brand communication?


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1.1. Theory and Structure of The Thesis Before reading the thesis, a brief introduction to the structure og theory application will be presented. The visual structure of the thesis is organized according to the figure:

Figure 1: Structure of The Thesis Chapter 1 presents on introduction to the problem field, problem statement and research questions. Afterwards, this section, theory and structure of the thesis, functions as overview of methods and theories that seeks to answer the problem statement. Chapter 2-‐5 provides the literature review of the thesis. Firstly, a brief introduction to the traditional view of advertising will be elaborated. Here, Doyle’s (1997) notion of strong brands will be applied, where Menell (2014) and Li & Bernhof (2008) account for the definition, illustrated by McLuhan’s characteristics of a Hot Medium. Afterwards, the chapter of Consumer Behaviour will stress the notion of the new empowered consumers (Jenkins, 2004), where McDonald (2013) as a result argues for a new Me-‐Conomy generation. This functions as an understanding to the shift in the marketing paradigm, which chapter 4 will uncover foregrounded by Barnham (2008), Bhalla (2011) and Bilton (2007). Because of the new marketing paradigm, chapter 5 will take a closer look at the theory of brand communication, and how new communication modes will increase brand involvement. To account for the impact of consumer attitudes to brand involvement, theory will draw from Smith, Chen & Yang (2008), Chu & Kim (2011) and Shin (2009). Chapter 6 accounts for four different cases of advertising which practices communication theory from chapter 5. The cases will be used as stimuli for focus groups in the research design to test theory in practice.

Introduction

Literature Review

Case Selections

Research Method

Findings

Discussion/Conclusion


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Chapter 7 elaborates on the scientific position and research methods of the thesis. As a social constructionism stance, Burr (2008) and Andrews (2012) provides an overview of the paradigm. To the research methods, O’Nonell’s (1988) three phases focus group process will be applied. This is based on Brygman’s (2001) arguments for qualitative methods. This data collection will consist of a snowball sampling in which Noy (2008) accounts. Chapter 8 presents the findings of empirical analysis of the collected data. First part of the findings, present theme 1 and 2 which functions as answer to my research question 1 by uncovering the informants’ attitudes towards advertising. Afterwards, the findings of theme 3 and 4 will answer my research question 2 by testing informants’ motivations for brand involvement. Chapther 9 discuss the findings of my analysis and how this contributes to future research and advertising practice. Finally, the chapter concludes on the problem statement, and discuss the limitations and future outlook of my results.

1.2. Delimitations The scope of this thesis evolves around consumers’ perceptions of advertising and their incentives for brand involvement. Hereby, the thesis excludes the notions of the advertiser. Moreover, it should be acknowledged that research is seen from a marketing perspective, and thus evaluations of advertisements affects are purely based on consumers’ attitudes and behaviours towards brand communication, and does not include advertisements’ effect on consumers’ purchase behaviours. Furthermore, I acknowledge that attitudes of advertising depend on societal factors, where the focus of my thesis is limited to the Western Society of Danish consumers aged 21-‐28. Thus, results should only be addressed within this context. Also, it is recognized that consumers’ attitudes and behaviours are further affected by brand surroundings, such as situational context and brand image, which is to be seen as outside of this thesis’ scope. In relation to scope and page limitations, I have made a very broad definition of traditional vs. creative advertising, which in real practice have to be further distinguished. However, due to its complexity, the thesis will not uncover marketing initiatives in detail, as the purpose is not to explain advertising but rather to understand its affects from a consumer perspective.


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2. The Traditional View Before the advent of new media, the advertising world was based around fixed physical media, i.e. TV, Radio and Print (Mangold & Faulds, 2009:359). Thus, mass media have for a long time been huge cornerstones for advertising. To exemplify, TV advertisements alone increased by 27% between 1996 and 2003 (Grant, 2007:6-‐7). This reflects a period of mainstream advertisements resulting in media inflation where advertisers competed for the consumers’ share of mind through mass media gateways. However, since then, the heavy exposures to advertisement have affected and changed consumers’ view. According to Yankelovich’s Marketing Resistance survey in the USA, only 48% of consumers reported mixed or negative views of advertising in the 1960s. In 2007, the figure was increased to 72% (Ibid:7). Furthermore, in 2003, 59% reported that marketing has little relevance to them (ibid). This paragraph therefore covers the traditional view on advertising to gain an understanding of the decreased ad popularity. The view on traditional advertising and persuasive messages will therefore function as background information to understand consumers’ perceptions of brand communication and the resulting shift in the marketing paradigm followed in the next paragraph.

2.1. The Persuasive Message In a traditional view, advertising serves to persuade, manipulate, and condition consumers (Mendell, 2014:789). From this radical perspective, the primary communication function of advertising is to inform consumers about market offerings and thereby help them weigh one purchase choice against another (Soh, Reid & King, 2007:455). Here, the classical idea of marketing was expressed by Professor Doyle (1997) with his definition of a strong brand:

Figure 2: Traditional definition of strong brand

S P D AV

Strong brand = Product Benefits x Distinct Identity x Added Value


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According to Professor Doyle (1997), a strong brand thus consists of a marketing programme aiming at communicating:

! A distinctive product benefit or set of benefits (USP) ! A distinctive identity: name, logo, look and feel, personality ! A set of distinctive emotional brand values

In this view, a strong brand should be advertised through informational messaging by the sender, i.e. the brand. Focus is therefore on the brand attributes, i.e. brand benefits, brand identity, and brand values. Hence, this orientation is very sender-‐to-‐receiver oriented, as the marketing efforts focus on the brand itself without including the consumer’s point of view. It is thus implicit that consumers trust advertising to fulfil its proclaimed functions and for it to perform effectively it should be seen purely as a source of information. However, contemporary advertising research generally finds advertising as a persuasive, rather than an informative, medium (Menell, 2014:790). However, the problem with traditional advertising is that once consumers recognize its persuasive intent’ it increases their psychological resistance. According to Menell (2014), this is a natural consequence of any perceived threat to behavioural freedom. Thus, the resistance can manifest as scepticism toward a persuasive message, which can be particularly directed toward the advertisement. As result, the target will most likely see the ad message’s intent as self-‐serving (Menell, 2014:790-‐91). Hence, to decrease these psychological defence mechanisms, the target must not realise that he/she is being persuaded. If not, consumers, recognizing brand communication with a persuasive attempt, will process the message differently than if the recognition did occur (Ibid:791). Hereby, advertising is argued to work best when consumers get distracted from the persuasive message and they do not recognize it as such. Furthermore, Menell (2014:793) argues that consumers being aware of commercials’ persuasive intentions will defend against the advertiser’s goals through unconscious means, most obviously by avoiding the message completely. Instead, advertising best persuades its audience at low levels of cognitive involvement. The low attention paid to an advertisement hereby allows it to ‘evade the target’s natural psychological resistance to persuasion’ (Menell, 2014:792). However, later I will counter argue this, and instead claim that marketing should refrain from hidden transparent intentions, in order to make the consumers more involved. Moreover, to distract the target, Menell (2014:792) further claims that the most important feature of advertising is its highly repetitive nature where the target’s natural defences are worn down by its stealth and repetitiveness of the persuasive commercial message. However, this is a very traditional perspective to advertising. Even though repetition and stealth might increase brand awareness, I argue against Menell’s (2014) viewpoint, as the goal of advertising should not purely be based on figures of brand awareness. Instead, the aspect of brand engagement is of far more value to companies. Here other factors than stealth and repetition are needed. This notion of traditional advertisement therefore clearly separates advertisements from creative content, as focus is purely on reach for the sender and not impact for the consumer. Menell (2014:793) further argues: “Ads are not meant for conscious consumption. They are intended as subliminal pills for the subconscious”. He therefore suggests that advertising works best when it exerts an influence over brand choices at a non-‐conscious level. This


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reflects a very traditional view on advertising, whereas I argue that today’s sophisticated consumers are more conscious about brand choices, and reject brands that are not transparent in theit brand messages (Section 3.1).

2.2. The Hot Medium Another important factor to advertising is the medium use. Traditional advertising is known for using centralized distribution channels that offer standardized commodities for the masses (Kotler et. al., 2009:334). Here, Marshall McLuhan’s definition of a ‘hot medium’ can be transferred to traditional advertising. A hot medium is characterised as high on informational content but low in consumer participation and involvement (Stevenson, 1995:121). This is also in accordance with the transmission model of communication where the hypodermic needle injects a message into consumers (Li & Bernoff 2008:101). Also, in the hypodermic model, the mass media see individuals as isolated and no interrelationship among the components occur (Windahl & Signitzer 2009:70). Hence, this form of ad messaging through hot media disallows the audience to talk back to the sender as the audience are talked to and not with (Windahl & Signitzer, 2009:210). Therefore, a social distance between the powerful expert source, i.e. the brand advertiser, and the audience member, i.e. the consumers, is often created (McQuail, 2000:362). Thus, by applying McLuhan’s notion of hot medium with Doyle’s (1997) definition of strong brands, traditional ads are focused on sending informative brand messages to the consumers, with a medium and message that leaves no inclusion for consumer involvement and interaction. Hence, the advertisers of old media are shouting the message rather than talking with the audience:

Figure 3: Traditional Brand Communication based on McQuail (2000) and Li & Bernoff (2008). In connection to figure 3, traditional advertisers are forced to transmit their ads to everyone exposed to the medium, i.e. ads cannot be turned on or off for selected people. For this thesis, as argued by Grant (2007:7), this form of mass messaging is therefore:


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“The tragedy of the commons, analogous to the seas that get over-‐fished because as resources deplete, people fish harder. Advertising are shouting louder and louder, and people are covering their ears.” The next section will go further into the new consumer behaviour, and why the target might be covering their ears towards traditional advertising.


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3. Consumer behaviour This section wishes to gain an understanding of why today’s consumers seemingly are turning away from advertising as discussed in previous section. Overall, a reason for the marketing paradigm shift can be explained by consumers’ movement from an ‘information society’ to a ‘dream society’ where emotions, experiences and intangible values are in focus (Kusek & Leonhard, 2005:165). Here, the existence of social media and digital networks have created new needs and wants by the empowered consumer (Ibid:31). As opposed to Maslow’s physical and safety needs such as food and shelter, the need for self-‐realization and personal satisfaction is now foregrounded in consumers’ hierarchy of needs (Solomon et. al., 2006:99). Therefore, to fulfil new hedonic and psychogenic needs, consumers seek ways for self-‐expression, diversity, status, power and affiliation (Ibid,:94). Hence, the utilitarian needs, i.e. functional or practical benefits, have been replaced by emotional responses (Ibid:90). As a result, involvement now plays a huge motivational factor in the process of retrieving new information (Ibid:106). Thus, for consumers’ to grant awareness to content, it has to have an ‘impressive’ appeal in which the consumers can relate.

3.1 The Me-conomy Generation Earlier in the information society, consumers were assumed to be passive, predictable, stationary, isolated, compliant and silent/invisible (Jenkins, 2004:38). However, new media has resulted in an era where the media environment is exposed to consumers everywhere, thereby enabling consumers to “archive, annotate, appropriate and recirculate media content in powerful new ways” (Jenkins, 2006:18). Within this global digital economy (GDE), individuals are emphasised rather than institutions, i.e. a Me-‐conomy is created (McDonald, 2013:6). The Me-‐conomy is more than simple platforms tuned to trawl users’ data (Ibid:6). To thrive in the GDE, rather than just survive, collaboration is seen as a necessity by sharing knowledge and data among producers and consumers (ibid). Therefore, the convergence of technology can be seen as a bottom-‐up consumer-‐driven process changing the role of today’s audience (Jenkins, 2006:37). Now, the consumers of the me-‐conomy are migratory meaning that attention will only be attributed if it serves their individual needs. Otherwise they will move on to other places (Ibid:37). This brings a consumer group who are very selective and only loyal to purposes that fit them (Ibid:37). The consumers of the Me-‐conomy belong to the net generation. Compared to previous generations, information is found proactively and mass communication is often seen as a source of distrust (Kusek & Leonhard, 2005:99). This brings a consumer fragmentation where mass communication is no longer efficient due to its direction towards a large number of receivers (Windahl & Signitzer, 2009:48). Instead, the net generation of Me-‐conomies form relationships online and create communities to communicate, learn, interact and participate with one another for purposes that fit their


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needs (Kusek & Leonhard, 2005:99). Moreover, the generation is ‘hungry for expression, discovery, self-‐development and very socially conscious’ (Buckingham & Willett, 2006:6). Therefore, this consumer group requires immediate access to information at their convenience and demand control over consumption (Mangold & Faulds, 2009:360). As a result, consumers are turning more frequently to various types of social media to conduct their information searches and purchase decisions. Furthermore, the generation grants peer groups huge importance for their socialization patterns (Macedo & Steinberg, 20:161). Hence, there is an increased co-‐creative behaviour of media users where identity is attached to the relations within the media. Hence, new consumer behaviour and the convergence of new media have brought new possibilities to communicate and bestowed consumers with power not previously experienced.

3.2. The Me-conomy’s Impact on Brand Communication Based on the described new consumer behaviour, advertisers of today are dealing with a new type of consumer, i.e. one that is better educated, more collaborative, and infinitely more resourceful than any time in the past. As consumers are becoming more ‘knowing’, they recognize the marketing processes and often they are willing to play the marketing game by taking part in the creative process themselves (Barnham, 2008:207). They are therefore not content with being mere spectators: they demand to be heard, have a say in how consumer value is created and what they would like to consume (Bhalla, 2011:4). Compared to the past age, when consumers saw rational ad messages in TV and processed them rationally, advertising was seen as relatively transparent. However, now in our media literate age, consumers expect brands to be more devious with a manipulating agenda (Barnham, 2008:207). Thus, consumers are looking for, and expect to find, intentionality in the brand communication that they encounter (ibid). As a result, brand owners are facing a much harder brand communication process as consumers instinctively try to look behind what they actually see to unravel the deeper motivations of the brands. In accordance to Barnham (2008), consumers therefore no longer take words and ‘messages’ at face value, and instead they look at the hidden meanings by the brand owner. Consequently, the former passive recipients of what was offered, is now transformed to empowered consumers who question brand messages and instead urge to be part of the brand communication. Hence, the days of long impersonal value chains played solely by the companies’ rules are gone. Instead, consumers feel that companies should be talking with them (Bhalla, 2011:5). In accordance to this, brands should therefore not only limit their new communication modes to product information but also incorporate more interactive modes of communication in their marketing efforts. Moreover, our sense of self is no longer bound in stable attachments to place, ethnicity, gender, class and work. Instead personal identity is now more customized and individualised (Bilton, 2007:139). Demographics (postcodes, social classifications by occupation etc.) have thus become unreliable bases for market segmentation. The new consumers are increasingly attracted to unprecedented experiences, or at least seek an element of surprise or novelty within an otherwise familiar product. For example, as


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soon as a tendency has been identified, consumers will reject the label and seek new ways of differentiating themselves. One solution is to give up on any predictable patterns of collective identity and focus on the individual by addressing them as a ‘market of one’. This way, the individual’s personal data becomes the ultimate commodity (Bilton, 2007:140). However, assumptions are here also being made about the stability and continuity of individual identity. Often, the appearance of a personal relationship with the consumer is therefore no more than stored personalized data based on previous behaviours. Despite these advanced technologies, marketers thus still seek the economies of scale by the use of traditional market segmentation, clustering individuals according to shared characteristics or preferences. Instead, real customization requires a more flexible and responsive approach to the individual (Bilton, 2007:140). The notion of social identity has therefore instead gained huge emphasis as it serves to communicate something about self to others (Maden & Köker, 2013:571). Hereby, consumption choices are made to become a member of social class. Hence, consumers are often attracted to products and brands which are linked to their social identity (ibid). Moreover, within social identity, the norms play a huge influence on consumers’ creativity and creative endeavour (ibid). The social identity is therefore to be seen as an aspect of the self which is derived from memberships of social groups of their own values and norms. As new consumers continuously seek new ways of self-‐expression, marketers must therefore refrain from data based on past behaviours which no longer counts as a reliable guide to future consumer intentions. However, if marketers should avoid past behaviours of the consumers, which indicators should they then use to base campaign choices upon? One of the core assumptions of modern strategic marketing is that consumers are not interested in products. They are interested in the benefits it provides to them. Marketing students are here taught to quantify the benefits of a product and to focus on not what product is but what it can do for the consumer. At the theoretical level this is supported by the distinction between ‘product’ and ‘product surround’ with a reference to ‘levels of the product’ and Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (Bilton, 2007:141). All of these models emphasize that marketing is concerned with the meaning and value of the product, not the thing itself. Marketers must thus be aware that consumers are no longer passive consumers who can be manipulated into recognizing core benefits. They are, increasingly, calling the shots as active co-‐creators of meaning and value (Bilton, 2007: 145). This further echoes the consumers of cultural products according to contemporary theories of cultural consumption. On this basis, consumer involvement has therefore become the primary objective where sales should be seen as a by-‐product to consumer relationships, and transactions become less important than the consumer experience itself (Bilton, 2007: 141). The so-‐called ‘hypodermic’ model of media effects, as discussed in section 2.1. is this way replaced by a new interest in the ‘symbolic work’ of consumers’ decoding of media messages. Here, consumers no longer absorb: they reflect, interpret, and like to be seen as active co-‐creators in the production of meaning (Bilton, 2007: 145).


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Table 1 sum the development of the Old to New Consumer Reality: Old Reality New Reality Identity Role

Consumers, respondents Passive; consumers of value

Real people, creative partners Active collaborators; Co-‐producers of value

Source of insights Surveys, dispassionate objective observation

Conversations, stories, impassioned immersion

Company contact Transactional-‐based Interactions and experience-‐based

Location Fixed and invisible; At one end of a long value chain

Adaptive and very visible; anytime, anyplace

Information and influence

Company advertising and message: Expert opinion

Word-‐of-‐Mouth: Peer-‐to-‐Peer, Social Media

Concept of value Primary source of value

Company offers: one size fits all What’s in the brand: Attributes and features

Consumer determines; tailored and unique What Consumers do with the brand: Unique solutions and customized experiences

Table 1: Profile of the Old and New Consumer (Bhalla, 2011). To sum, the consumers of the Me-‐conomy have thus been raised with the advent of new technologies which they have not just adopted but internalised (Buckingham & Willett, 2006:131) Therefore, one can conclude that the generation has brought ‘a communications revolution’ where consumers experience increased empowerment (Macedo & Steinberg, 2007:161). Earlier, the old consumers were silent and invisible. Now, the new consumers are noisy and public (Jenkins, 2006:19). The consultative mode of communication thus gains importance as the changing consumer behaviour demand the right to add a shaping role to content (Holt & Perren, 2009:151). Within the advertising business, a new player has therefore been involved, i.e. the public. Hence, the public is no longer just the target of the ad, but is to be seen as co-‐producer, distributor, and promoter (Krasilovsky & Shemel, 2007:415).


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4. Shift in Marketing Paradigm

As discussed in previous sections, brand communication has been accepted as more complicated than originally thought (Barnham, 2008:205). It is now widely recognised that emotional values conveyed in advertising are as important, if not more important, than the rational messages that accompany them to bring positive brand attitudes and involvement (ibid). Moreover, from section 3.2, it is now understood that new consumer behaviour is more than simple information passing units and instead one must understand the effects of brand communication at more profound levels. However, several advertisement cases still show that not all marketers have completely understood that ‘when companies are more interested in telling than listening, consumers’ attitudes and feelings towards the offending company usually harden’ (Ibid:40). In section 2.1. Traditional Ad, a strong brand through marketing plans was defined as:

S = D x I x AV Grant (2007:19) argues that this definition of brands derives from explanations offered by leading professionals in agencies based on:

! How advertising (TV and print) and design (packaging and logo) seemed to work

! Their typical client at the time: fast-‐moving consumer goods and “badge” brands like cars, cigarettes and perfumes

! Back in the days when people seemed mostly to like and accept advertising

The problem with this is that while it fits the old way of doing marketing, it short-‐change brands stretching into new media and the business models within. Furthermore, it also ignores the pressure on brands to adopt a more authentic approach which is more than ‘selling’ your USPs, identity or image (Grant, 2007:15). As a good example, advertising researcher Mike Hall (In Grant, 2007:18) points to the limits of the power of brand fame by exemplifying that:

“Everybody has heard of Ford, but how many want to drive one?” This is exactly how advertisers of new marketing should start thinking. Namely, not just focusing on brand repetitiveness and stealth, but look beyond the notion of brand awareness pushed from the companies and instead aim for more powerful brand messages created in the mind of consumers. Since the break of new media, it has here become natural to think of campaign ideas that are viral, peer-‐to-‐peer and interactive. As a result, it is argued that current push advertising is increasingly falling on deaf ears, where consumers ignore the marketers failed injections of brand messages. As put by McDonald (2013:85):


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“It doesn’t matter how good your idea or product is if people are not paying attention to it”.

