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Theme: Marketing & Society

The Appropriateness and Value of Using ofPrincess Diana's Image in Road Safety Seat

Belt Campaigns: A Preliminary Study

Dr Susan DannStephen Dann

Address for all correspondence:

Dr Susan DannDirector of Research and ConsultanciesGraduate School of ManagementGriffith University,Nathan Campus,QueenslandAustralia. 4111

+ 61738757350+ 61738757177

E-mail: susand@gsm.gu.edu.au

Stephen DannPhD StudentSchool of MarketingGriffith University,Nathan CampusQueenslandAustralia. 4111

+ 61738757585

E-mail: stephend@orgo.cad.gu.edu.au

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The Appropriateness and Value of Using ofPrincess Diana's Image in Road Safety Seat

Belt Campaigns: A Preliminary Study

ABSTRACT

This paper presents the findings of a preliminary study into the value,appropriateness and public reaction to the use of the image of Diana, Princess ofWales in a road safety seat belt campaign. Data collected included attitudestowards Diana, attitudes towards the use of her image in road safety campaignsand evaluations of the three advertisements. The findings of this study indicatethat there appears to be sufficient interest in and support for a seat belt usecampaign that uses the image of the Princess of Wales to make this a viable areafor further study. In particular, the preliminary indications are that a campaign ofthis type would not only generate interest, but would lead to an increase insupport for the campaign it promotes.

Keywords: [Social Marketing, Advertising, Princess Diana, Social marketingEthics]

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INTRODUCTION

This paper presents the findings of a preliminary study into the value,appropriateness and public reaction to the use of the image of Princess Diana in aroad safety seat belt campaign. Pilot research was conducted with three styles ofadvertisement being developed and tested on a sample of 130 university studentsfrom Griffith University and Queensland University of Technology in March1998. Data collected included attitudes towards Diana, attitudes towards the useof her image in road safety campaigns and evaluations of the threeadvertisements. Following the decision to conduct this research, the British RoyalAutomobile Club (RAC) announced plans to apply for the use of Diana's image ina road safety campaign in England. Whilst the RAC subsequently decided towithdraw their application following public outcry, it was indication that herimage will be used in a road safety campaign sooner rather than later.

RESEARCH PROPOSITION

The paper outlines an exploratory pilot study examining attitudes towards the useof the image of Princess Diana in road safety seat belt campaigns. Princess Dianawas selected as the 'celebrity' endorsement for seal belt usage as a result ofspeculation that her death in Paris could have been avoided if she had beenwearing a seat belt. Three advertising copies based on the theories of rational(logos) and emotional execution (ethos and shock) were developed using thecommon road safety message that seat belt usage saves lives. The study capturedrespondent attitudes towards the use of Princess Diana in road safety advertisingand evaluations of the three advertisements. Demographics recorded includedgender and ethnicity. No hypotheses have been developed as this study is apreliminary investigation into attitudes towards the use of Princess Diana's imagein road safety campaign.

THEORY

Social Marketing Communication

Social marketing communication strategies are frequently confronted with thedifficulty of selective attention to advertising messages. Road safety advertisingexists amongst the sea of motor vehicle advertising. Commercial slogansindicating that the road to better life is through ownership and driving ofexpensive sports vehicles or that the path to family harmony is off the beatentrack with a four-wheel drive. Commercial vehicle manufacturers expendmillions of dollars each year demonstrating how their safety features can justabout protect a driver from themselves accidents. Somewhere in this crowdedfield of messages are road safety campaigns struggling for attention. Messagesindicating the benefits of seat belts, reduced speeds and careful driving competewith messages of air bags, quality tyres and brakes and safety 'crumple' zones.

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Consequently, in the crowded market vying for the consumers limited attentionspan, social marketing campaigns need to address the problem of selectiveattention. Careful channel selection, dramatic design elements and familiarity inspokesperson and messages can assist the success of these campaigns (Andreasen,1994). In particular, careful selection of celebrity endorsement can improveadvertising recall (Friedman & Friedman, 1979), improve the recognition of thesocial issue (Petty, Cacioppo & Schumann, 1983) and increase the likelihood ofadoption of the cause (Heath, McCarthy, Mothersbaugh, 1994; Kahle & Homer,1985; Kamins et al, 1989; Ohnian, 1991)

The effectiveness and value of celebrity as an endorser of a social campaign isbased in matching the appropriate celebrity with the appropriate cause. The"matchmaking" process is based on two issues, the symbolic meaning andperceived attributes of the celebrity. Symbolic meaning is derived from thecultural meanings which are associated with the celebrity, either from theirpersonal activities or the origin of the fame, such as sport, cinema or television(McCracken, 1989). Matching an actor who has a publicly recognised history ofdrug addiction with the "Just Say No" campaign will discredit the campaign, andreduce the impact. Similarly, perceived attributes of the endorser should matchthose of the campaign. In particular, the expertise, trustworthiness and empathyof the endorser influence the effectiveness of the endorsement (Andreasen, 1994;Walker, Langmeyer & Langmeyer, 1992). Expertise relates to the degree towhich the endorser has a recognised degree of expertise in relation to the socialcampaign. Trustworthiness is the extent to which the audience on the basis of theperson, rather than their perceived expertise trusts the endorser with the cause.Finally, empathy is the degree to which the endorser shares the values of thepotential adopters, and the degree to which these adopters regard can related tothe endorser.