The power of the network has changed in favour of the empowered consumer, moving from conventional media with large market segments to today’s individual-‐centric me-‐dia (McDonald, 2013:146). Brands must therefore adjust their marketing paradigm towards one that is more socially oriented and open for dialogue for consumers to pay attention. As a result, the key implication of new brand theory is another formula:

Figure 4: Contemporary view of strong brands Thus, it is here implied that there has been a shift from brand image marketing to one that is messaging more interactive, involving, authentic and dynamic content (Grant, 2007:24). In accordance with Grant’s (2007) emphasis on messaging, postmodern theory therefore projects a new ‘economy of signs’ to the brand message (Bilton, 2007: 141). Here reality is filtered through language games, where meanings are disconnected from objective realities, and nothing is what it appears to be. Advertising, according to this logic, is no longer designed to sell products or to communicate key messages about the brand – it is the product. Bilton (2007) goes as far as to say that the trailer has replaced the film, thus advertising is replacing the product itself. It is therefore not the product but the advertising, which sells a brand. The aim of marketing and advertising in the postmodern world is therefore to construct a symbolic web of associations around the product, allowing consumers to create their own meaning attributes (Ibid). In connection to post consumer theory, consumers seek to become active participants by making their own sense out of the building blocks of narrative laid out by the marketer. This is an argument for framing experiences that provide the raw materials for creative consumption rather than finished products. From this, quality and content will only become valuable when filtered and reinterpreted by the consumer (Bilton, 2007:148). Accordingly, the author, i.e. the brand, thus becomes an enabler of other people’s creativity rather than the visionary creation. Hereby, postmodern consumption reverses the value chain, by shifting focus from producer as the primary creativity towards the consumer. Following this logic, the challenge of creative advertising is thus to find the perfect balance which triggers the curiosity of the consumers without revealing too much and hereby leave the conclusions for the consumers to draw.

Messaging Brand Marketing


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Figure 5: Interactive Value Chain of the message As a result, the new generation of consumers has developed a much more collaborative and multifunctional approach to the creative processes of advertising (Bilton, 2007:31). It is therefore here hypothesised that consumers demand to be an interactive part of the value chain, and reject just being on the receiving end. Instead, consumers want to make their own meaning attribution of the marketers’ communication messages. This led to new forms of message transmissions, which demand more creativity from the marketer. The next section will depict how advertisers should adapt to the new consumer demands through the use of new creative advertising. Here, the section will display a definition of ‘creativity’ and afterwards transfer the impact to the advertising business.

4.1. Creative Advertising Originally, marketing has always been conceived as a creative discipline. Here, the definition of creativity provides broad multiple-‐meaning connotations. Therefore, to answer the question “What is creativity?” is very subjective, and should always be seen in the eye of the beholder. Despite its subjectivity, management literature has categorised creativity into two principal aspects. Firstly, creativity is overall about novelty, i.e. a deviation from conventional tools and perspectives (Bilton, 2007:3). Secondly, it requires that creative individuals have the freedom to express their talent or vision (Ibid). According to this logic proposed by Bilton (2007), the western philosophical tradition, where individualism and innovation are rooted, has reinforced a one-‐sided and destructive stereotype of creativity and creative people. With this, the creative individualism and innovation disconnect creative thinking from the contexts and systems in which their creativity is to create meaning and value. Thus, creative individuals’ prime target is to create deviant creativity for the sake of novelty seen from their point of view. However, as a criterion for the generation of the Me-‐conomy, the creative idea should also be seen as useful or valuable for the receiving end, i.e. the

Consumer

Message Marketer

Message


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creative idea must demonstrate a ‘fitness for purpose’ (Bilton, 2007:4). In a marketing context, it is therefore crucial that advertising, with creative content, ensures a connection between the novelty and the purpose within the context. If marketers understand this, previous research has found that creative advertising helps to attract more attention from consumers because its divergence creates a contrast with less-‐creative ads (Smith, Chen & Yang, 2008:47). Moreover, it is suggested that creative ads have more favourable effects on brand attitude, hence the ad creativity adds value to a brand (Saadeghvaziri, Dehdashti & Askarabad, 2013:101). When creativity thus demonstrates a ‘fitness for purpose’, it can be seen as the driver of competitive advantage (Fillis, 2002: 379). To ensure fitness for purpose between ad creativity and consumer, one must also look at what is communicated, and how this can lead to favourable brand attitudes and behaviours.


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5. Brand Communication A brand is essentially the sum of all experiences related to the product or service and to the company that makes and delivers the product. This means that every brand activity communicates a message to the receiver (Subramaniam, Mohre & Kawde, 2014:93). It is therefore more than just the sum of its component parts; it embodies additional attributes that are intangible. As a brand arises from intangible components, a brand is thus a perceived image that resides in the minds of consumers (Ibid:95). Brand communication can therefore be used to differentiate a company’s products and services from competitors (Ibid:93). Thus, it is important to understand what a company’s target group values in brands in order to communicate and facilitate a favourable brand attitude and consumer behaviour. The following sections will entail aspects of brand communication which lead to brand attitude, brand involvement and brand engagement.

5.1. Brand Attitude In general, an attitude is the summed body of a person’s evaluation of an object, i.e. a concrete target, behaviour or person/event (Albarracín et al., 2008:19). In research literature, attitudes are often referred to as mental shortcuts guiding people’s behaviour (Gass and Seiter, 2011:41). An attitude is therefore pre-‐computed evaluations that help consumers navigate their way through a complex world (Olson and Kendrick, 2008:111). However, an attitude is not fixed as it is formed and may change based on the experiences that consumers may have (Erwin 2001:2). An attitude thereby allows the consumers to construct perceptions of the world which make sense to the individual. In relation to brand communication, an attitude towards a brand can therefore be seen as a predisposition to respond in a favourable or unfavourable manner to a particular brand after the advertising stimulus has been shown to the individual (Kapoor, Jayasimha & Sadh, 2013:54). Hence, attitude is one of the most essential issues in advertising effectiveness as it is defined as a person’s enduring favourable or unfavourable evaluations, emotional feelings, and action tendencies toward some object or idea (Saadeghvaziri, Dehdashti & Askarabad, 2013:100). Consumers’ attitudes are thus important indicators of advertising effectiveness. Here, attitudes were initially considered to be unequivocal predictors of, and explanations for, consumers’ behaviour (Augoustinos and Walker 1995:19; Olson and Kendrick 2008:111). In this connection, previous studies have shown that attitudes towards ads are connected to purchase behaviour (Saadeghvaziri, Dehdashti & Askarabad, 2013:103). It is further hypothesised that creative ads, which are more entertaining, are more favourably evaluated. The positive effect transfers to the brand resulting in a more favourable brand attitude. Moreover, positive brand attitude is argued to create approach behaviours from the consumers (Smith, Chen & Yang, 2008:52). From this attitude toward advertisements therefore directly affect consumers’ attitudes towards brands and then purchase intention and communicative behaviour:


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Figure 6: Consumer attitude affects brand behaviour In sum, as people’s attitudes towards ads are related to their reported behaviour, a positive attitude thus increases the probability of responses to the ad, i.e. a positive consumer attitude affects feelings and emotions which affect consumer behaviour and thus consumers’ level of brand involvement.

5.2. Brand Involvement As the value of advertising is merely being measured in qualitative rather than quantitative terms, consumer involvement has become increasingly important for ad effectiveness. To increase consumers’ level of involvement, brands rely on catching the consumers’ attention by creating something in which the consumer relates. Thus, for consumers to become involved with the brand communication in the first place, it is crucial that the brand content reflects consumers’ characters and needs, as this hold an increasingly bigger impact on consumers’ level of involvement (Rosendahl, Dahlen & Modig, 2013:321). This finding thus suggests that consumers relate advertising to their self-‐perceptions and concepts. Moreover, Van Noort, Antheunis & Verlegh (2014:2) further argues that the effect of self-‐disclosure transfers to favourable behavioural responses, i.e. spreading the word about the campaign and brand use intentions. Thus, to involve consumers in brand communication it is therefore claimed that consumers’ concept of self is highly important in order to provide an involving environment for both the advertiser and consumers. In that connection, research had found that the level of consumer involvement is higher when consumers engage in brand-‐related activities compared to consumers who simply read, listen or watch videos about a brand (Logan, Bright & Gangadharbatla, 2012:167). Logan’s view is in line with the famous quote: “Tell me and I forget, Teach me and I remember, Involve me and I learn” -‐Benjamin Franklin Here Franklin thus also argues that learning demands involvement. Therefore, the more consumers relate to the brand content, the more they will engage with the brand. By incorporating the notion of consumer involvement, brands hereby become the facilitator rather than the teacher who doesn't speak to but with the consumers.

Ad attitude Brand Attitude

Brand Behaviour


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5.2.1.Social Networking Sites (SNSs) However, to obtain the possibility to speak with the consumers, brands still need to catch the attention of the consumers. As found in Consumer Behaviour X, we live in an increasingly subdivided marketplace with sophisticated consumers reacting against ‘mass’ and ‘push’ media. Instead, Bilton (2007:154) argues that campaigns building on involvement within a narrow niche market are more plausible than campaigns aiming for breadth. Here, consumers are becoming more savvy and sceptical about the values of mass advertisements, making the effectiveness of traditional ads and online advertising such as banner ads increasingly negative (Logan, Bright & Gangadharbatla, 2012:165). Thus, to activate consumers, social network sites (SNSs) have proved to provide an inherently different experience for consumers as it allows for brand involvement. Although advertising through SNSs is technically speaking also online advertising, it differs from one-‐transactional banner advertising as it allows consumers to actively interact with the advertisement (Ibid). Unlike traditional ads and banner advertising, advertising on SNSs enables consumers to “like” brand content, follow the brand and share their ads with friends within their social networks. Another important feature is that SNSs allow consumers to connect with others by exchanging information, opinions and thoughts about brands and products (Chu & Kim, 2011:48). Thus, it is hypothesised that SNSs provide brands with interactive platforms and thus greater opportunities for brand involvement. In sum, interaction with a brand message is therefore argued to increase consumer engagement with the brand. The following paragraph will discuss means of brand involvement by introducing the concept of Word Of Mouth (section 5.2.2.) and Co-‐Creation (section 5.2.3.). For this part, the hypothesis is that consumer commitment is more likely to accrue around a collective sense of ownership among peers encouraged through word of mouth and co-‐creation. Here, the social aspect of brand messages provides an engaging environment, which will be detailed lastly in section 5.3, Consumer Engagement Behaviours.


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5.2.2. Word of Mouth The significance of WOM in influencing consumer decision-‐making has been well recognized in marketing and advertising literature (Chu & Kim, 2011:48). Here, WOM is defined as the act of “exchanging marketing information among consumers” (ibid), and plays an essential role in changing consumer attitudes and behaviours towards products and services. Compared to company-‐generated persuasive messages, WOM is perceived to be delivered by a more trustworthy source of information, i.e. the consumers themselves. Thus, consumers often rely on WOM when they search for information to base their purchase decisions on. Therefore, word of mouth is also evaluated as the most-‐effective and least-‐expensive type of marketing (Shin, 2009:97). The reason for its effectiveness is that it appears to be a win-‐win for both marketers and consumers. For recipients, it feels less like spam, and for referrers, providing a recommendation can be a gratifying experience which allows them to provide value, express themselves and connect with their friends (Shin, 2009:97). This improves market reach, as the message crosses platforms and social networks (ibid:101). The natural dream for marketers is then to ‘go viral’ (Ibid). Here, Shin (2009:99) argues that for an ad to go viral, the focus on the message should be:

! Simplicity ! Unexpectedness ! Concreteness ! Credibility ! Emotions ! Stories

However, as discussed in Chapter 4, the goal of an advertising campaign should not merely be focused on awareness, but more on the perceived message. Therefore, I argue that the point of departure should not be to go viral, but rather to focus on the message portrayed. It is here, as Shin notes above, however useful to create a simple concrete story with emotions and unexpectedness that may hold potential to go viral, but most importantly affect the targeted audience. To deliver a brand message, it was found in the above section 5.2.1. that SNSs provide valuable sources. With the development of SNSs, consumer behaviour has hereby transformed as new online platforms provide opportunities for consumers to share and create content about anything, including brands (Muntinga, Moorman and Smit, 2011:2). The emergence of SNSs has thus facilitated the development of WOM online, i.e. electronic word-‐of-‐mouth (referred to as eWOM hereafter). EWOM is defined as ‘any positive or negative statement made by potential, actual, or former customers about a product or company, which is made available to a multitude of people and institutions via the Internet’ (Hennig-‐Thurau et al., 2004:39). Because of the consumers’ desire to establish and maintain social relationships within their personal networks, eWOM behavior within SNSs may be initiated. By sharing product experiences, SNS users can help their social connections (e.g. friends) with useful product information. As argued in X, consumers participate in social networking sites to express themselves and socialize


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with their friends. Therefore, smart marketing is to insert themselves into these conversations through dynamic and memorable interaction opportunities (Chu & Kim, 2011:51). Here, behaviours are associated with the social influence of eWOM where users of SNSs view contacts as an important source of product information (Ibid:57). Social media has thus a lot to offer to marketers in the form of a web of brand-‐related-‐conversations (Payal, Jayasimha & Sadh. 2013:43). By the increasing popularity of social media, users indulge in eWOM behaviour while interacting with other users of social media, thereby diffusing the brand-‐related discussions to a much larger audience (Ibid). These brand-‐related conversations influence various aspects of consumer behaviour including awareness, information acquisition, attitudes and purchase intention (Ibid:44). Furthermore, eWOM is also associated with the term ‘User-‐Generated Content’ (UGC) which is a term used for the content produced and uploaded by consumers rather than companies (Ibid). This has an important impact on brands, as consumers depend more and more on each other for information, rather than on companies (Ibid). Consequently, consumers are becoming more influential with respect to the brands they are interacting about. Chatterjee (2011) examined the drivers of product recommendations and referral behaviour on SNSs. Here it was discovered that UGC is more likely to be recommended than brand-‐generated product recommendations. Moreover, close to about 70 per cent of brand-‐related searches on social media are linked with user-‐generated content rather than content created by marketers (Payal, Jayasimha & Sadh. 2013:45). In sum, WOW and eWOM are seen as valuable information sources in the Me-‐conomy. Here, consumer-‐to-‐consumer interactions about brands are argued to provide win-‐win-‐win situations for both receiver, referral and referred. The aspect of WOM is thus important to consider in relation to brand involvement. Another aspect of brand involvement includes the notion of co-‐creation which will be elaborated on in the following.


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5.2.3. Consumer Co-creation In recent years, the number of companies using co-‐creation for new product development has grown steadily (Bhalla, 2011:75). The discipline is now transferred towards innovative marketing initiatives, where brands engage in co-‐creation to create value together with their consumers (Ibid, 75). This often leads to creative consumption where the individual consumers add value and meaning to the brand message through an investment of their own ‘symbolic resources’ (Bilton, 2007: 152). Thus, the value of the brand is no longer determined by the original producer. Instead, brands should look for ways of involving consumers in the brand by allowing space for new brand interpretations. By letting go of brand control, marketers thus free them to be re-‐invented and re-‐inhabited by consumers (Bilton, 2007:154). Here the key interaction is not the relationship between the brand and consumer, but more the relationship among the consumers. Therefore, if users are allowed to take part in the brand ownership, and at the same time re-‐invent their own image among peers, they will inevitably take the brand in unexpected directions. This unexpectedness is exactly the relationship between brand and consumer which will allow the brand’s meaning and value to evolve and grow in response to its users (Bilton, 2007:156). To put this in relation to the Me-‐conomy, effective brand communication acknowledges the social relationships of the generation and understands that beyond social networking, it must create and maintain a thriving community which function as an opportunity for the spread of their influence in the social platforms (McDonald, 2013:7). Hence, if brands are able to integrate a social community among their consumers, the advantages are numerous, and go far beyond sales figures (Ibid). Here, McDonald (2013:8) brings a new evolution of ROI, which for the Me-‐conomy should not account for Return On Investment but rather Return On Involvement. However, before brands can enjoy the benefits of the return on involvement, marketers should be aware that the emerging platforms of consumer collaboration and co-‐creation will not return involvement for existing mental maps of managers that favour traditional company-‐centric methods of value creation (Bhalla, 2011:24). Therefore, in order to have a successful collaboration with consumers, brand owners must let go of their control. Here Bhalla (2011:25) proposes three pre-‐requisites for marketers’ new mindset:

! authenticity ! flexibility ! conviction

Thus, when the marketers wish to reach the consumers, the appeal needs to be authentic. Today’s savvy consumers can easily disguise hidden motives behind a brand message. In that connection, flexibility implies a greater willingness on the company part to accommodate opposing points of views. The brand and consumers do not have to agree, however it is essential that the brand demonstrates the awareness of the opposing views by listening and by showing a willingness to reconsider its own beliefs,


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values and actions’ (Bhalla, 2011:26). On the other hand, if companies do not convince the consumers of its follow-‐through, the motivation for co-‐creation will fall fast to the ground. Thus, when brand communication is evaluated as mere talk through symbolism and not backed by sincere action, it is highly likely to be penalized by today’s consumers (Ibid:28). Bhalla’s (2011) notion is very much in line with the proposed content for generating WOM in Section 5.2.2, Brands should therefore from this provide a framework with room for collective creativity that could grow into greater complexity. In sum, Bhalla (2011) argues that consumers are increasingly becoming the new producers of brand messages, which can lead to consumers’ increased feelings of brand ownership which will lead to higher brand commitment and engagement. McDonald (2013) confirms this notion by arguing that brands’ willingness to collaborate with consumers of the me-‐conomy will bring them increased return on involvement. Therefore, the brand communication literature has established that positive brand communication favours brand attitude which leads to increased brand involvement which in return will cast brand engagement from the consumers:

Figure 7: Positive Effects of Brand Communication The next section will thus elaborate on the results of positive brand attitudes and involvement, which will benefit the brand through higher consumer engagement behaviours.

Brand Attitude

• In favour of the brand

Brand Involvement

• Brand related activities • Part of the brand

Brand Engagement

• Return On Involvement


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5.3. Consumer Engagement Behaviours (CEB) Theory up brand loyalty metrics in marketing has a long history, dating at least all the way back to Guest (1944, in: Romaniuk & Nenycz-‐Thiel, 2013:68). Since then, however, a lot of discussion exists about brand engagement and how the conceptualization, operationalization and integration of behavioural and attitudinal components increase brand commitment (Ibid:68). As argued in previous sections, Brand Attitude and Brand Involvement affect ad effectiveness. This section further entails how to increase this effectiveness by consumers’ brand engagement. Overall, brand engagement is a biased behavioural response towards a specific brand. This behavioural response is expressed over time by decision-‐making based on a function of psychological processes which preference a particular brand in a class of products. It is thus consumers’ willingness to buy the brand repeatedly irrespective of the changes in the price, and their involvement to refer the brand to others (Subramaniam, Mohre & Kawde, 2014:95). According to Shin (2009:57), the main characteristics of successful consumer engagement are:

! Consumer interest and passion ! Authentic intent ! Multi-‐way interaction

Accordingly, consumer engagement is only possible if consumers share a common passion and interest. Here, it is crucial that the consumer is willing to act on that passion. Without the consumer’s willingness to invest time and energy, consumer engagement is a non-‐starter. Moreover, for shared passion to express itself in spontaneous and unique ways, people need to experience authentic environments for engagement, not be baited into false fronts for selling or promoting brands. Lastly, consumer engagement truly bubbles up to its full potential when consumers are able to interact with one another on their own terms, and the company sponsoring the engagement chooses to facilitate, not control the proceedings (Ibid). Hence, engagement creates new patterns of relationships between the company and its consumers. To put this in an advertising perspective, consumers’ motivation for engagement is argued to be higher when a brand communicates a shared passion open for interaction with and among the consumers. From the consumers’ point of view, loyalty is thus a primary attitude that many times leads to a binding relationship with the brand. Many researchers here believe that there must be a strong attitudinal commitment for true brand loyalty to exist (Subramaniam, Mohre & Kawde, 2014:95). However, for this thesis, I do not wish to uncover whether consumer engagement and brand loyalty affect advertisement effectiveness or not. As opposed to Subramaniam, Mohre & Kawde, I on the other hand question the notion of true brand loyalty among the postmodern consumer in the Me-‐conomy. According to the consumer behaviour of this generation, section 3.1, consumers are only loyal to purposes that fit them. Otherwise new consumers are migratory and they will move on to the next brand as soon as new needs arise. Thus, I don't believe in true brand engagement for the postmodern consumer, but


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still find the notion as a valuable aim, as long as marketers are aware of its unstable fixation. Instead, I prefer to define the above sections of brand involvement, word-‐of-‐mouth and co-‐creation as Consumer Engagement Behaviours (CEB). CEBs are consumers’ behavioural manifestations toward a brand beyond purchase (van Doorn et. al., 2010:253). The verb to engage has several different meanings according to the Oxford Dictionary (1996). Important meanings include: to employ or hire, to hold fast, to bind by a contract, to come into battle, and to take part. All these meanings imply a behavioural focus. The definition of CEBs in a consumer-‐to-‐firm relationship therefore focuses on behavioural aspects of this relationship (van Doorn et. al., 2010:254). Yet, as opposed to brand engagement, which meaning connotes a binding contract between brand and consumer, CEBs should offer a less fixed definition of consumers’ behavioural patterns. Moreover, in a consumer management context, there has been extensive attention paid to behavioural consumer metrics with a strong focus on purchase behaviour (e.g., Bolton 1998; Bolton, Lemon, and Verhoef 2004; Mittal and Kamakura 2001 and Reinartz and Kumar 2000). For this thesis, I argue that CEBs however go beyond transactions, and are instead seen as behavioural manifestations caused by motivational drivers other than purchase (Ibid). Again, one must not take the word manifestations as a fixed term, but instead the term should be acknowledged as manifested for as long as the behaviour fits the consumer’s needs. In that connection, Sprott, Czellar, and Spangenberg (2009:92) discussed a general measure for brand engagement. They here define brand engagement as ‘an individual difference representing consumers’ propensity to include important brands as part of how they view themselves (Ibid). One must therefore see CEB as a reflection of the individual’s self-‐reflections which cannot be measured solely by purchase, and which change in accordance to consumer’s self-‐view. To evolve and manage CEBs, brands should thus take an integrative and comprehensive approach which would drive consumer motivation for engagement. To test, sustain and evolve the literature review, four ad cases have been selected for my research which will be presented below.


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6. Cases In order to uncover the target group’s attitudes towards brand communication and involvement, four cases have been selected. All cases try to involve the consumers through different digital marketing initiatives. The case examples have therefore been selected to test consumers’ processing and perceptions of the shown advertising creativity, and whether the case examples would motivate the selected informants to be involved in similar brand communication. The following will therefore present and describe each of the four cases, and reflect upon the motivations for investigating the chosen phenomena and why these will provide answers to my problem statement. The cases should therefore uncover the research questions for the thesis:

RQ1: How do consumers perceive advertising and creative marketing? RQ2: What motivates consumers to take part in brand communication?

6.1. Case 1: #HappyBeerTime, Carlsberg The first case example is Carlberg’s marketing initiative #HappyBeerTime (appendix 1). In the fall 2013, the Carlsberg Group launched a new take on bars’ well-‐known on-‐trade promotion “Happy Hour”. Here, bar guests were given the chance to get discount on beers by extending the usually planned “Happy Hour”. This was done by encouraging them to take pictures at the bar and upload them to Instagram with the hashtag #HappyBeerTime and the hashtag of the selected bar venue. When guests uploaded a picture, their hashtag would automatically prolong bar guests’ period time for cheap beers. For this thesis, the case of #HappyBeerTime is used as a marketing example to demonstrate a new way of activating consumers in their own social settings. The purpose of the brand activation around #HappyBeerTime is to further tie the brand of Carlsberg to consumers’ social sphere in an indirect non-‐push strategy. Therefore, by including consumers’ own social setting, the posted pictures on Instagram come to resemble a recommendation from a friend, more than a brand communicating about their products. Thus, the campaign wishes to tap into the consumers’ word-‐of-‐mouth by letting the consumers produce and upload the content. By combing a physical aspect, i.e. the social scene of the venue bar, with the fit of modern social media, the initiative further seeks to bridge the gap between physical socializing and social media. The #HappyBeerTime campaign is thus hypothesised to create win-‐win-‐win situations. Firstly, the consumers of the Me-‐conomy get cheaper bar deals and a legitimate chance to upload pictures of themselves in a social setting which, according to the new consumer behaviour theory, fits their social needs for self-‐expression and affiliation.


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Here, the consumers are attracted to unprecedented experiences and seek an element of surprise within an otherwise familiar product (Bilton, 2007:139). The combination of social affiliation and self-‐expression with novelty and longer happy hour is therefore seen as a win for the consumers. Secondly, the bar venue gets free promotion by the picture uploads from the guests which will spread in the social networks. Lastly, the brand itself receives the word-‐of-‐mouth buzz from the consumer involvement. The case example is hereby in accordance to Bilton’s (2007) notice found in 4.1, where the #HappyBeerTime campaign has made consumer involvement the primary objective by granting less emphasis on sales and transactions and instead foregrounds the actual consumer experience. However, even though the campaign might be creative and innovative from the marketer’s perspective, it is also crucial to further investigate how the consumers perceive such initiatives, and whether or not the social aspects actually appeal to target consumers as a motivation for brand communication.

6.2. Case 2: Nul Procent, Neutral

The second case example is Neutral’s social platform Nul Procent (Appendix 2).

In August 2014, the Danish skincare brand Neutral launched a new user-‐driven campaign that focused on the individual consumer’s opinions. As opposed to the traditional beauty ads featuring international supermodels and cliché brand messages, Neutral choose to use statements from their consumers (Markedsføring.dkrom, 2014). Furthermore, selected consumers were featured on the ad posters for Neutral’s ‘Nul Procent’ skin care products.

Up to date, 1,200 consumers have uttered their opinion and contributed with their brand messages on the platform www.nulprocent.dk where users can either create their own login or login through Facebook and afterwards share their statements on Facebook (Nulprocent, October 2014). To activate the users, Neutral states: We give the floor 100% to you – We put the consumers in focus and let your recommendations be the message in our new campaign (English translation from Ibid). Here, the campaign promise is “0% talk, 100% your opinion” (ibid). According to the new consumer behaviour, chapter 3, the Nulprocent campaign is in accordance with consumers’ of the Me-‐conomy quest for self-‐expression where the concept of value is determined from the consumers’ point of view. Also, in the literature review, the traditional words and messages from brands are no longer taken at face value. Instead, the sceptical consumers often look for the intentionality behind the brand owner. Therefore, consumers often question words coming from brands and instead perceive other consumers’ words to be more credible (Bhalla, 2011:5). Neutral’s pursuit for


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consumer involvement is, from this theoretical perspective, seen as a motivational factor for consumers’ information retrieving.

In relation to this thesis, the case example is thus used to test new theory upon consumer brand involvement by informants’ level of motivation for entering such campaigns and their transferred consumer affects when exposed to the case example.

6.3. Case 3: Gaming Helmet, Fridge Raiders

The third case is the British snack brand Fridge Raiders’ co-‐creation campaign ‘MM3000 Gaming Helmet” (Appendix 3).

In the spring of 2013, the British snack brand Fridge Raiders tried a new way to engage their snack eaters. Instead of aiming for a mass market, they decided to target a niche consumer group consisting of young British gamers. Here, Fridge Raiders found that most young gamers snack while playing, and they thus needed a credible way to engage their target through gaming. Therefore, they partnered with The Syndicate Project, who is a popular online British gaming commentator (Campaignlive, 2013). Instead of just being a regular celebrity endorsement, the collaboration mobilized The Syndicate Project’s fans to Fridge Raiders by having them work together and solve the problem How to snack and game at the same time (Ibid).

The followers of the Syndicate Project were asked to urge their ideas to Fridge Raiders’ Facebook page, where more than 15,000 followers submitted their solutions (Ibid). Here, the best submissions where built into prototypes and tested on The Syndicate Project’s platform. To keep the fans activated, Fridge Raiders posted daily Facebook updates, and weekly Youtube episodes kept the followers and co-‐creators up-‐to-‐date (Community, 2013).

By targeting a niche audience, Fridge Raiders managed to become a synonym for snack for UK gamers, which compose a target audience of 3.5 million gamers. The co-‐creation provided Fridge Raiders with 110,000,000 impressions and 3,500,000 YouTube views, and their sales were further increased by 65 % (Fridge Raiders’ case video, 2013). Here it is hypothesised, that in return for brand involvement, the consumers feel that they are being heard and perceived as valuable knowledge producers by the brand centred around a social setting of likeminded, i.e. other passionate gamers. The case should therefore uncover how relevance and humour affect informants’ urge for brand co-‐creation, and


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whether such brand communication have an effect on their perception of advertising.

Moreover, by replacing a traditional mass marketing campaign with a niche consumer driven bottom-‐up process, Fridge Raiders’ case example operates in accordance to the review of the Me-‐conomy, where collaboration and data sharing among consumers and producers are seen as a necessity to thrive. The case is therefore interesting to further investigate from a consumer perspective, and to which degree such marketing initiatives provide a source of value for the consumers.

6.4. Case 4: #BestBuds, Budweiser The last case example is Budweiser’s campaign #BestBuds (Appendix 4). This is a more traditional ad which was featured during the Super Bowl finals this year (US Magazine, 2014). However, compared to the traditional ad description found in chapter 2, the one-‐minute long video only features the love story between a puppy and a horse, and does not contain any direct product information or the actual product itself (YouTube, PuppyLove, 2014). Instead, Budweiser tells a story which plays on the viewers’ emotions through the attributes of the puppy/horse, love and the emotional song “Let Her Go” by Passenger. It is thus only in the end of the commercial that it becomes clear for the viewer that this is an advertisement for Budweiser. Here, the ad ends by showing Budweiser’s logos and the digital call-‐to-‐action with the hashtag #BestBuds. Before the advertisement was even aired on television, it had attracted over 12 million views on YouTube, and to date, the commercial has reached over 52 million views on YouTube (YouTube, Puppy Love, 12 October 2014). This made the ad the most watched of all the official 2014 Super Bowl ads (Marketingland, 2014). As the last case example, the ad has been selected for two reasons. Firstly, the format of the ad is very traditional by its centralized distribution channel airing on American television stations. It can therefore be categorised as one-‐way sender-‐to-‐receiver focused. However, in contrast to traditional ads, the ad seeks the perspective of the receivers in the end by urging the consumers to share their #BestBuds moment on social media. The ad hereby encourages the receiver to talk back with the hashtag #BestBuds where consumers should create and post new personal perspectives to their meaning of the term ‘Best Buds’. Also, the case does not promote the product benefits. It is instead up to the consumers to add value or meaning to the product. From this, I thus wish to demonstrate whether the traditional format can trigger informants’ behavioural involvement by the digital call-‐to-‐action. Secondly, the content of the ad is centred on the emotive love story. From the informants’ point of view, I thus wish to uncover whether the emotive appeal functions as a persuasive motivational trigger or not. Here, I will use the case to see how


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informants evaluate the persuasive intent and test how the ad format affects informants’ overall perception and motivation for involvement. This can be used in comparison to case example 3, Fridge Raiders gaming helmet, which contains an appeal to informants’ humoristic sense.

6.5. Sum Up of Cases To sum, the selected cases are examples of creative advertising which exemplifies the theory of social setting, word of mouth and co-‐creation. Here the purpose is not to rule out a set of marketing “Does and Don’ts” for brands, but rather to investigate consumers’ attitudes and behaviours towards consumptive social expression, word of mouth and co-‐creation. Moreover, the four cases have been chosen as they represent four different ways of involving the consumer through the use of social media. The cases therefore act as gates for different forms of eWOW, i.e. sharing, liking and commenting, and co-‐creation with a brand. Because of their range, it is the purpose to demonstrate which elements of the different cases that the informants like the most and least. Also, by discussing the cases and their methods for involving the consumers, this might evoke further recall and new case examples by the informants. To be aware, one must keep in mind that creativity is subjective, and is thus subject to various opinions. Therefore, the case examples should not function as means to demonstrate ad creativity. Instead, the research aims to look at the different drivers of brand communication in the cases, and whether these trigger motivation for brand involvement. It is therefore not the purpose for me, as a researcher and writer of this thesis, to highlight these cases as creative solutions for marketers but rather to uncover parts and elements from the different campaign methods which work in accordance with the selected consumer responses.


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7. Research Method Before presenting the findings of the case research, the following chapter will account for my choices in relation to the scientific perspective. Afterwards, the research methods for my findings will be accounted for.

7.1. Scientific Perspective To answer the problem statement and research questions of this thesis, I operate within the paradigm of social constructionism to gain an understanding of how consumers of the Me-‐conomy perceive advertising and brand communication. The following will therefore firstly describe the position and secondly discuss the implications of operating within this paradigm. First of all, there is no single description adequate for covering the definition of social constructionism. Even though writers refer to the same characteristics of social constructionism, they do not all have the same in common, and the phenomena is thus described in multiple ways (Burr, 2001:2). Thus, as a position within the social constructionism, my approaches have its foundations in one or more of the key assumptions proposed by scientists of social constructionism. These will be depicted in the following. First of all, the focus in social constructionism is on a social world constituted by language. Here, Burr (2001:7) brings a central belief of social constructionism that when people talk to each other the world gets constructed. Therefore, social constructionists argue that language is the construction that produces the social world (Burr, 2001:8). From this interpretative approach, interactions are therefore of great interest to social constructionists. Here, knowledge creation thus happens through interaction between people within societies (Andrews, 2012:40). The social world is therefore viewed as something that is subjectively constructed. Thus, by embracing this subjectivity, knowledge is obtained. This is in opposition to the grounded theories. From a social constructionist view, understanding does not derive from the nature of the world as it really is, but instead people construct understanding between them (Andrew, 2012:39, Burr, 2001:4). As a response to postmodern consumer behaviour, social constructionism rejects the prior fundamental assumptions of modernism by emerging as a critical alternative to the natural sciences (Andrew, 2012:40). Within this critical stance, the notion of one absolute truth is one of the social Constructivists’ key rejections (Burr, 2001:4). The truth is therefore not regarded as a product of objective observation of the world, but of the social processes and interactions in which people are constantly engaged with each other (Burr, 2001:4). This is a counterargument to many of the prior philosophical foundations which believe that knowledge exists in one true, objective way (Andrews, 2012:12). Social constructionists, on the other hand, believe that there is no universal reality but rather multiple versions of reality, and that knowledge is not created but constructed (Andrews, 2012:39). Burr (2001:6) even states that ‘as different realities are constructed through different interactions, there is no such thing as an


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objective fact’. This notion is in line with the consumers of the Me-‐conomy who reject the idea of both an ultimate truth and structuralism. The postmodern world, through the eyes of a social constructivist, thus no longer evaluates through one overarching system of knowledge (Burr, 2001:14). From this view, brands’ use of mass communication is restricted, as the new media landscape makes more knowledge constructions available through multiple media and networks.

7.2. Research Design With a social constructionism perspective, this section will change direction from a theoretical to an empirical focus, with the purpose of introducing the data collection method and research of the thesis. Lastly, the implications of my scientific position for my research methods will be discussed. As found in section 3.1, the generation of the Me-‐conomy defies “put-‐in-‐box” categorisations offered by the traditional market segmentation and exhibits inconsistent patterns of attitudes and behaviours. To provide an inclusive and valid general conclusion upon brand communication for the target population, interpretation of survey-‐generated data is thus challenging. Also, according to Rosendahl, Dahlén & Modig (2013:321), earlier research has mostly been occupied with understanding how the advertised product is perceived and the benefits for the advertiser, i.e. taking an “Inside-‐the-‐ad” perspective. However, as advertising continues to increasingly permeate consumers’ everyday lives, research should instead apply an “Outside-‐the-‐ad” perspective (Ibid). The research design of this thesis will therefore refrain from looking at creative advertising effects purely related to the benefit of the advertiser but instead seek to reveal how consumers perceive creative advertising and how motivation for involvement is affected by their everyday lives. To answer the problem statement, the research study will thus be based on a qualitative research approach to provide more in-‐depth insights from the target generation about their attitudes and behavioural traits in relation to advertisements. For the research design, this section will therefore present the methodological and epistemological reflections of the thesis’ research process. The section will firstly introduce the qualitative methodological choice of focus group interviews, snowball sampling, selection criteria and sample of the informants and lastly, the implications of my scientific stance and the reflections of the moderator guide will be discussed. As stated in chapter X, four cases of advertising will serve as the foundation for investigating the informants’ perception of brand communication and motivations for brand involvement. Together with the theoretical foundation of the literature review and the case examples, the reflections and execution of the following research design are seen as essential pillars for answering the problem statement of the thesis.


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Below is listed a visualisation of the research process:

Figure 8: Research Process.

7.2.1. Qualitative Method Holding a social constructionist position, the thesis will operate within the qualitative research paradigm to understand how recipients interpret advertising. In contrast to quantitative research, which aims to quantify a phenomenon in numbers, qualitative research collects, analyzes and interprets data by observing what people do and say (Burns & Bush, 2006:202). Here, a central point for the qualitative analysis to try to see through the eyes of the people being studied (Bryman, 2001, p. 277). By acknowledging this, the research method thus opens for insights from the informants of their motivations and reasons for brand involvement. However, working within a qualitative research field, one must further acknowledge that meaning creations are individual and subjective, and it is thus necessary to understand that the social worlds of the audience members are different (Ibid: 264). Hereby, I wish to gather and increase understandings of the consumers’ perceptions of advertisement by answering the how of the problem statement (Schrøder, 2001:28). By using a qualitative approach for the thesis, I therefore seek to understand and conceptualize how chosen informants perceive advertisements. Even though the representativeness of qualitative methods are low compared to quantitative observations, which provide research with a higher level of measurement precision, the qualitative method will provide high validity to the research. To achieve high validity, it is important to stress the methodology behind the research to enhance transparency of the findings. By keeping the strengths and weaknesses of qualitative research in mind, the following sections will therefore present the thesis’ research design. The sections will depict and explain my choices for selecting focus group interviews, using a snowball sampling method, my criteria for recruiting informants and finally the rationale for the moderator guide and transcription process.

7.2.1.1. Data Collection: Focus Group Interviews Since social constructionism has a social rather than an individual focus (Andrew, 2012:40), the collection of empirical data will consist of focus group interviews. Here, the goal is to understand the world of lived experience from the perspective of those who

Case Selections

Snowball Sampling & Selection Criteria

Moderator Guide

Semi-‐structured Focus Group Interviews

Thematic Analysis


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live in it (Ibid). Thus, as suggested by Burr (2001), our identity originates not from inside the person but from the social realm. Therefore, the conducted focus groups will uncover the social interactions and processes between informants with language being the prime research area. This sustains the focus of the problem statement since the focus group interviews allow me to obtain a first-‐person perspective of the informants’ individual perceptions to advertisements and brand involvement. Focus groups have been used successfully to gather a wide variety of qualitative information for an extensive period of time where its qualitative data have not readily been obtained by any other data-‐collection techniques (Quible, 1998:28). Here, Stewart & Shamdasani (1990) argues that group interviews can gather consumers' impressions about a program, and generate new program ideas for testing and possible implementation (Ibid:30). To reach an answer to the problem statement “How consumers’ perception of advertising affect brand involvement”, the focus groups should therefore uncover informants’ attitudes and impressions of advertising and test cases of creative advertising to form ideas for how and whether brands can involve their consumers in their brand communication. The advantage of conducting such interviews is its collective interaction which offers more spontaneous and expressive answers compared to individual interviews (Kvale & Brinkmann, 2009). The interactions among the group informants could therefore further stimulate and expand their perceptions of advertisements. The information brought by the group interviews is thus believed to surface true motivations and reactions of the informants, which might be missed by a statistical study (Daymon & Holloway, 2013:242). However, as a researcher, I must be aware of the disadvantage of focus groups. During group interviews, informants might feel pressured to provide socially acceptable responses to conform to group norms. Moreover, due to the narrow sample size, the findings cannot be generalized beyond the members of the populations from which they are drawn. However, research obtained through focus groups should not be marked as invalid due to low representability and subjectivity. Instead, it enhances credibility due to its explorative nature (Daymon & Holloway, 2013:82). Also, there is a risk that my own subjective evaluations, as a moderator and researcher, might affect the interpretation of responses. To ensure that my own prejudices did not affect the analysis by interfering with informants’ responses, I based the findings from my open-‐ended questions on quotations from the two focus groups. This way, I used the words from the informants as argumentation for my results. For the purpose of this thesis, focus groups as a research method therefore provide valuable insights to the findings. Here, the research does not aim at drawing generalizations. Instead, it wishes to investigate selected informants’ attitudes towards advertising, which is in nature a very subjective manner. Here, the in-‐depth insights will help comprehend the involvement level of the informants, and gain a deeper understanding of their experiences and actual perceptions of brand communication. This should then serve as a basis for further research.


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7.2.2.Selection criteria Since the purpose of this research is to understand the Me-‐conomy perception of advertisements and incentives for brand involvement, the first criterion was that the subjects belonged within this generation. This age group belong to the Generation Y (consumers born between 1977 and 1994) (Williams, Page, Petrosky & Hernandez, 2010), but has been narrowed down to people aged 21-‐28. Due to the scope and page limitations, the target group has been narrowed to people aged 21-‐28 to get a chance to go more in-‐depth within a smaller age group. Moreover, to take part in the focus groups, a further criterion was that the participants used SNSs, as the case material draw on drivers from these platforms. Here, the Pew Internet & American Life Project has reported that more than 70% of online users between 18 and 29 years old use SNSs (Chu & Kim, 2011:49). Therefore, I decided to hold a narrow focus on this selected age group. Lastly, both female and male informants were equally selected for the group sessions. Selection Criteria Generation Gender Media Me-‐Conomy, 21-‐28 years-‐old present on SNS

Equal distribution of male & females

SNS user

Table 2: Selection Criteria of Informants Based on the prescribed selection criteria, a specific sampling method, i.e. snowball sampling, was selected.

7.2.3. Snowball Sampling Within qualitative research, snowball sampling is arguably the most widely employed method of sampling in various disciplines across the social sciences (Noy, 2008:330). To collect my data for the focus group, the method of snowball sampling has therefore been applied. The use of snowball sampling has been suggested, when applied critically, to generate a unique type of knowledge that is emergent and interactional (Noy, 2008:327). Here, it is said to be one of the most important nonprobability sampling methods used in marketing research (Voicu & Babonea, 2011:1341). This is a technique for finding research subjects where the researcher accesses informants through contact information that is provided by other informants (Noy, 2008:330). The procedure can be repetitive as informants refer the researcher to other informants which then refer to yet other informants etc. (ibid). Thus, the metaphor of the evolving “snowball” effect. According to Baltar & Brunet (2012:60), this sampling method is a useful method for exploratory, qualitative and descriptive research. Furthermore, Noy (2008:329) also acknowledge, that the sampling procedure allows for unique facets for any paradigm within qualitative research that leads to dynamic moments, which generate unique social knowledge of an interactional quality. This is in line with social constructionism where


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knowledge arises through the language with others. Therefore, as information about informants in snowball sampling is supplied solely be the informants themselves, the researcher resigns a considerable amount of control over the sampling phase to the informants (Noy, 2008:332). As result, it is the informants who drive the sampling process, where informants’ choice of referrals impacts the final data collection. Snowball sampling for this research will thus bring the value of a random informant selection, within the selection criteria, which brings an unbiased representative where I, as a researcher, cannot control the output of results.

7.2.2.1. Informants By using the snowball sampling method, three initial informants were selected for both focus group interviews, where two of the initial informants referred two referrals (1st referrals), and hereof another referral was found (2nd referral). See table 3 for an overview of the snowball sampling method which led to the initial respondents, 1st and 2nd referrals: Focus Group 1 Focus Group 2 Initial respondent (IR) Betina, Simon, Emil Joachim, Nicoline, Sarah 1st referral (1st R) Lene, Martin Kristian, Malene 2nd referral (2nd R) Anja Anders Table 3: Initial respondents and referrals for focus group 1 & 2. Below is a further division of the informants, where the sampling trees of focus group 1 & 2 indicates the course of the sampling processes, i.e. the effect of the snowball sampling method. The snowball stemma for focus group 1 and 2 here includes network information about the linked position within the stemma, the number of referrals supplied by the informants, and the socio-‐demographic information of each informant.


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Figure 9: Snowball stemma, Focus Group 1 (Inspired by Noy, 2008):

Figure 10: Snowball stemma, Focus Group 1 (Inspired by Noy, 2008):


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Using this personal network recruitment method for research also has some limitations, which needs to be acknowledged. As the focus groups were partly formed by groups of people who shared social experience predominately, it thus holds the risk of participants sharing attitudes and behavioural traits. Moreover, what participants choose to tell a researcher is always selective, and being aware of my position as both a person within some of the informants’ social network, and a researcher, I recognize that research accounts are necessarily partial where the interpersonal relations prevents from having a fully ‘transparent reflexivity’ (Rose, 1995). Therefore, it was important to provide open follow-‐up questions to make informants elaborate on their views and ensure that all viewpoints were expressed and all voices were heard. Also, as a non-‐probability sampling method, the referrals entered arbitrary and therefore make it hard for the researcher to grasp the real distribution of the sample population (Voicu & Babonea, 2011:1345). The initial respondents further tend to refer persons, they know best and who they share the same opinions with, and it is therefore very likely that the informants share the same features and characteristics. Thus, the final sample obtained risk only representing a small subgroup of the entire target population, where small target groups will pass unnoticed (Voicu & Babonea, 2011:1345). To avoid a unified subgroup data sample, I, as a researcher, identified an initial set of respondents within my social network. Here, 3 preselected informants, who did not belong within the same subgroup, were requested to recommend and bring another informant who also fulfilled the selection criteria (section 7.2.2). Before the initial selected respondents found their referrals, I did not inform about the topic of the focus group. This was done to avoid any selection bias (Baltar & Brunet, 2012:61) and pre-‐selective attitudes (Voicu & Babonea, 2011:1345). Otherwise, the initial respondents might have found informants within their social network who they beforehand knew would hold similar beliefs about advertisements as them. Instead, to increase the representativeness, the sample group was sought as random as possible to secure the external validity of the sample (Baltar & Brunet, 2012:61). The snowball method for this the research does not intend to generalize data for the entire populations, but rather to collect detailed information on a specific event or phenomena (Ibid:1345). The advantage of choosing a smaller number of informants for the study is that it allows me to use more resources on each informants’ opinions in the interviews and in this way obtain greater depth (Mick & Buhl, 1992). For the purpose of this thesis, snowball sampling therefore brings a random representative with an explorative description of a target generation in focus, and their attitude and behavioural beliefs about advertisement.


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7.3. Scientific Implications for Research and Findings Based on the paradigm of social constructionism, this thesis therefore takes a critical stance to taken-‐for-‐granted-‐knowledge (Burr, 2001:3). I hereby challenge the view that knowledge is based upon objective unbiased observations. Instead, I acknowledge that the informants of the focus groups construct their own realities in which I will focus on the nuances of their multiple understandings instead of putting forward an absolute truth. In contrast to the newer scientific foundation of philosophical hermeneutics, social constructionists believe that the subject does not have a core identity, and therefore view the notion of the receiver as non-‐existent. All identities are instead produced in the room by different discourses. This notion is essential for my research within advertising as identity is not produced by an inner core self but only constituted by discourses at all time (Ibid:19). Thus, traditional marketing segmentation is questioned and my role as researcher should not be seen as sender of a subject, i.e. advertising, to the receivers, i.e. the chosen respondents. Instead, these respondents are to be seen as informants in which knowledge will arise through their interactions among each other. From this methodological perspective, the role of language is emphasised to gather knowledge. As Burr (2001:7) states: “When people talk to each other, the world gets constructed”. This means that the knowledge data I bring for my findings is produced during the focus groups and the interactions encountered between me, as a moderator, and the informants. Moreover, the subjective nature of individual realities is emphasized through the social constructionist approach. Therefore, I, as a researcher, accept that findings may bring multiple truths as informants cannot provide objective accounts of an absolute truth. With a belief in multiple realities, I instead aim to ‘uncover the meanings by which people understand their own experiences, behaviors and communication’ (Daymon & Holloway,2013:102). Here, the informants’ perspectives must also be understood as time—and culture-‐bound and can therefore not be taken as once-‐and-‐for-‐all descriptions of human beings (Burr, 2001:6). Within this paradigm, people can therefore interpret the same events differently depending on the historical and cultural context. Johansson & Heide (2008:294) states: ‘As people have different backgrounds, interests, experiences, education, positions, and so forth, they will also make sense of the very same situation in multiple ways’. Therefore, the informants’ past experiences and cultural surroundings further affects their notion of advertising. Also, their predominant characteristics of the social world are thus also continual subjects for change. Hence, the findings of this thesis do not bring final conclusions but should instead be subject for continuous research. Moreover, my own biases through socio-‐cultural experiences have indirectly influenced the interactions during the focus groups, and thus the research data. However, I was very aware of this bias, and tried to avoid bringing a personal agenda, but rather I sought to uncover the respondents’ views on advertising. My role was thus to stimulate conversations to bring the social realities of the informants through the interaction among them.


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7.4. Focus Group Process After a clarification of my research design and role as a researcher, the process of my focus group will now be discussed. According to O'Donnell (1988), a focus-‐group process consists of three phases: planning, conducting, and analyzing/reporting. Firstly, a good planning phase is essential to ensure that the defined problem statement will be reached through the listed research questions. Here, a semi-‐structured moderator guided was developed to ensure that objectives for the research were met. The planning phase thus played an important role in determining what questions to ask during the session (Quible, 1998:31). Secondly, the conducting phase of the focus group sessions is crucial to ensure that both the informants and the moderator feels comfortable during the meeting (Ibid). Hereby, the phase ensures that expressions and opinions are freely floating among informants. This will be elaborated on in the below section 7.4.2, Conducting Phase. Thirdly, the foundation for analyzing the data and reach findings for the problem statement was settled in the analyzing and reporting phase (Ibid). Here the process of transcription and evaluation of the use of a thematic analysis will be discussed.

Figure 11: The Three Phases Focus Group Process (O’Donnell, 1988) The next sections will therefore sequentially elaborate each stage from the planning to the conducting to the analysing/reporting phase of the focus groups.

7.4.1. Planning Phase: The Moderator Guide For the focus groups, I have chosen to use a semi-‐structured moderator guide, where I created a list of themes with suggested questions to explore during the group sessions (Appendix 5). In this connection, Belk (2013) advises that interview questions should be flexible with a moderator who deviates from the moderator guide to explore emergent

Planning Phase

• Moderator Guide

Conducting Phase

• Focus Group sessions

Analyzing and Reporting Phase

• Process of Transcription • Thematic Analysis


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topics deemed relevant. This hereby allows me, as a moderator, to adjust from a structured and fixed sequence of questions, and instead lets me openly follow the path led by the informants’ inputs (Kvale, 1996:124). For the same reasons, I also refer yo the focus group contestants as ‘informants’ and not ‘respondents’. I refrain from the term respondents as the intention of the interviews was not to create a strict role distribution of me as an interviewer and them as respondents but rather the group sessions were to be seen as a discussion upon equal parts where my role as a moderator was to facilitate the discussion among the informants through the semi-‐structured moderator guide. Hereby, the overall findings of the research will be from the informants’ own perspective. In this way, I gained a descriptive access to the informants’ thoughts and attitudes upon advertising as well as their perceptions of the chosen case examples. The content of the moderator guide therefore consisted mostly of open-‐ended questions to allow informants to answer in their own terms and provide the group sessions with unexpected answers (Brygman, 2008:232). In that connection, the open-‐ended answers from the informants led to immediate responses towards the topics discussed, which contributed in revealing their attitudes towards advertising in general and motivations for brand involvement in regards to the chosen case examples (Keller, 2003:432). Furthermore, to ensure objectivity, any leading and biased questions have been avoided in order not to direct misguided answers from the informants (Brygman, 2008:242). Within the group sessions, it was also important that the spoken language was easy to understand and comprehend for all informants, and all theoretical terminology have therefore been avoided in the moderator guide. Instead, a more informal and casual language was used to ease the conversation and make the informants more comfortable in sharing their attitudes. For the same reason, both interviews were held in the informants’ native language, Danish, and afterwards the data were transcribed into English (Transcription of Focus Group 1, Appendix 6, Focus Group 2, Appendix 7). This process of translating data was critically handled as direct translation of an instrument from one language to another does not guarantee content equivalence of the translated scale (Cha, Kim & Erlen, 2007:387). Thus, to ensure validity and maintain equivalence between original and translated measures, the back-‐translation method and pre-‐test method were used to overcome limitations of a single technique (Maden & Köker, 2013: 573). The moderator guide was structured into three parts. The first part is an introduction to the meeting and focused on warming up the informants with contextual information about themselves. By getting to know the other, the informants should feel more open and encouraged to contribute to the group debate. Also, they were asked to indicate how they preferred to get information about products and brands. With the informants’ pre-‐stated opinions about receiving product information, this could be used later in the analysis of ‘why’ informants might feel and express their views as they did. The second part was linked to RQ1, and hereby focused on uncovering the informants’ perceptions and attitudes to advertisements. This was conducted by starting with general open questions on advertisement and afterwards progressing to the case-‐specific examples. Before wrapping up, the third part of the moderator guide was linked to RQ2, and looked more into details upon the informants’ motivations for taking part in brand


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communication. This was done with a comparison of the case examples’ brand communication and initiatives for brand involvement. In the following section, accounts for the actual implementation of the moderator guide will be elaborated on.

7.4.2. Conducting Phase: The Focus Group Sessions Before the start of the focus group, all participants filled out a consent form for participating in the interview. The consent form contained information about the purpose of the meeting, recording of data and possibility to become anonymous in the data collection (Appendix 8 and 9). Afterwards, as stated in the moderator guide, the first part of the focus group session was a short briefing and introduction. Here, my role as a moderator was to make the participants feel at ease, and enable them to become acquainted with each other, and also break the ice by questions that evoke answers from the participants with biographical questions such as name, age and occupation (McCracken, 1988:34-‐35). Afterwards, the actual group session began. Firstly, the group discussed their attitudes in general towards advertising by giving examples of good and bad advertisements. Afterwards, I, as a moderator, presented the stimulus material of the four case examples. Here one case at a time was shown and a paper with screen shots from the case was handed out to each informants to ensure that all details was captured by the informants (Appendix 1,2,3,4). Afterwards, the specific case was discussed by follow up questions before moving on to the next case. When it was time to compare the four cases to each other, I referred to each stimulus material and made sure that each informant got a recap of the different cases by re-‐looking at the four case hand-‐outs. This was done to ensure that all four cases were fresh in memory before the comparisons. The stimulus material therefore functioned as means to discuss different elements of brand communication and at the same time evoke new examples of brand communication which relates to the discussed subjects. During the group sessions, my primary role as a moderator was therefore to promote interaction, probing for details when the need arises, and ensuring the discussion stays focused on the topic of interest (Quible, 1998:30). Here I tried to get participants to express all points of view and to react to other participants’ comments. Furthermore, Sink (1991:201-‐202) notes: “There is a real art to asking questions that are not dichotomous, that don't lead, and that obtain real perceptions” It was therefore very important for my research, that all participants had a say, and tried to avoid that a few participants dominated the discussion. By asking open-‐ended questions, it allowed the participants to determine the direction and nature of response. As a response to informants comments I asked follow-‐up questions to deeper investigate the rationale behind their arguments.


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After both interviews were conducted, the reporting phase of transcribing the sessions began. The following will short describe my transcription method.

7.4.3. Analysing and Reporting Phases

7.4.3.1. Transcription of Focus groups The data was collected from the two focus groups, which lasted for 1hour43minutes (Focus Group 1, appendix 10) and 1hour48minutes (Focus Group 2, appendix 10). In total the group meetings lasted for 3hours and 31minutes. Before the analysis of the data could take place, a preliminary phrase of transcribing the group sessions from spoken language to written language was done. The purpose of the transcriptions was to reveal overarching themes found from contestants and not at a linguistic level. With the point of departure in Kvale (2007), the transcription of the focus groups therefore focused on content and was thus conducted verbatim, word-‐by-‐word, and not on details such as pauses, laughs and uses of ‘mh’ and ‘eh’. This choice was made to give a better overview of the following thematic analysis. Hereby, the comprehensibility of the transcribed texts is clearer with a simplistic version of the spoken word. To ensure accuracy of the transcribed, several listening and corrections of the recorded spoken word were compared to the transcribed data (Focus group 1 transcript, Appendix 6, and Focus Group 2 Transcript, Appendix 7).

7.4.3.2. Thematic Networks It is not only vital how I collected the research but also how the data was handled afterwards. Therefore, to ensure meaningful and valid results of my qualitative research, my empirical data was analyzed in a structured manner. Here, I further emphasized the importance of choosing a transparent method to give a clear and present image of how I reached the results followed in chapter X, Findings. Due to the heavy textual data, the first focus for my analysis was thus to find a tool that could put large amount of unstructured texts into order to be able to make useful sense of the data. Therefore, as a technique for breaking up the text and still create meaning from the qualitative material, a thematic analysis was selected. In correspondence to social constructionism, thematic analysis also put a strong focus on language. Within the thematic analysis, the analytic tool of thematic networks will be applied to reveal the language of the empirical data. As a definition, thematic analysis is a method that identifies, analyse and report patterns, i.e. themes, extracted from the data (Braun & Clarke, 2006:79). Thus, each theme comprises information and reflects patterns inhabited from the empirical research. Within the thematic analysis, Attride-‐Stirling’s (2001) method of thematic networks will be applied as tool. This is a web-‐like illustration that categorize informants’ utterances into main themes (Attride-‐Stirling, 2001:385). The method is especially helpful for answering my problem statement, as the aim of thematic networks is to ‘explore the understanding or an issue or the signification of an idea, rather than to reconcile conflicting definitions of a problem’ (Ibid:387). To explore, thematic networks offer a simple way of organizing a thematic analysis of the qualitative data by facilitating


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a depiction of the themes (Ibid). Moreover, it is a useful technique for ‘breaking up text and finding its explicit reationalisation and implitic signification’ (Ibid:388). As a way of systemizing the themes, thematic networks compose of three themes (Attride-‐Stirling, 2001:388):

! Basic Themes o The lowest-‐order premises from the text

! Organizing Themes o Categories of basic themes grouped to summarize more abstract

principles ! Global Themes

o Super-‐ordinate themes that captures the principal methaphors in the text as a whole.

The Basic Theme represents the most basic and lowest-‐order themes from the textual analysis. It can be seen as the backing of a statement of belief anchored around a central notion (Ibid:389). Thus, on its own it says very little about the text as a whole. To make sense of the basic themes beyond its immediate meaning, it need to be seen in a context with other basic themes. Together they represent an Organizing Theme. Hence, an organizing theme is a middle order theme which, as the word indicate, organizes the basic themes into a cluster of similar issues (Ibid). This thus represents the significance of the basic themes into one summarizing theme. The theme is therefore more abstract but also more revealing of the main points from the text (Ibid). Hence, they enhance the meaning of a broader theme which in groups constitute the global theme. A Global Theme represents the superordinate themes of the text and encompasses the principal metaphors of the data as a whole (Ibid). Compared to the two lower-‐order themes, this should be seen as a concluding claim. Being a macro theme, it make sense of the clusters found in the lower-‐order themes. The final theme is therefore both the summary and revealer of the interpretations of textual data. A thematic network is thus developed from the Basic Themes, which is clustered to Organizing Themes, and in the light of their basic themes these are brought together to illustrate a super-‐ordinate theme, i.e. the Global Theme. The three themes are then represented as web-‐like maps to reveal salient themes of each three levels and the relationship between them (Ibid).

7.5. Steps for Analysis The full process of the analysis can be split into three broad stages: (a) the reduction or breakdown of the text; (b) the exploration of the text; and (c) the integration of the exploration (Attride-‐Stirling, 2001:390). The thematic networks will therefore be presented through this step-‐by-‐step guide of the analytic process. The first stage of the step guide, Stage A: Breakdown of the text, will provide a description of my choices and methods for coding the material, identifying the themes and lastly constructing the thematic networks. This will be depicted in the following section. Afterwards, the


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choices made in Stage A will form the basis of the analysis, i.e. Stage B, and be presented in next chapter X, Findings. After this, the findings will be interpreted and discussed in chapter X, Discussion. Below is a table for overview of the steps for the analysis: Steps for analysing Thematic Networks Analysis Stage A: Breakdown of Text Step 1: Code Material Devise a coding framework

Dissect text into segments using coding framework

Step 2: Identify Themes Abstract themes from coded text segments Refine themes

Step 3: Construct Thematic Networks Arrange themes Select Basic Themes Rearrange into Organizing Themes Deduce Global Themes Illustrate as Thematic Networks Verify and redefine the networks

Analysis Stage B: Exploration of Text Step 4: Describe and Explore Thematic Networks

Describe the network Explore the network

Step 5: Summarize Thematic Networks Analysis Stage C: Integration of Exploration Step 6: Interpret Patterns Table 4: 6 Step analysis for Thematic Networks (Attride-‐Stirling, 2001:391).

7.5.1. Stage A: Breakdown of Text During the transcriptions of the data, the first thoughts for the themes were listed. After the transcriptions, the textual data was read through several times to establish a coding system. As presented by Attride-‐Stirling (2001), the themes were conducted crosswise of the two focus group sessions. This was done to enable my findings to be analyzed and discussed collectively. Here, color codes was conducted to represent found themes from the text (Appendix 12). Then the initial coding was underlined with the colour codes in both transcripts (Appendix 13 and 14).


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To dissect text into segments, the underlined statements from informants was further coded into statements of individual, consensus or areas of agreements/disagreement. Code: Statement mentioned by: I Individual C Consensus A Areas of Agreement/disagreement Table 5: I,C,A Coding Scheme (Lederman, 1989: in Quible, 1998:33). According to Lederman (1989), statements mentioned only by one individual will be marked as an I-‐coded statement, if a consensus point is represented among more informants it will be marked as a C-‐coded statement, and lastly A-‐coded statements are the points of agreement or disagreement among the informants. Here the color coded transcripts were further extracted and clustered according to Lederman’s coding system. For this thesis, an area of consensus was decided to represent similar statements expressed by 4 or more group informants. The I,C,A coding is represented for each theme in Appendix 15,16,17,18. Here the coding is visualized from the following color codes: Code: Statement mentioned by: I Individual: _________ C Consensus:_________ A Areas of Agreement:_________

Areas of disagreement:_________ Table 6: Color codes for I,C,A Coding Scheme. Deriving from the coding scheme, the basic themes were formed. Afterwards, the coding was listed into main themes and subthemes. During this process, 18 themes appeared with 109 subthemes. After evaluating the themes with the problem statement, the themes were deducted to 88 basic themes . By looking at the basic themes, I found links between the themes which was clustered into 18 organizing themes. From this, 4 global themes were brought together deriving from the basic and organizing themes, and thus represents the overall more abstract main points of my research. In the next chapter, I will move to analysis stage B to explore and describe the thematic networks. Afterwards, stage C will discuss and integrate the findings to theoretical and practical implications in chapter 10.


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8. Findings The former section introduced the theoretical methods for the thematic analysis. This section will present the findings from my thematic analysis of the data. The following will therefore analyse the main themes, which represent the findings of the two focus group discussions. Before stating the findings, I continuously questioned my interpretations during the analytic process by reading through the transcripts multiple times to hold my interpretations against informants’ argumentations. Based on the answers extracted, tendencies and opposing views appeared through reoccurring statements brought by the informants from both group sessions. From this, four global themes were found. The first part of the analysis answers RQ1 by uncovering informants’ positive, i.e. Theme 1, and negative, i.e. Theme 2, attitudes towards advertising. From this, the second part of the analysis wishes to discuss informants’ positive, i.e. Theme 3, and negative, i.e. Theme 4, motivations for communicating with a brand. RQ1: How do consumers perceive

advertising and creative marketing?

RQ2: What motivates consumers to take part in brand communication?

Positive Global Theme 1:Ads can Excite Global Theme 3: Message and Purpose of Brand Communication affect Brand Involvement

Negative Global Theme 2: Ads Interrupt Global Theme 4: Consumers are Sceptical

Table 7: Connection between Themes and Research Questions The networks should not be seen as hierarchical but rather as four interconnected parts. In the following, each thematic network will be presented followed by an analysis. The analysis takes its point of departure from the organising themes. Here, the basic themes are illustrated as statements withdrawn from the interviews and included under the relevant organizing theme. The organizing themes thus function as umbrella terms for the basic themes and link to the overall global theme of each network, which sums up the main topics. For the sake of simplicity, most of the basic themes are only listed once. This does not mean that similar or reoccurring statements do not exist, and the global themes should therefore not be considered as stand-‐alone-‐statements. Instead, Appendix 19, Themes referred to by informants, list how many times each basic theme are referred to in total in both focus group sessions. Due to page restrictions, the analysis will not cover all themes referred to by informants, but instead focus on the themes which help uncovering the problem statement. After the analysis, a brief sum up will give an overview of the main findings from each global analysis which will function as the main points for the following discussion about how consumers’ perceptions of advertising affect brand involvement.


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8.1. Ads Excite The global theme Ads Excite focuses on elements in ads which informants find exciting. Theme 1 thereby answers RQ1 “How do consumers perceive advertisind and creative marketing. Furthermore, the theme functions as a basis for investigating behavioural motivations for brand communication in theme 3 “Message and Purpose of Brand Communication affect Brand Involvement”. The theme is centred around 5 organizing themes, which each contains 3-‐8 basic themes:

Figure 12: Theme 1: Ads Can Excite


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The following will present the findings from the global themes, which are expressed by the informants’ statements from both interview 1 and 2, i.e. extracts from the basic themes.

8.1.1. Can I Have Your Attention? From the theoretical literature, it was found that marketers are now competing for the consumers’ attention in a marketplace more crowded, sceptical and selective than ever. This section will therefore analyse how today’s consumers, within the selection criteria, gain attention towards ads based on the two group sessions. The following therefore presents the main points that catch consumers’ attention, which is captured around Humour, Storytelling and Emotions, Unique & New and Addressed to Me.

8.1.1.1. Humour Throughout both interviews the notion of humour was a reoccurring and consented theme among the informants. Most ad examples referred to as good included an element of fun in which informants felt entertained and excited. In total humour was the most referred element from the interviews, where it was mentioned 40 times (Appendix 19). Among the informants humour was seen as an essential factor for remembering and liking an ad (Appendix 15, Theme 1:3-‐4). From the informants it became clear that humour in ads is a good factor for recalling an ad as most of the ad examples discussed contained elements of humour. For this thesis, my focus is, however, not to evaluate parameters for static brand recalls but rather how to involve consumers in interactional brand communication. Therefore, theme 3 “Message and Purpose of brand communication affect brand involvement” will deeper investigate the reasons for brand involvement by reflecting on informants’ positive behaviour towards humour under the organizing theme “Extreme or unique before sharing”. Conversely, by looking at the elements which are referred to in informants’ ad recalls, these elements may also be transferred and compared to informants’ motivations for participating in brand communication. As Simon (Appendix 6:6) points to, humour is an element which in general appeals to and reach a wide range of people. With regards to brand attitude, Joachim and Anja evaluate humour as more important than the brand’s actual product. Here, Anja remembers an ad with two funny animal characters. She thinks the ad is from Nybolig but is not sure if it is from another sender, all she knows is that the characters are funny (Anja, Ibid:6). Indicated from this, advertising is hereby no longer designed to sell products or communicate key messages about the brand. Instead, it replaces the product. In that connection, Joachim states that humour plays a huge factor: When it has humour then I think the actual ad becomes cool, and then the product is secondary (Joachim, Appendix 7:4). Thus, Joachim sustains Bilton’s (2007) view, from section 4.1, that the trailer has replaced the film, i.e. making the ad primary and the product secondary. Nicoline also noticed that the Danish company L’Easy has cut their commercial so it only contains the funny character “Luffe” and no actual product from the company:


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Nicoline: “So here it’s more Luffe who sells it than the product. It is also him you connect to L’easy” (Ibid:26).

Hereby, both Nicoline and Anja connect a character and not the product to the brand. To this, Bilton (2007) argues that the aim of advertising should allow consumers to create their own meaning experiences from a symbolic web of associations in the marketing efforts. From this view, consumers are active participants who construct their own sense out of the building blocks of narrative laid by the marketer. In this case it is through humour. Therefore, humour plays an essential role in grapping the attention of the consumers, where it excites and casts positive brand attitudes and in some cases replaces the function of the product.

8.1.1.2. Storytelling & Emotions From the informants, it also became clear that storytelling and ad aesthetics function as elements for consumer excitement. For example when informants were asked to recall an example of a good ad, Anja (Appendix 7:2) said: “…Here the screen is transformed into a round screen, and this way I think the aesthetics makes it a good ad”. To which Simon agrees: “They kind of sell a story to you” (Ibid). Anja reconfirms: “Yes…its much more a universe compared to just being product related” (Ibid). Later, Anja (Ibid:20) returns to this notion by stating: “Often it’s more about a product and its price. If they could tell more a story”. According to their notion, ads grab attention when brands try to sell a story instead of focusing on the product itself. This reaffirms Doyle’s (1997) notion found in Chapter 2. He argues that ads should be much more than products’ USPs, and instead focus more on the consumers and which stories appeal to them. Joachim further recognizes the influence of emotions and he hopes that ads in the future will hold a little more history and story to it (Joachim, Appendix 7:25). The focus on storytelling and image-‐building from informants suggests a detach from the product, and instead becomes an end in itself. Here informants stressed the movement from a information to a dream society, where emotions and experiences are in focus (Kusek & Leonard, 2005). In that connection, another way to grab the attention of the consumers is thus through emotions. When the informants were asked to compare the four case examples, Betina, Lene and Sarah agreed that the Budweiser case was the best case due to its play on emotions. Here Betina admits that emotional content keeps her parades down (Appendix 6:4), Lene foregrounds it simplicity (Ibid:15), and Sarah recognizes that ads should not be about what the product is, but more what the ad does to people (Appendix 7:19). This further sustains the emphasis on a dream society centred around the receivers of the ad. Therefore, for Betina, Lene and Sarah, ads that move them emotionally also cast favourable brand attitudes. To illustrate the importance of storytelling for consumer attention, Simon also reveals that he has installed an app for blocking advertisements on Youtube, i.e. AdBlock.


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However, the app does not always work, and if the ad displayed is exciting and tells a story, he sometimes ends up watching 5-‐7 seconds more instead of skipping the ad (Simon, Appendix 6:3). In relation, Betina also transforms her ad resistance to attention when she is in the cinema “as you cannot do something else in the meantime” (Betina, Ibid:4). Thus, people who as a natural defence mechanism avoids ads can also pay attention towards ads if the ad displayed hold an exciting factor or the factors surrounding them does not disturb. Overall, the main finding is therefore that in order for brands to excite and grant attention, they have to grant an extra effort in their brand communications. To this, Anja stresses the importance of brands putting an extra effort in their ads, with the example of ads in the cinema which, compared to TV ads, contains something extra (Ibid:4). The next theme, Unique & New, will elaborate on Anja’s expression of ‘something extra’.

8.1.1.3.Unique & New As another consensus, many of the informants’ examples of good ads included unique features compared to the examples mentioned as bad advertisements (See Theme 2: Ads Interrupt). Some of the unique features were “make an event out of it” (Simon, Ibid:4), “make me dream” (Lene, Ibid:2), ”Changes when you pass” (Anja, Ibid:3). From these extracts, when marketers thus create something different it helps to attract more attention from consumers because divergence creates a contrast compared to less-‐creative ads (See section 8.2, Ads Interupt). Moreover, from the informants, it was suggested that examples of creative ads have more favourable effects on brand attitude. This is in line with previous research found in section 4.1, where divergence was shown to create a contact compared to less-‐creative advertisements. Furthermore, case 1, #HappyBeerTime, also reinforces the belief that new features in ads cast positive consumer attitudes. Martin and Simon state that they liked the campaign the best, as it catches their attention being a marketing initiative completely new to them (Martin & Simon, Appendix 6:15). In that connection,, Anja could also imagine talking about the campaign because it is something new (Anja, Ibid). Therefore, when the informants are presented with elements which they have not seen before, their novelty surprises and attracts attention. In that context, informants also hold positive opinions about brands reacting to things or situations present in the media. Hereby, addressing current issues in the media can also be a good way to attract attention. Emil mentions new expressions formulated to current sport events (Appendix 6:6), and Lene points to the issue of the Kähler vase, which created a lot of attention when their special-‐made 175 year anniversary vase quickly sold out and disappointed a lot of consumers (Ibid:9). After this a lot of brands posted funny interpretations of the situation, in which both Lene and Anja referred to Carlsberg’s immediate response (Ibid). However, as stressed by the informants, attention is only limited as repetition of the ad message desecrates the informants’ positive attitudes and their initiative to participate in the brand communication. For example, Malene reports about an ad that really made her laugh, but now it appears everywhere and “it becomes a little lame. But I loved it in


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the beginning” (Malene, Appendix 7:4). In relation to that, Lene also states that she would like the #HappyBeerTime case “at least the first couple of times, then you might get tired of looking at it (Lene, Appendix 6:10). Overall, there is a wide consensus among the informants that the “wow-‐effect” of a campaign will quickly vanish, and they will move their attention if marketers do not add new elements to their communication. As Sarah (Appendix 7:21) clearly expresess: It has to be something new, as soon as it not new anymore it becomes pointless. Hence, repetition makes informants switch from positive to negative as nobody wants to do it (Nicoline, Ibid:22). Moreover, Lene sums it very well by saying that what is fun now, is not stable for the long run, because it is just an ad (Appendi 6:20). Hence, advertising, from the informants’ point of view, has the potential to excite and surprise, but if the message is trapped in the same paradigm for too long, it is not stable and will become “just an ad”. To conclude, Sarah stresses the importance of a new novel concept:

Sarah: “I think it’s cool to do something new, and the concept is pretty cool, it’s just not for me” (Appendix 7:7).

Thus, there further needs to be a connection between the novelty and receiver. Here, Sarah ends by adding, “It’s just not for me”. This is an essential line for the next section, which entails informants’ emphasis on interest-‐related content addressed to them.

8.1.2 Addressed to Me In this section, the findings analyse why mass-‐market distribution of ads does no longer seem efficient. From the focus group sessions, the informants emphasised that to pay attention to ad content an important criteria was for it to be within their self-‐interest. The informants therefore confirmed the new consumer behaviour theory, where they expressed a migratory state of mind in which they only pay attention to purposes that fit their needs (Appendix: 15, Theme 1:4). Betina expresses that she would not notice a campaign if she was not interested in the brand in the first place (Appendix 6:16). To sustain this, Joachim expresses:

Joachim: “However, if it’s more advertising then it has to be very specific towards me, then it can also be great. Here I like to receive the information. Unfortunately, it’s often not the case. (Appendix 7:1).

This further proves that ads can grant positive attitudes if informants characterise it as within their self-‐interest. In total, interest-‐related content was referred to 28 times by the informants, which, after humour, makes it the most discussed subject of the group sessions (Appendix 19). Here, traditional ads in magazines within your interest were mentioned as a way to get Simon and Martin’s attention (Appendix 6:4). Therefore, in this connection, McLuhan’s notion of a hot medium, where consumers reject messages high on information and low on involvement, does not apply. From the quotes it seems that informants are willing to pay attention to purely informative content, as long as the


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content is self-‐chosen and within their interest. To this, Joachim recognizes that push content from marketers can be okay as long as the content is adapted to his personal needs. Also, Malene confirms this by stating that she would notice a campaign on Facebook if the campaign contained a product she used (Appendix 7:10). Meaning and value should therefore be seen as a matter of individual taste (Bilton, 2007), and thus mass projection of content with a large population does not seem to apply. Instead, according to the statements, brands should invest more in user-‐adapted content, where its reach might not be as big, but in return its impact would be much higher. In contrast to push content, examples of the informants actively choosing information from brands, i.e. pull content, grant positive brand attitudes. Betina, Malene and Anders agree that they pay more attention to content from brands posted on Instagram. Here the informants get to choose themselves which brands to follow and thus which information to receive. As Betina stresses, consumers here get to follow what the brands are doing, thus it is not so much about generic product features, but more for what is does (Appendix 6:6). Content on Instagram thus becomes more interest-‐related as consumers can choose which specific information they would like to receive. For example, Malene, who is pregnant, focuses a lot on baby related content. Here, she follows brands which offer specific information within this subject (Appendix 7:2). It sustains the movement from generic product features towards what is important to the person viewing it (Shin, 2009). As Anders stresses, on Instagram consumers can choose which information that offers value to them, and in contrast if he gets tired of the crab he will just unfollow the brand (Anders, Ibid:3). Furthermore, Lene likes the case example of Neutral where they used the sayings from the consumers: “I think it’s nice that they let their users talk” (Lene, Appendix 6:12). Whereas Anja foregrounds the case example of Fridge Raiders as she “likes the idea of creating something so small for a small niche audience” (Ibid:14). Both cases therefore sustain the impact of creating a brand message to a small audience and listening to their ideas. However, if the content did not belong within the interest of the informants, they were quick to dismiss the ad (Appendix 15, Theme 1:5). Here, both Martin (Appendix 6:15) and Simon (Ibid:19) find the Fridge Raider case to be too specific, and Neutral is only if you care about skin products. In that connection, Lene also dislikes the Fridge Raiders’ case as she cannot identify with gamers (Lene, Appendix 6:15). In connection to self-‐interest, Betina does not like the Carlsberg case because she does not drink beer (Ibid:14). Sarah reaffirms this by stating that she thinks the #HappyBeerTime campaign would work better for another target group (Appendix 7:7). Both Anja, Joachim, Martin and Simon find the Neutral case boring (Appendix 15, Theme 1). Interesting, Joachim mentions that he dislikes the case of Neutral because he does not use the product, however he could imagine that if it was a product I used it would appeal more to me (Appendix 7:22). From the above consensus, it was clear that informants’ brand attitud were dependent on their interests, as products outside their interests were not granted positive


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attitudes. When informants were to pick which of the four case examples they liked the least, their choice of cases was highly based upon their interest. Anja, Betina, Simon, Sarah, Martin and Joachim thus hold the consensus that the cases, in which they did not relate, were granted the lowest ratings. However, the most positively referred case example by the informants, with the exception of Lene and Martin, was the case example of the British snack brand Fridge Raiders, in which both brand and product were unknown to the informants beforehand (See Theme 3, section 8.3.1). Nicoline also recognises this by stating that even though she did not know the brand she still likes it the most because the ad is fun (Appendix 7:23). Hence, this section proves that interest-‐related content is important, but if brands manage to add the right amount of humour to their campaign, they can still reach segments outside their target group.

8.1.2. Sub Conclusion 1 The above themes hereby demonstrate that ads have the possibility to affect consumers in a positive way. Even though the main part of the informants started the group sessions by indicating that they do not pay attention to ads and prefer to get product information on their own hand, a more thorough investigation showed that the informants did take notice of campaigns which includes features of humour, uniqueness or campaigns addressed to them and within their interest. Based on the findings, it is thus essential that brands provide food for thoughts when addressing the consumers. As stated by Mike Hall, in chapter 2, everybody has heard of a Ford, but how many wants to drive one? The informants reaffirm this, as findings show that repetition and stealth does not grant attention, instead your message needs substance. If brands manage to catch consumers’ interest, ads were stated to hold the possibility of positive brand image and even loyalty (Kristian & Sarah, Appendix 7:24). To sum, ads, which belonged within informants’ self-‐concept, were positively evaluated. However, characters from ads, which deviated from their own self-‐concept, also provided entertaining. Emphasis was here mostly found on ads, which contained a high amount of humor, but also ads, which had other unique or new elements, hold potential for consumer excitement. Hence, the creativity of ads was thus found to add brand value (Saadeghvaziri, Dehdashti & Askarabad, 2013:101).


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8.2. Ads Interrupt As a result of traditional mass top-‐down disseminations of advertising , the literature review argued that new empowered consumers are often in a defensive processing stance when exposed to ads. One of the reasons found is that advertising is often regarded as a vested-‐interest source (Yang & Smith, 2009:936). Instead, Yang & Smith (2009:937) hypothesized that creative ads decrease consumers’ resistance for brand messages, as it produces a more curious and open-‐minded information processing approach. This is based on that creative ads are divergent and should thus be more ambiguous in the sense that consumers cannot apply their current knowledge to provide a coherent explanation (ibid). As sustained in previous theme 1 “Ads Excites”, informants expressed various creative ad elements that maintained their curiosity. However, if ambiguity does not exist (i.e. low-‐creative ads), it is argued that consumers tend to quickly reach disclosure towards the ad message by applying their original attitude (ibid). To test this hypothesis, informants were asked to exemplify ads which they disliked. The following will therefore entail theme 2 Ads Interrupts. This theme hereby focuses on the negative answers found in relation to RQ1 “How do consumers perceive advertising”, and thus functions to investigate the underlying reasons to which consumers do not wish to become involved in brand communication. The theme should therefore be seen in connection to theme 4, Consumers are sceptical. The global theme 2 is centred around 4 Organizing themes, which each contains 4-‐7 basic themes:


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Figure 13: Theme 2: Ads Interrupt

8.2.1. Avoid Ads In line with the literature review upon traditional ads, informants expressed avoidance towards ads pushed from sender to receiver. Martin, Lene and Simon all express how exposure to TV commercials disrupt and they find no pleasure being exposed to them. Instead, they try to keep them occupied during the TV commercials, i.e. watch their phone or go to the toilet (Appendix 6:4). It also reaffirms Buzzador’s research that 8 out of 10 consumers avoid TV-‐advertisements, and instead turn to their smart phones during TV breaks. Furthermore, it is in accordance to Grant’s (2007) notion, Advertising are shouting louder and louder, and people are covering their ears, where Simon directly says: “I find it very annoying that they always


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turn up the sound during the TV breaks, then I just go to the toilet”(Ibid). As a result, Simon covers his ears and avoids the ads shouting towards him. Especially Malene shows high avoidance towards advertising, and express that she don’t prefer any forms of advertising (Appendix 7:1), and no kinds of advertising seems to catch her attention (Ibid:21). Instead, Malene reports she has seen so much, that she has reached a point where she just becomes careless about the ads (Ibid). Malene’s strong disclaim of all ads reaffirms Menell’s (2014) argument that once consumers are aware of commercials’ persuasive intentions, they naturally defend against them through unconscious means such as avoiding the message completely. Another worrying finding for marketers, is informants’ ability to block out content which does not fit their needs. Joachim is not able to recall an example of an bad advertisement which could either mean that he has never been exposed to what he would judge as an bad ad, or more likely as he also points to himself that his conscious simply block the content (Appendix 7:2). Likewise, Malene says: “It’s like they are invisible” (Ibid). Anja agrees to this by ignoring the sponsored ads on Facebook where she elaborates Even though I know they are there, I don’t see them (Appendix 6:6). Therefore, this finding sustains the hypothesis from chapter 2, which claim that consumers reject just being on the receiving end of the value chain. As a response, according to the informants’ statements, they instead choose to completely ignore the ad message. It further sustains Bhalla’s (2011) argument that when companies are more interested in telling than listening, consumers’ attitudes and feelings towards the brand harden.

8.2.2. Forced Advertising The findings therefore show that the informants are increasingly avoiding ads. One of the main reasons to this is what I determined as forced advertising based on the statements from the informants. Here, advertisement which pops up at informants’ computer screen, during a movie or appears before a clip on YouTube annoys Lene, Simon and Anja (Lene & Anja, Appendix 6:2, Simon, Ibid:4). From Lene’s own reaction, she cannot understand why marketers would want to spent money on this type of advertising as her immediate reaction is to shut it down (ibid). Moreover, Betina agrees that all direct marketing, such as pop-‐up ads on websites, should go away (Betina, Ibid:19). Hereby, Simon recommends Adblock which, as the name entails, blocks for pop up advertising online (Simon, Ibid:2). To this, Martin reaffirms that on EB.dk it removes all ads, in which Simon finds awesome. Thus, advertising is here evaluated as something the informants want to avoid, and instead of finding the content informative, it is judged as spam. Anders agrees that the sponsored content is annoying as it is purely based on what a certain algorithm says. He therefore thinks this is bullshit (Anders, Appendix 7:2). From the informants’ expressions, these types of forced advertisement do not have a positive impact on the informants. As a result, through both group sessions, informants directly referred advertising as crap, bullshit or spam 14 times (Appendix 19).


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8.2.3. Bombarded with ads In connection to forced advertising and as a consequence to why informants avoid advertising, they also report that they are bombarded with ads. This was directly expressed 9 times during the group sessions (Appendix 19). Hence, the informants confirmed my view from the introduction, which claims that massive exposure and information overload is overwhelming for the consumers. As a result, Simon (Appendix 6:19) and Kristian (Appendix 7:24) indicate that advertising is this way seen as a source of irritation. Simon further expresses that because of the overwhelming information overload, it can be hard to tell the marketers apart. Hence, if consumers cannot tell the advertised apart, they ignore the brand communication and their marketing efforts are, according to these statements, wasted. Instead, Anders argues that marketers should refrain from stealth and market reach (Anders, Appendix 7:2). As Anders states, this kind of marketing segments everyone from 0-‐99, and does not contain specific content related to him (Ibid). Therefore, Anders evaluates this form of advertising as annoying: It seems like there hasn’t really been done any work to the campaign and they don’t speak to me at all (Ibid). In connection to Anders, Betina and Sarah agree. From their view, they get bombarded with random content which does not have their interest at all. For example, Betina mentions pregnancy tests (Appendix 6:6), and Sarah notes that she gets promotions for penis enlargement (Appendix 7:2). This can be embarrassing, and it is, as Sarah states, not even specified for her. Therefore, unspecified repetition of ad messages affect brand attitude negatively. In connection to repetition, Anders states that content viewed as funny in the beginning may change if marketers ‘push it too far’ (Anders, Appendix 7:4). Also, in according to Simon, marketers that focus on the same message can be annoying (Simon, Appendix 6:5). Lastly, Kristian hopes that traditional ads will be limited in the future, as he has ‘seen it a 1000-‐times before’ (Kristian, Appendix 7:25). This contrast Menell (2014), who from the literature review claimed that the most important feature of advertising is its highly repetitive nature which wear down target’s natural defences. However, on the contrary, informants here seem to increase their defence system and develop negative brand attitudes.

8.2.4.Distrust Advertisers Throughout the group sessions, informants expressed a wide distrust to advertising. This belief could be seen as a consequence of above organizing themes of Forced Advertising, Bombarded with Ads and Avoid Ads. Instead, the informants preferred to find their information on their own hand. Based on informants’ statements, it was clear that they desired to pull content which contained specific information of their interest. As Joachim states if I need some information ,then I will find it myself (Joachim, Appendix 7:1). In line, Kristian, Simon,


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Emil and Martin explained that they often turn to online media to conduct information searches (Kristian, Ibid1, Martin, Emil & Simon, Appendix 6:1). Furthermore, Martin and Emil liked recommendations from friends in which Martin states I prefer to get information through friends, as their opinions has a lot to say before buying (Ibid). This in line with Maecedo & Steinberg (2009) who propose consumers grant peer groups huge importance. Overall, there was a great consensus among the informants that they preferred the advice from friends compared to from the brands themselves (Appendix 16, pp. 4-‐5). As Sarah explains I trust if my friends states a positive opinion about the brand otherwise they wouldn’t do it (Appendix 7:12). Nicoline is also more inclined to use a product in which she knows her friends are using (Ibid:12). In connection, Martin, Anja, Lene would also be more willing to like, comment of shared something which came from their friends (Appendix 6:8). Martin even states that he has never liked something coming directly from the brand (ibid). As Joachim express, friends’ recommendations hold a higher initiate for brand involvement:

Joachim: “It is something about trust. If one of my friends share a product then I would definitely also check it out.” (Appendix 7:12).

One of the reasons to informants’ low reliance on brands’ own words can be found in the following. Here, the informants reported negative attitudes about hidden ads and ads’ effort to, as the informants determined, deceive you. Especially Betina express a great distrust to paid commercials. For example, Betina refers to when she reads a woman’s magazine and the commercial aspect is hidden. This makes her feel deceived as you don't feel it’s objective what you just read. It’s just a paid commercial (Betina, Appendix 6:4). Instead, she prefers the advertisers to be more open about their ad message (Ibid:5). Anders shares this view, and wish for advertising to just be out in the open:

Anders: “Everybody tries to wrap it and say to people this is not an advertising even though we know it is and we know what they are trying to do.” (Appendix 7:25).

From this, informants argue that they can easily recognize the intentionality behind. Based on the informants judgement of case examples, the importance of transparency in brand messages were further sustained. In connection to the case examples, Lene questions the credibility of case 3, Fridge Raiders, and cannot help wonder if it is staged or not. Therefore she does not find the campaign credible (Lene, Appendix 6:13). With regards to case example 2, Neutral, Betina do not think the campaign is sincere as Neutral choose the winners themselves, in which she states “has properly influenced me a bit negatively” (Betina, Ibid:19). In relation to Neutral, Anja says that she would never believe the campaign was sincere, and instead believe it was ad in the ad (Anja, Ibid:12). As a result, the informants question Neutral’s authenticity. The case example, hereby highlights intentionality and transparency as two essential aspects for marketers to consider when communicating a message to their consumers.


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In general, the informants were very sceptical towards brand contests. For example, Simon (Ibid:12) accuses companies of deleting bad reviews on Trustpilot. Also, both Simon (Ibid:12) and Kristian (Appendix 7:12) point to that brands, like Neutral, will not use negative consumer statements as that would be bad marketing. Sarah and Nicoline agree to this, and also points to the consumers’ role, who might make their statements a little more extraordinary just to win the contest (Sarah & Nicoline, Ibid:12). In connection to campaigns, Sarah elaborates There is nothing which is 100 % altruistic (Ibid:12). Moreover, Anders and Malene are also question the truth of the messages as consumers mostly just participate to win (Ibid). The findings thus reveal a great distrust towards communication in relation to brand contests where the altruistic of the message is often questioned. Lastly, Anders further stresess that he has reached a certain age where he is more aware of the things and know the motivations behind (Anders, Ibid:24). Based on the informants’ sayings, advertising is thus seen more as a persuasive, as opposed to the traditional view of informative, medium (Menell, 2014).

8.2.5. Sub conclusion 2 From this theme, there was a wide perception that ads disrupt more than they do good. Informants argued that they are bombarded with ad stimuli and as a consequence they avoid content which is forced upon them. Especially, repetitions and retargeting were evaluated as spam. Also, there was a wide agreement about finding information on their own hand, i.e. pull content. Here, online search machines, SNSs and informants’ friends were seen as valuable sources for information. Overall, the informants shared a great distrust towards advertisers. This was seen in the light of bombardments of advertising, where informants, as a result, have developed defence systems which automatically seeks to avoid this kind of forced advertising.


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8.3. Message and Purpose of Brand Communication From theme 1 and 2, informants’ attitudes towards advertising were depicted through examples on how ads can excite and interrupt. The following two themes seek to answer RQ2 by discussing what motivates consumers to become involved in brand communication. Afterwards, based on the findings of Theme 3 and 4, a discussion will uncover the problem statement “How Do Consumers’ Perceptions of Advertising affect Brand Involvement”. Firstly, Global Theme 3 Message and Purpose of Communication includes the positive indications of brand involvement as reported by the informants. The theme entails four organizing themes containing 5-‐10 organizing themes:

Figure 14: Theme 3, Message and Purpose of Brand Communication affect Brand Involvement


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8.3.1. Unique or Extreme before sharing In connection to Theme 1 Ads Excite, extreme or unique elements in a campaign does not only grant positive brand attitudes but the findings further found that it increased the informants’ motives for brand involvement. Here the elements of humour, emotions, unique and individualized concepts appeared as reoccurring factors for positive evaluations, which will be analysed in the following.

8.3.1.1.Cool or Individualized When the informants mentioned examples of campaigns where they would like to be involved in the brand communication, i.e. liking, sharing or commenting, the overall incentive was a cool or extreme element. For example, Anders only remembered sharing one campaign where everything was just so extreme which happened in those 3 minutes… then the ad was really well-‐made and the set-‐up seem credible (Anders Appendix 7:5). Thus, the well-‐made credible setup with extreme elements made Anders share the campaign. Sarah confirms this, and exemplifies that this is why the Super Bowl ads also always end up going viral (Sarah, Ibid:19). In contrast to the organizing theme, Avoid Ads, Kristian also elaborates and says that there has come a culture in relation to Super Bowl where you wait for the commercials as you know something special will come (Kristian, Ibid:20). Anders backs this argument and explains that the Super Bowl ads have become an attraction in itself (Ibid). Hereby, Kristian says that this is why he would be more willing to share this kind of campaigns compared to others (Ibid). Thus, Super Bowl has become a place for brands to reach the mass audience through creative initiatives, which reaffirms Belch & Belch (2013:395) who argue that viewers are watching the commercials almost as much as the game itself. As an explanation to consumers’ interest in the Super Bowl campaigns, Kristian explains that the ads here seems more thought-‐through (Ibid:20). This is in alignment with the finding from theme 1 that to grab the attention of the informants, marketers need to show an extra effort in their campaigns. However, according to Lene, it is not only the campaign which needs to be cool, but also the product. She exemplifies that Neutral is not a cool product. Instead, the concept would have been great if it for example was a really cool product where Lene states to see herself in a famous brand universe is attractive (Lene, Appendix 6:16). In line, Betina would also be inclined to participate in contests from a food brand, which asked consumers for flavour inspirations I think it could be fun to say that I made this flavour, but it’s also because this has my interest (Betina, Ibid:16). Emil further makes the example of Kim’s chips where you can make your own flavour and get your picture and name on the chips bag (Ibid). The fascination of appearing in a famous brand universe correlates with the Me-‐conomy and their self-‐identity with others. However, even though the informants were not so inclined to be involved in the brand communication by Neutral, Anja reports that she follows and has shared brand communication from another skincare product, Vichy. Anja explains that this brand is good at involving the


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consumers with questions and pictures, which really makes it work (Anja, Ibid:7). Thus, the product behind does not affect brand involvement if what is communicated is managed well.

8.3.1.2. Humour To connection to informants’ positive attitudes towards humour, the same was present when informants exemplified and evaluated their motives for brand involvement. Especially Malene expressed a high emphasis on the elements of humour. For her to share and become involved in a campaign it first of all had to contain something funny. Hereby, she would be inclined to just think let’s do it, it could be fun (Malene, Appendix 7:13). When evaluating the cases, Malene further emphasised that she would share the case example of Fridge Raiders, not because she thought the ad was cool but more because it would make her laugh (Ibid:22). In line with this, Sarah emphasises the extra effort Fridge Raiders has putted in finding people in their forums and developed a campaign around their users’ premises (Ibid). Here, Emil also stresses that he thinks the idea is good as it is the target group, i.e. the gamers, who has been part of selecting the final product (Emil, Appendix 6:13). To this, Anders thinks the campaign is genius on many levels as it involves the users and has a good sense of humour while doing it (Anders, Appendix 7:13). Lastly, Nicoline would be most likely to share the Fridge Raiders case because it’s fun and fun to talk about (Nicoline, Ibid:22). To sum, the informants highlights Fridge Raiders because of the campaign’s humoristic product development which involve the users on their premises. Therefore, Fridge Raiders, between all of the campaign cases, was also the most likely campaign to be shared by the informants. The Carlsberg’s campaign #HappyBeerTime was reported with mixed feelings by the informants. In Theme 4, Consumers are Sceptical, I will address the negative behavioural consequences stated by the informants, whereas the following will focus on the positive. Anders and Simon believed that #HappyBeerTime was genius for the segment it targets (Anders, Appendix 7:21, Simon, Appendix 6:19), whereas Emil also states that it could be fun to post a picture when you are at a bar as it’s within my target and something we would do when going out (Emil, Ibid). Lene agrees and adds that also because it’s a new way of thinking, and it differ a lot from the rest of the cases (Lene, Ibid). Thus, the case further exemplifies that interest, humour and new ways of thinking are essential for brand involvement. Additional examination of the Carlsberg case will appear under the following organizing themes; Return On Involvement & Social Aspect is Important. To stress, Anders lastly underlines the importance of humour for brand involvement by:

Anders: I also think when it’s something you would send to your friends or sharing it in the public media it has to be something funny (Appendix 7:22).

This sums the organizing theme, where the main motivation for sharing brand content was through humour.


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8.3.1.3. Emotions In relation to case 4, Budweiser’s BestBuds, it further showed that emotions lead to positive attitudes that affect especially the female informants’ level of brand involvement. For example, Betina would be most likely to share Budweiser’s ad, and likes that many people can relate to it (Betina, Appendix 6:20). This is in connection to Lene who thinks the campaign worked really well, and states that she likes that it appeals to her emotions. (Lene, Ibid:14). Joachim recognizes its broad target, and finds it genius as you can share any other product with somebody with emotional associations to the horse and dog (Joachim, Appendix 7:18). After seeing the campaign, Sarah reports that she might upload a picture using the Budweiser hashtag #BestBuds as she think it is a bit fun (Sarah, Ibid:18). The same goes with Emil, who states: “I might use the hashtag #BestBud, but that would only be for fun” (Appendix 6:19). In line with this, Anders argues that it is either humour or emotions which makes one involved in brand communication (Anders, Appendix 7:20). Even though Anders states that he would not share #BestBuds as the ad is not one that has stocked in his memory, he also admits that there is something about the ad that just makes him smile because of that damn dog (Ibid). Hereby, the findings revealed that emotional content does appeal to the informants’ unconscious and its associations might increase informants’ motivations for brand involvement. However, as stated by Emil and Anders it would mostly be the humoristic elements of a campaign that would increase their incentives for sharing a campaign. To sum, informants reported positive behavioural attitudes towards campaigns which contained unique or extreme elements. Here, Anders sums the essentials of the findings by stating it’s about being unique (Anders, appendix 7:13). Sarah further elaborates that it is not enough that an ad is cool, she also need to find it unique before sharing it (Sarah, Ibid:19). Here Simon makes the concluding remark for this organizing theme:

Simon: “Then it should really be for a product I found cool or who did something special. Otherwise, I should be able to win something” (Appendix 6:16).

The element of winning something, leads to the next organizing theme; Return On Involvement.

8.3.2. Return on Involvement As a purpose for brand involvement, the informants also focused on their return on involvement, i.e. ‘what’s in it for them’. Here a lot of different factors were evaluated as motivation, such as the chances of winning, get your name on the price and informants’ time and effort in participating. The following will discuss the motivations more in detail.

8.3.2.1. Time Effort From the findings, informants addressed that brand involvement had to be simple and easy to access. Time-‐effort was thus evaluated as an essential motivational factor for


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brand communication. Martin reports that brand involvement should not take too long or demand a login. In contrast, he states: “The easier the more likely I would be to participate” (Martin, Ibid:19). Emil sustains this:

Emil: “If it takes too long time, I think a lot of people would skip it” (Ibid:17). In comparison to case 1, #HappyBeerTime, Simon expresses that what makes the campaign a little difficult is that involvement demands an effort of taking a picture and using their hashtag, i.e. it’s not just to press one bottom (Simon, Ibid:10). Based on this, brands should therefore ensure that their call-‐to-‐action communicates simplicity and does not contain too many steps for the consumers to take, as they might instead just get distracted on the way.

8.3.2.1. The Price However, if informants could get something in return of their involvement, the issue of time did not seem to be a factor. Instead, the chances of winning something, whether it was small or big, were granted high emphasis from the informants. As an element for motivation, Anja said she would be willing to share brand content if she receives a free product sample (Anja, Ibid:7). This echoes that the price of consumer involvement does not have to be something big, but rather that their effort is valued by the brand. In connection, Emil emphasises that broad competitions is a waste of his time to participate in due to the low winner changes (Emil, Ibid:16). Thus, Emil and Anja stress that a real chance to get something in return affect their motivations for brand involvement. This notion is also enhanced by the informants’ response to receiving cheap beers in case 1 #HappyBeerTime. Both Anders and Joachim agrees that when you go out you often take pictures, so therefore you might as well use the #HappyBeerTime and get something in return (Appendix 7:9). Nicoline follows this logic, and accepts that you have to do something to get something in return (Nicoline, Ibid:21). Moreover, she would be willing to do it to prolong the happy hour, and explains that for some it would also be fun to have their pictures appear on the screen (Ibid:7). Lene recognizes this, and emphasises that there needs to be a catch like this to enter a brand competition (Lene, Appendix 6:16). Also, as a contrast to the organizing theme Aware of Self-‐Image, discussed in Theme 4, Lene here expressed that when you can get something for free, people would not have a problem with uploading pictures (Ibid). In line with Lene, Simon notices that to get cheap beers, you could always just delete the pictures afterwards (Simon, Ibid:10). Therefore, in relation to participating in the campaign, Simon and Lene also express an awareness of self, which is to be discussed in next global theme, Consumers are Sceptical. However, despite self-‐awareness, the informants, Lene, Simon, Anders, Joachim and Nicoline, would be willing to participate in a similar campaign to serve their self-‐interest. Overall, Nicoline sums by expressing that it depends on the product, if you would like to own this (Nicoline, Appendix 6:5). This leads to the next theme; Self-‐Interest.


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8.3.2.2. Self-‐Interest When the informants exemplified their purpose for entering brand involvement, another reason was also the focus on self-‐interest, which links to the attitudinal theme Addressed to Me in Section 8.1.2. For example, Martin expresses that his brand involvement has a lot to do with interest, which combined with something new would make him participate (Martin, Appendix 6:16). In relation, Betina explains that she would be willing to participate in contests about travels or dinners (Betina, Ibid:7). Joachim reveals that he was close to participate in a contest to win a guitar even though he generally does not like to promote products. However, here Joachim did not care about what he shared and only thought about the possibility to win the guitar (Joachim, Appendix 7:13). This elaborates the above findings, and sustains that the informants’ eyes on the price can affect brand involvement and hence dismiss constrains on self-‐awareness and diminish restrains of brand promoting purposes. Also, individualised brand communication was granted high attention. Anja mentions making your own toothbrush (Anja, Appendix 6:16), and Lene a Coca Cola campaign where you could design the layout (Lene, Ibid:17). Furthermore, Anders mentions the example of designing your own shoe with Nike ID or My Adidas as a good way to involve the users in the process (Anders, Appendix 7:13). Lastly, Simon sums the theme by:

Simon: “I think maybe it’s more about that. The effort where you try to win to get your name on the price, and not so much about buying the burger” (Appendix 6:16).

Hereby, to see your own name on the price is evaluated as more important than the actual product, which deems that the social aspect of brand communication is important. The following organizing theme will therefore elaborate how social aspects affect brand involvement.


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8.3.3. Social Aspect Is Important As mentioned the informants were found to be very socially aware. This proved to affect brand involvement in both a positive and negative way. The following theme will entail the positive aspects of brand communication seen as social. In Global theme 4 Consumers are Sceptical, the organizing theme, Aware of Self-‐Image, will depict the negative consequences of social brand communication as evaluated by the informants. Overall, informants reported positive involvment behaviours towards campaigns that allow for interaction with others. However, this was highly depended where the informants are exposed to the campaign. The following will therefore discuss how the social aspects positively affect informants’ brand involvement.

8.3.3.1. Interaction with others In connection to the case examples, informants especially foregrounded #HappyBeerTime and #BestBuds for the campaigns’ interaction with others. Emil imagines to use #HappyBeerTime as it’s within my target and something we would do when going out (Emil, Ibid:19). In connection, Martin likes the social aspect of getting to share a picture which could create a bond with other bar guests (Ibid:15). This is in line with Simon, who states that it could be fun to see what other people at the bar post (Ibid:10). Furthermore, Simon could also imagine that him and a couple of friends would want to go down to the bar and try it (Simon, Ibid:15). Overall, Emil, Simon, Martin, Lene (Appendix 7:8) and Anders (Appendix 7:10-‐11) like the interaction of the case. In comparison, Simon, Martin, Kristian, Joachim and Anders also remark the social bond created by case 4, #BestBuds. In relation to return on involvement, Simon mentions that even though you cannot win anything in this campaign, people would still think it is fun to upload pictures of their best friends (Simon, Ibid:14). This is essential as it stresses that return on involvement does not have to be ‘a material thing’ but the return could also been seen as social interaction with peers. To capture this, Kristian explains:

Kristian: “It’s about social feeling and friendship” (Appendix 7:18). Due to the social feeling, Joachim could imagines many using the hashtag whether your drinking a beer with your friend or together with your goldfish (Joachim, Ibid:18). In line with this, Anders argues that the campaign targets all people who love their dogs (Anders, Ibid:18). In connection to the theme Aware of Self-‐Image, Anders further claims that he sees a huge potential in the campaign as you upload pictures of your pet instead of pictures of yourself (Ibid). Therefore, this sustains the impact of social interactions where the hashtag BestBuds makes it more socially acceptable to upload a picture to informants’ social network. In relation to the case of Neutral, Kristian mentions that he sees the opportunities in the case as it creates user involvement, where other people can go vote on peers’ statements (Kristian, Ibid:13).


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8.3.3.2. Share with Friends In connection to Interaction with Others, the social aspect of friends was also referred to when informants explained what would make them share brand communication. Also, content shared by friends were also seen as the highest factor for noticing brand communication. Joachim explains that the chances of clicking on a link shared by a friend would be high, in which Malene agrees (Joachim, Ibid:12). Furthermore, even though content was not targeted at Malene, she argues that if her Facebook contacts posted something, then she would see the content anyway: “If someone I knew shared it, I could not help myself to find out what it was about” (Malene, Ibid:13). This correlates to Sarah which remembers seeing case 4 from Budweiser after her friend shared it on Facebook (Sarah, Ibid:19). In connection, Emil reports that he would be inclined to like Budweiser’s ad, but that he would only share the film to specific friends (Emil, Appendix 6:18). Also, as #HappyBeerTime allows for sharing pictures together with friends, Martin would be most motivated to participate in this campaign (Martin, Ibid:18). Even though Betina firstly stated that the #HappyBeerTime was the case she liked the least, as she does not drink beer, she later states that it could be quite fun to participate in the campaign if her friends also participated instead it’s more if I was the one who somehow had to start. If no one did it, then I properly wouldn’t either (Betina, Ibid:11). Thus, this underlines the importance of the social bond, and how the place, mood and surroundings affect brand involvement. Anja sustains this by explaining that it has a lot to say when and where she is exposed to the cases (Anja, Ibid:20). For examples, she would only react to the Carlsberg case if she is among friends, and in contrast the Neutral case would be when you are alone (Ibid). There is thus, according to Anja, a big difference in when you are exposed to the ad, and how it impact consumers’ motivation for brand involvement. Nicoline emphasised this by stating that it depends a lot of the people you are with (Nicoline, Appendix 7:9). Here she elaborates:

Nicoline: “I mean what the mood of the room says. It’s not like I’m going to upload pictures of myself, but I think it depends who you’re with” (Ibid).

From this, Nicoline firstly indicates that she would not upload pictures of herself, but again it depends on the people she is with, which sustains Betina’s note, and opens for the possibility of her sharing a picture if her surroundings also did it. The above findings therefore stress that brands should carefully consider when and where they target their brand communication in relation to the message of their campaign. Here, the informants urged dependence of their peers, which should is thus seen as a high motivational factor for brand involvement.


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8.3.4. “A Real Problem” Another essential finding for this global theme is that the brand message needs to demonstrate a purpose which seeks a solutions from the informants. Thus, make them feel that their brand involvement is needed.

8.3.4.1.Purpose of the Campaign It was clear that a valid purpose of the campaign was a motivational factor for more positive engagement behaviours of the informants. For example, it was not enough that a campaign was evaluated as creative if there was no connection between the novelty and the campaign purpose. Here, Joachim expresses what Bilton (2007) determined a ‘fitness for purpose’ with the case of #HappyBeerTime. Joachim believes the concept have a good potential, but notes it would work better if it was for another social or charity purpose (Joachim, Appendix 7:8). In connection, Malene also stress that it depends a lot of the message if you can see a real problem and a need for a solution (Malene, Ibid:13). In relation to Neutral’s case, she finds this pointless even though she uses the product (Ibid). Moreover, Joachim also expresses that he would like a real need for a solution, and thinks it would be fantastic if a campaign does not necessarily have a purpose of selling more (Joachim, Ibid:1). This sustains that when brands goes beyond transactions it have the possibility to create positive consumer engagement behaviours as discussed in section 5.3. For example, Emil mentions an ad on a train station from Knæk Cancer, where the ad person’s hair blow off when the train passes (Appendix 6:20). One of the reasons to foreground this, is according to Emil, that the ad made people think about the deeper meaning and what it is like being a cancer patient. Therefore, it could be something that would make people share it to others (Ibid). As a contrast,, Anders explains that the Neutral case is the worst as it does not create something that he would think about, and instead it becomes a bit neutral (Anders, Appendix 7:21). Therefore, according to Malene, Joachim, Emil and Anders, brands should move focus from selling brand USPs and instead focus more on creating meaning for the receiver.


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8.3.4.2. Express/Share Opinion In relation to informing their network, the findings also showed that informants emphasised brand purposes where they got to express or share an opinion. For example, Lene (Appendix 6:17) stressed if you think that you have a good idea and something to bring and it’s something you’re interested in then she would be motivated to be involved in the brand communication. This is further illustrated by case 2, Neutral, where Sarah finds the practice more fun as it gives you an opportunity to share an opinion about a product (Sarah, Appendix 7:12). Furthermore, Sarah states that this way both her friends and the brand will benefit from it. In correlation, Nicoline likes that it is not the brand which is making the claims but rather it is the consumers, that express their opinion about the product (Nicoline, Ibid:24-‐25). From Sarah and Nicoline’s points, brand messages are granted more credibility when coming from the consumers. Accordingly, the brand expression brings value for both the referral, i.e. consumer, the receiver, i.e. the consumer’s network, and the referred, i.e. the brand. Brands should therefore demonstrate the awareness of opposing views by being willing to reconsider its own beliefs, values and actions which in return will bring higher credibility towards the brand message (Bhalla, 2011). However, not all informants were convinced by Neutral’s campaign. As found in Section 8.2.4, the campaign was evaluated as mere talk, which was not backed by sincere actions of the company. In alignment, Simon stresses the importance of transparency and says it should not be some gimmick where they already have a model ready in place (Simon, Appendix 6:17). Instead, the engagement to brand communication proved higher with the case of Fridge Raider. According to informants’ statements, the brand facilitated low control and enabled consumers to interact with each other through passion and humour (section 8.3.2.1.). This is emphasised by Emil who thinks it is a good idea to let their target group decide the product (Emil, Appendix 6:14). In connection, Malene and Sarah could also imagine being part of a similar co-‐creation, if they thought the idea was fun and they had a solution towards the problem (Malene & Sarah, Appendix 7:13). At the same time, Nicoline enhances the importance of fun, and states that there does not necessarily have to be something to win as long as it is fun and you have an idea to a solution (Nicoline: Ibid). Furthermore, Nicoline likes Fridge Raiders’ demonstration of listening to the consumers by making the fans see that their prototypes work in real life (Ibid). To conclude, Kristian states:

Kristian: “You get to express your opinion and get social acknowledgement from other people who like your attitude to the product” (Ibid:24).

Therefore, according to Kristian’s argument, consumers get social rewards from expressing opinion among like-‐minded. In the review of Brand Involvement, section 5.2, it was hypothesised that consumer commitment is more likely to accrue around a collective sense of ownership and involvement around peers, which is thus sustained by this section. In connection to the purpose of the campaign, informants also reported positive behaviours about informing their network. Emil (Appendix 6:16) and Sarah (Appendix


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7:5) both express that they do not mind sharing something when it is for someone in their network. In connection, Simon states that he would be more inclined to help new start-‐up companies whereas he do not feel a need to support big companies like Carlsberg (Simon, Appendix 6:19). Another way is by informing the network with valuable information, in which Malene elaborates that this is also because it’s something where I want to inform certain people about this (Malene, Appendix 7:5). Therefore, informants were more inclined to enter brand communication when they believed they were helping their network and their brand involvement were deemed as a cause.

8.3.5. Sub conclusion 3 By comparing the positive attitudes, theme 1, with this sections positive patterns of brand involvement, the findings proved that a positive consumer attitude affect brand behaviour, as stated in Figure 6, Chapter 5. Here, this theme revealed that informants were willing to play the marketing game (Barnham, 2008), and take part in a creative process proposed by brands, if the exposed campaigns entails a unique, humorous or emotional message within informants’ self-‐interest. Therefore, as proposed by Yang & Smith (2009), exposure to this form of creative ads can trigger desire to postpone closure and increase consumers’ curiousness about the message instead of jumping to defensive judgement. However, in contrast, when campaigns are evaluated as less-‐creative, informants’ instead proved to be more sceptical for brand involvement. The following theme, Consumers are Sceptical, will therefore discuss the negative consequences of consumers’ brand involvement.


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8.4. Consumers are Sceptical From theme 2, Ads Interrupt, informants’ negative attitudes towards advertising were analysed. This theme will further investigate why informants might not feel motivated to enter brand communication. The following will therefore analyse consumers as sceptical from three aspects; Aware of Self-‐image, Reluctant to share ads and Brand Behind affect Brand Communication. Here theses organizing themes includes 3-‐8 basic themes:

Figure 15: Theme 4: Consumers are Sceptical


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8.4.1.Aware of Self-Image As one of the most surprising findings, the informants proved to be very aware of their self-‐image and how their self-‐portrays appeared in social contexts. In all, formulations of self-‐image were directly expressed 11 times by the informants (Appendix 19). As found in theme 1, the informants expressed a positive attitude on ads’ impressive appeal which fits their personal needs and interests. Moreover, from the consumer behaviour, chapter 3, it was further emphasised that today’s consumers hold high social needs and seeks new ways of self-‐expression. Informants’ need for expression was also recognized in Theme 3, when the communication was about a cause. However, surprisingly informants were more reluctant and refrained from social participation when the advertising was evaluated as self-‐promotion. Consequently, the informants proved to be very self-‐aware and social consciousness. As a result, they expressed a negative brand involvement when the brand communication involved sharing personal content and self-‐images.

8.4.2. Avoid Self-Promotion The informants’ reluctance to share content of self was mostly exemplified with the case example of #HappyBeerTime. As response to the case #HappyBeerTime, Malene gets repelled and provoked by the fact of appearing on the bar screen, which made her stop paying attention. Furthermore, she expresses that it was a shitty ad with a bad concept (Malene, Appendix 7:7). Later in the group session, Malene instead propose that she would rather post a picture of her friends and this way the concept would function really well. But according to Malene, the current campaign becomes too staged (Ibid:9). Similar, Sarah believes the campaign represents a superficial tendency, where Sarah’s problem is that the objective is to appear on the screen (Sarah, Ibid:8). The same is present for Anders, who would not participate either as it becomes too self-‐promoting (Anders, Ibid). In line, Betina do not want to be part of things like this as she does not like the thought of posting pictures of herself, but she recognizes that it would be fun for some but it’s just not me (Betina, Appendix 6:10). Instead, Sarah has an app where she can ‘check-‐in’ at selected bars to get free beers, and would rather do this than uploading a picture (Sarah, Appendix 7:9). The promotion of self in relation to #HappyBeerTime therefore affected Sarah, Malene, Anders and Betina, negatively. With regards to case 2, Neutral, Malene also expresses that, even though she could win a years supply, she would not enter this contest either. However, she believes that a lot of people likes to showcase themselves and the campaign will therefore appeal to them (Malene, Ibid:12). Sarah respond that she cannot stand this either, and therefore she would also not participate (Sarah: Ibid). However, previous in the group session, Sarah also indicated that she thinks the campaign is pretty genius because participants can choose if they want to be anonymous (Sarah, Ibid:12). Thus, the case of #HappyBeerTime and Neutral exemplifies that informants refrained from posting images of self which was regarded as self-‐promotion. Instead, informants’ revealed deep consideration of the messages they sent when communicating. For example, Lene expresses that she often keeps in mind what


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message she sends whenever she like, share or comment on something (Lene, Appendix 6:8). This therefore has a huge impact on brand involvement, and sustains the importance of message and purpose behind brand communication found in theme 3. In connection, Emil also proves to be socially conscious about his self-‐image, where he, as a contrast to Malene and Sarah, likes the concept of #HappyBeerTime. However, he would only post images in relation to the campaign on his Instragram profile, where he has less followers compared to Facebook. On Instagram, he therefore do not think so much about what he posts (Emil, Ibid:10). In connection, Betina, who does not upload much on her Instagram profile, feels that she all the sudden would bombard her feed if she participated in such campaigns (Betina, Ibid:11). However, later she could imagine uploading pictures of her apartment for a campaign from a Housing Magazine. This is within her interest and she does not have to upload pictures of herself (Ibid:15). In line with this, Simon also says that he has uploaded pictures from Aros, a Danish Museum, where the campaign was about making your own picture (Simon: Ibid). Therefore, the findings confirm that the informants are sceptical about brand involvement which might be categorised as showcasing themselves. However, if the communication is about a cause or self-‐interest they were less sceptical, and therefore they do not have a problem about this form of self-‐expression, as theme 3 also found.

8.4.3. Reluctant to Share Ad In connection to the above theme of self-‐awareness, informants also reported a reluctance to sharing ads and participating in broad brand contests. The reasons for avoidance where when brand content was categorized as being spam or hold a pure sales purpose. The following will therefore detail each of these organizing themes.

8.4.3.1. Avoids contest From the research response, it was clear that informants strongly deviate from messages pushed by the marketer through broad contests on Facebook. Even though marketers try to cover the commercial messaging, informants reported that they quickly recognize and reject this traditional way of transmitting a message to them. For example Sarah expresses that contests on Instagram and Facebook started as something cool, where everyone wanted to participate, however now it more feels like spam because it has become very incorporated for brands to do (Sarah, Appendix 7:6). As Sarah elaborates:

Sarah: “It seems like the smart thing to do, just log-‐on to Facebook and share your content then it will reach people” (Ibid).

This witnesses the old communication paradigm of injecting a message where marketers expect to reach people. This is therefore an example of advertising focusing on what the brand is doing to the consumer and thus constructed around how the brand owner sees the benefits of a contest (Barnham, 2008:206). However, Sarah and Nicoline demonstrate that this is not how they relate to brands (Appendix 7:6). Hence, this


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stresses the importance of moving away from the traditional way of transmitting a message from sender to receiver. Here, Simon further stresses that he has stopped participating in Facebook contests as this demands you also have to follow the brand (Simon, Appendix 6:7). Lene agrees by stating that she gets provoked by the brand’s demand and thus do not want to participate (Lene, Ibid:8). Therefore, Sarah, Nicoline, Lene and Simon here question the brand communication and intentionality behind the campaign and rejects just being mere parts of a bigger brand puzzle. In connection, from the literature review, Van Noort, Antheunis & Verlegh (2014) claimed that advertising campaigns on SNSs often offer more entertaining formats in which consumers might be more willing to reveal personal information. Firstly, the above findings from informants revealed that ordinary SNS contests on Facebook or Instagram are no longer evaluated as entertaining due to overexposure and incorporated familiarised content. Secondly, informants also reported high reluctance of sharing personal information to brands on SNSs. Here, Anja states that every brand communication where she has to use her Facebook login makes her quit the competition as she is very sceptical about that (Anja, Appendix 6:16). Therefore, for future brand communication, Anja would like less Facebook logins and more transparency about private issues as she cares a lot about what her information is used for (Ibid:19). Similar, whenever Sarah is confronted with a ‘follow us’ or ‘share our picture’, she does not want to participate as she is also afraid where her data would appear (Sarah, Appendix 7:6). Instead, Sarah is much more interested when it’s something my friends upload (Ibid). The same is present for Emil, who also refrains from brand communication where he has to like the brand page or share their content to participate (Emil, Appendix 6:8). This correlates with the emphasis on friends and as distrust found in Theme 3. Moreover, it evidences that consumers are sophisticated who questions the face value of brands.


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8.4.3.2.Spam As a reason for avoiding brand involvement, many of the informants often evaluated the brand communication as spam which they did not want to share with their social network. For example, Anders reports:

Anders: “I think it’s very pushy to share content to other people’s news feed and share this crab with 400 people, when you know it’s an ad” (Appendix 7:5).

This view is shared by Lene who is also very sceptical about sharing content (Lene, Appendix 6:10). In line, Joachim further states that he refrained from participating in a competition as it involved sharing something (Joachim, Appendix 7:13). Here Joachim agrees that the reason is that he feels it is spam. Also, Joachim does not want others to see he participated (Ibid). Martin also refrains from participating in contests, as then you might get spammed with a lot of information afterwards if you forget to unlike (Martin, Appendix 6:8). This further echoes informants’ view on brand communication categorized as spam. As a result, they do not want to share to their social network. In this relation, Anja, Nicoline and Anders also express similar attitudes towards Case 2, Neutral. Anja believes it becomes a little pointless to participate, and she would not want to read about other people’s statements (Anja, Ibid:12). Moreover, Anja thinks it should have been the consumers who decided which statements they liked the best, and not the brand itself (Ibid). Comparable, Nicoline would not like to participate even though she uses the products from the brand (Nicoline, Appendix 7:9). Lastly, Anders connects the campaign to contests of liking, sharing and commenting, and this way it has just become too much in a way (Anders, Ibid:13). Yet, Anders recognizes that Neutral’s campaign is more in-‐depth as the consumers get to share their own expressions, however he still believes that it feels like the regular Instagram contests (Ibid). The informants’ statements therefore urge for more authentic environments for brand engagement, in which they will not be baited into false fronts for simply just promoting brands.

8.4.3.3.Sale Purpose In connection to promoting brands, informants did not want to share ads when it involved direct sale purposes. In connection, Kristian and Joachim further state that they will not share or participate in other forms of brand communication when the purpose is purely being used to create sale. Kristian gets very irritated when it becomes too clear that the only purpose of the ad is to sell him something and express that it’s fine to inform about a product, but it doesn’t have to just be like buy more (Kristian, Ibid:2). This corresponds to the theoretical review of brand intentionality (Section 3.2). Kristian’s statement hereby enhance that consumers hold an underlying expectation of brand intentionality and thinks the brands have agendas behind their brand message. To this, Joachim further stresses his scepticism towards the face value of the message:

Joachim: “Create some attention which result in more sale. So it’s just about marketing” (Appendix 7:13).


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From this, brands should not expect consumers to passively just receive and absorb their messages. As noted by Barnham’s (2008:208), the findings thus confirm that brands no longer are evaluated as purely ‘a purveyor of messages’.

8.4.4. Brand Behind affect Brand Communication Lastly, as another reluctance to share brand communication, the sender of the message, i.e. the brand, also proved to affect informants’ motivations for brand involvement. For example, Betina states that she does not want to be an ambassador for a brand who has a bad reputation or one that does things she cannot approve of (Betina, Appendix 6:16). In relation, Malene agrees that if you have a relationship to it then my interest would be way bigger (Malene, Appendix 7:23). Moreover, Nicoline would also be more inclined to share content from a brand she thought was cool (Nicoline, Ibid). To illustrate, Nicoline had no previous knowledge of Budweiser whereas she has a relationship to Carlsberg (Ibid). Similar, Martin does not think he would share the Budweiser case as he does not think the brand is so nice (Martin, Appendix 6:18). However, Martin acknowledges that he likes the hashtag in itself, but when you look at the brand behind the hashtag I wouldn’t use it as I know it’s them (Ibid). The brand behind the brand communication is therefore also an essential factor. This underlines one limitation of my thesis. Hence, the choice of informants and their previous knowledge of brands affect findings. Instead, another choice of informants might hold other brand preferences and thus might evaluate the cases differently. However, Kristian, on the other hand, also states that he liked the ad from Old Spice because it was funny even though he had never heard about Old Spice before (Kristian: Appendix 7:23). This instead stresses that informants does not necessarily have to know about a brand beforehand to like it, as long as the content is evaluated as entertaining.

8.4.4.Sub Conclusion 4 From the findings in theme 4, informants proved to be very socially aware and selective in their communication behaviours. This counter argues the literature review, which claim that consumers are hungry for expression. Instead, informants only wish to become involved when the purpose of the message is related to informants’ self-‐interest and not based on informants’ personal information.


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9. Discussion/Conclusion The aim of this thesis was to contribute to the understanding of consumers’ perceptions and involvement levels to advertising. By the focus group interviews, the informants confirmed to the major points from existing theories however, also gave new insights about consumers’ motivations for ad involvement. Furthermore, my research offered new perspectives from the consumers’ point of view, in which should function as inspiration for future research. In the following sections, I will therefore discuss how my thesis contributes to advertising research and practice. Lastly, I will touch upon the limitations of the thesis and future outlook.

9.1. Contribution to Advertising Research When reviewing the literature upon brand involvement, the recipe seems very straight-‐forward: Interact with your consumers. However, my findings have shown that interaction and user involvement is much more complex and does not come automatically. Instead, there are many factors which influence consumers’ attitude and motivations for brand involvement. Overall, the literature review indicate that the existing research have preliminary focused on advertising seen from the marketers point of view, i.e. an inside-‐the-‐ad perspective. Instead, my research, as proposed by Rosengren, Dahlen, and Modig (2013), turned to an outside-‐the-‐ad focus, where implications of ads were investigated from the receiving-‐end, i.e. the consumers. Holding an outside-‐the-‐ad perspective, the findings upon creative consumption thus emphasise that the individual consumers add value and meaning to brands through an investment of their own symbolic resources. According to this argument, consumers are becoming the new producers. (Bilton, 2007:152). From corporate communication, one of the core points are that brand should speak with one holistic voice. However, if consumers are to define consumption through own symbolic values, how can brands maintain a holistic image? My findings and discussion thus moves in a fragmentation of this traditional and integrated notion of corporate communication. Therefore, with this thesis, I question the notion of holistic communication as informants of my research determined and attached their own values and interpretations of what’s communicated. From this, grounded communication theory should therefore take this into account and develop new communication ways of involving consumers in the communication, which allow space for interpretations. In this connection, my findings further showed a divergence in marketers’ and consumers’ view on creative advertising. For example, the case examples demonstrated


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that even though marketers evaluated content as creative, it might not hold consumers’ motivations for brand involvement. Instead, in return for their involvement, informants expected brand content to be novel and entertaining. This was however, only a factor for attention. In order for the consumers to engage further in the communication, the message and purpose of the ad should also be categorised as relevant for the receiving end. Thus, creativity should not exist only for the sake of novelty, but instead the connection between brand, ad and message was seen as essential for brand involvement. For example, some informants expressed that the case of Neutral had a brand-‐promoting purpose and was thus outside their interest. In contrast, due to humour and relevance in the Fridge Raiders’ case, informants granted this campaign high awareness and it was seen as the most likely case to be shared among the informants’ network. Therefore, elements of humour and relevance should be added as two very important dimensions for brand involvement. As relevance seemed to be the turning point for informants’ level of involvement, the message of ads should therefore take its specific audience into account. Therefore, one overarching definition to creative advertising cannot be made as it depends on the eyes of the beholder. Consequently, the perceptions of advertising are further affected by individual interests, and should always be seen as context-‐specific. As an unforeseen finding, informants emphasised message over media. From the literature review, it was hypothesised that consumers demand to be an active part of the value chain and rejects just being on the receiving end. However, my findings show results of informants appreciating being a passive receiver of a message. Here, the respondents valued being entertained by new, creative or humorous content within their self-‐interests. Thus, the traditional media format can for some purposes still grant attention, however, as soon a tendency was revealed, the informants’ brand involvement decreased. Moreover, to confirm previous literature, my findings also emphasis that consumers’ attitude towards ads influence their brand involvement (Smith, Chen & Yang, 2008). To add, my findings further stressed that even though informants evaluated an ad positively, it did not necessarily led to positive brand involvement. To exemplify, even though informants’ perceived the campaign of #HappyBeerTime to be a new cool concept, they would not participate in the brand communication as it deviated to far from their self-‐identity. In general, the informants refrained from content which was categorised as self-‐promoting. In contrast to consumer behaviour theory, the focus groups expressed a high self-‐awareness and demonstrated a high focus on how their self-‐identity were portrayed in social contexts. This supports Bhalla’s (2011:23) notion of Eco-‐systems of Relationships. The eco-‐systems of relationships is about tapping into conversations and engagement through the relationships of:

! Self with Self ! Self with Others ! Self with Causes ! Self with Brand


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Here, respondents were much more inclined to communicate and become involved in brands when the relationship entailed self with others or self with causes, and less when the relationship was self with self or brand. Therefore, my findings contribute to Bhalla’s (2011) eco-‐systems of relationship by putting the theory in a consumer-‐advertising context. How my findings in relations to the ecosystems of relationship implicate advertising practice, will be discussed in the next section. Here, I will transfer the thesis’ contributions from theory to practice.

9.2. Contribution to Advertising Practice From my thesis, sceptical and sophisticated informants reacted against ‘mass’ and ‘push’ advertising. Instead of aiming for breadth, future campaigns should therefore build on involvement within niche markets. As stated above, respondents were very aware of self, self with others and self with causes, and rejected communication which had a too direct brand promoting context. Brands should therefore incorporate this notion for brand communication. In other words, brands should think how can their campaign enhance a selected niche group’s self-‐image, improve their social relations with others and which messages would emphasis the cause in ways that does not directly connotes self with brand. Based on the findings of my research, I will therefore discuss how brands’ incorporation of self with self, self with others and self with cause can improve consumers’ brand involvement.

9.2.1. Self with Self From the findings, consumers react positive on content specifically addressing them and operating on their premises. However, the consumers also proved to be very self-‐aware and content evaluated as self-‐promoting were rejected. Also, repetition of brand content had a negative affect on consumers’ attitude and brand involvement. Instead, informants’ focused on novelty where unique content showed to increase consumers’ brand involvement. Therefore, brands should find new ways of differentiating themselves by applying innovations in their marketing efforts (Lendel & Varmus, 2013:35). This is in line with Kolster (2012:134) who emphasis the importance of surprising and inspiring content and states that greater creativity enable greater consumer engagement. To be aware, as proved from my findings, the innovation should connect to both the brand and consumer. The practice is thus much more complex than adding a novel idea to brand communications. If marketers however manage to balance the ingredients, the innovation in marketing can enhance consumers’ relation with self, as the new added value drives the consumer’s willingness to engage.


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Furthermore, humour was seen as a good entry point for consumer involvement. Therefore, if brands cleverly incorporate humour to their brand messages, it may create higher awareness. However, as found, for humour to be effective brands must know their target group well and build on strong insights, which the case of Fridge Raiders demonstrated. Otherwise, my findings stressed that informants were ad savvy and have thus become immune to sales promotion. Here, brands must realise that marketing is no longer message-‐driven, but should instead be consumer-‐driven, where it is the individual consumer who establish the meaning creation. The marketing process is therefore not a matter of simply putting messages into advertising and hoping that the same messages will ‘come out’ in the mind of the consumer (Barnham, 2008:210). Instead, the marketing task is one of creating a narrative that is interpreted by the consumer. Here brands should thus move focus from self-‐interest to common-‐interest.

9.2.2. Self with Others From my findings, the social aspect of brand communication was also granted high emphasis. Here, informants trusted recommendations coming from peers, and reported high awareness to content coming from their friends. Brands should therefore leave room for social interactions in their brand messages. By incorporating innovative marketing, the social systems allow the consumers to take part in developing the marketing and spreading the message to peers. Here SNSs secure the premise for successful marketing innovation, as social engagement transforms the relationship between companies and consumers from one-‐sided “build it and hope they come” to a true partnership model (Shin, 2009:107). In line with the new consumer behaviour, marketers should thus understand that innovative behaviour is about letting go of the control and let the innovation occur around the situation in which it arise, i.e. among the consumers (Ibid). The positive consumer outcome was exemplified through the Fridge Raider case, which offered consumers control and interaction among peers, who in return showed high involvement patterns. However, the case of Neutral also proved that in order for consumer co-‐creations to occur, brands must demonstrate follow-‐through. Thus, brand content evaluated as mere talk through symbolism than sincere actions will be rejected if the transparency does not shine through. Instead, by letting go of control, brands free them to be reinvented by consumers. Therefore, brands should provide a framework where the creative relations with others can grow into greater complexity.

9.2.3. Self with Cause From the findings, brands should communicate with consumers without traditional “spin” as consumers are too advertising savvy to be convinced by hard sell. Instead, ads were found to excite when demonstrating creative elements that fit their purposes, i.e. a clear connection between purpose and brand involvement were shown. Therefore, if brands invest in novel practices that hold an out-‐side-‐the-‐ad focus, this would lead to increased brand involvement through WOM and willingness to co-‐create the brand.


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Moreover, advertising could here be seen as not only beneficial for the brand but also for the consumers. Hence, marketers can turn the marketing paradigm from being one to avoid to a valuable source for information and social interaction. This is done by deviating from bombarding messages with sales purposes and instead strategically set on output from the consumers’ point of view. In relation, informants revealed that they found gratifying experiences in referring and recommending content which give them an opportunity to express themselves and connect with friends. Here, my findings showed that for this word-‐of-‐mouth to become effective, it is essential that the content is aligned with the consumers’ self with cause. Hence, the informants felt most agile to share and recommend content which had a informative/emotional/humoristic message that appealed to their self-‐interest. Most importantly, the informants refrained from participating in brand content with a purely commercial purpose. Therefore, advertising creativity should benefit more than the advertiser. This way, advertising will move away from labels such as persuasive and intrusive, and change to more positive consumer connotations which will return with increased motivations for involvement.

9.3. Limitations When evaluating the results and implications of my findings, one must however be aware of the limitations of the thesis. Due to the aim and scope, I focus on the perspective from a very narrow focus group. Firstly, the sample size only composes 12 informants, and secondly they represent a constricted age group from 21-‐28. Therefore, the representativeness of my empirical dataset is low. As a consequence of this qualitative method, the scope of the analysis should thus be seen as an indication for whether the phenomena should be further investigated or not. Operating within the paradigm of social constructionism, findings of my analysis can therefore not be seen as objective facts, as results are affected by both informants’ and my social realities (Burr, 2006:6). Thus, all knowledge in this thesis is derived from looking at advertising through some perspective. In line, the studies have been carried out in Denmark with Danish representatives, i.e. the findings hold a Western European restriction, and their cultural specific aspect can therefore not be transferred to other parts of the world as view on ad creativity and brand involvement might be evaluated different. Therefore, the suggestions and implications of my thesis should only be taken into account for this specific cultural group. Also, to judge creativity and consumer attitudes is very abstract, and results are thus very subjectively based on informants’ interpretations. Here, my problem statement focus on consumers’ perception of advertising. How the informants recognize, organize and interpret case examples is therefore highly individual based on own needs, values and expectations (Subramaniam, Mohre & Kawde, 2014:94). Here, I have further interpreted these interpretations, as a researcher, and my prior knowledge, as a corporate communication scholar, could have an impact on the deductive approach of


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the data processing. The findings are therefore not conclusive, and should instead be evaluated as more subjective than objective. Instead, it is important to expand the research sample, to increase validity of conclusions. Lastly, from the review of new consumer behaviour and my findings, the generation of the Me-‐conomy compose a base of unreliable components who think and act in terms of self-‐needs and as soon as a tendency is recognized they will move on. Therefore, the validity of my findings restricts a final conclusion as consumers’ attitudes towards advertising might change as soon as new tendencies arise. Also, this thesis evaluates advertising in general, and results might vary if other ad cases were shown. In sum, the findings can thus not be generalised and sets its outlook for future research.

9.4. Future Outlook Due to the limitations of my thesis, the research should therefore be used as a source of inspiration rather than a source of finite answers. First of all, to increase statistical reliability, a larger research sample must be implemented. Hence, it could be interesting for future research to investigate and compare results with findings from other selection criteria to test if the outcome might vary depending of a younger or older representativeness. Moreover, as a methodological limitation, the findings were drawn from group interviews, and results therefore might be biased as a result of informants’ chain reactions to other informants’ comments. Here, the informants could have expressed a more positive/critical stance towards the exposed ad cases which might not be the case in a real life situation. Therefore, a follow up study should be conducted to compare if informants’ arguments are reoccurring or whether they should be seen as stand-‐alone-‐statements. Also, as technology is ever evolving, the findings of my thesis is also very time restricted, where new enduring communications techniques might replace informants’ view on exciting advertisement and motives for involvement. Therefore, research upon the subject should not be finite but instead new research should test consistency of results. To build on my study, future discussion should also not be how loyal the consumers are, but rather how loyal the brands are to their consumers. Here, it could be interesting to investigate more strategically how brands should incorporate a human-‐strategy that started talking to consumers as like-‐minded. Brands should therefore demonstrate that they truly care about their consumers from a human perspective, not as sales figures, clicks or ratings. This way, it is up to brands to prove that they deserve to be trusted by the consumer and by doing so they will answer the consumer question What’s in it for me? Here, instead of interrupting with forced marketing messages, the license to operate should be through shared interests. This way, both advertiser and consumer would get return on involvement.


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