Celebrity Endorsement: The cultural meaning of Princess Diana.

The selection of Princess Diana as the "celebrity endorser" of the road safetycampaign was prompted by considerations that her death in an apparentlyavoidable road safety incident may be used in future road safety campaigns. Theinternational attention given to the accident has created an unprecedented level ofawareness surrounding the death of the Princess. Few, if any, people with accessto Westernised media could have avoided the saturation coverage of the aftermathand analysis of the death.

In terms of McCracken's (1989) measures of symbolic meaning, Princess Dianahas been associated with the cultural meanings which include charity,compassion, helping others, a spokesperson for victims, and being perceived as"an ordinary person" who was accessible to the people. (O'Hear, 1998).

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Advertising Theory

In addition to the use of endorsements, social marketing advertising must alsoconsider the type and nature of the information presented with the endorsement.Three forms of communication execution are presented: rational; emotion and nonverbal (Kotler and Roberto, 1989).

Rational execution presents a reasoned and logical argument which provideinformation for the recipient to use in the decision making process. The sourceand strength of the 'logos' or rational message is based on the logic of itsargument, rather than the emotions generated from the advertisement. In addition,this form of advertising frequently incorporates both sides of the argument inorder to allow the recipient to form their own conclusions.

Emotional execution appeals to the emotions of the recipient, and use themanipulation of these emotions to form decisions based on feeling, rather thanlearning. Three common forms of emotional execution are ethos, shock and fearbased advertising. Ethos advertisements are related to endorsements in that thestrength of the message is derived from its source. Shock campaigns are a relatedform of advertising where the emphasis is on the emotional impact of the messagerather than the arousal of fear (Keller & Block, 1996). The purpose of "shocktactics" is to present a dramatic design or content element that increases thevisibility and recall of the advertisement in order to combat the problem ofselective attention (Andreasen, 1994). Fear execution is where the purpose anddesign of the message is to cause fear arousal in the recipient. Whilst, this form ofcampaign has dominated emotional execution in social marketing, this has notprecluded the use of positive emotional advertising. (Bagozzi & Moore, 1994;Keller & Block, 1996).

Finally, the nonverbal elements of the advertisement also influence the messagedelivery. For still frame copy, such as the three advertisements developed for thisstudy, non verbal elements included facial expressions, perceived bodymovement, spatial distance and physical appearance of the persons featured in theadvertisements (Kotler and Roberto, 1989). The non-verbal elements alsoincluded the layout and design of the advertising copy, with emphasis beingplaced on white space, use of font size and styles and the use of colour.

METHOD

Design and Procedures

The design used to examine the attitudes towards the use of Diana was a onefactor experiment in which the copy for the three advertisements were shown.Subjects were 133 undergraduate and postgraduate students. The threeadvertisements were shown in order of logos, ethos and shock. Respondents were

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then required to fill out a four page survey. Questions pertaining to the assessmentof the advertising were placed beside black and white miniature version of theadvertisement which were included in the survey.

Test Advertisements

The three test advertisements were developed to represent the logos, ethos andshock emotional executions. It was felt that a fear-based message would overlapwith the shock message. All three advertisements were developed as dummymagazine format advertisements.

LogosThe logos campaign featured a two column page of text formatted in an"advertorial" style. Content featured a discussion of the effectiveness of seat beltsin reducing likelihood of death or serious injury in car accidents similar to that inwhich Princess Diana was killed. The copy featured the headline "Seat beltsmight have saved them" accompanied by an image of the wrecked Mercedes.

EthosThe second advertisement used two quarter page columns of text beneath a formalportrait style image of Diana and the sub headline. The content was drawn fromthe same source as the logos text. The copy featured a headline "A tragic lessonto be learned?" with a sub headline of "In a life led by example, could her deathserve as a lesson to us all?", and a slogan of "Seat belts save lives".

ShockThe shock-based advertisement featured the headline "3 out of 4 people agree"placed above a 2x2 set of head and shoulders portraits of Dodi Fayed, PrincessDiana, Henri Paul and Trevor Rees-Jones. The slogan "Seat belts save lives" wasplaced beneath the four images. No other body text was included.

Measures

Personal Involvement with Diana and Road SafetyAttitudes towards Princess Diana, road safety and seat belt usage were examinedusing five items derived from Zaichkowsky's (1985) Personal InvolvementInventory and Leavitt's (1970) Reaction Profile. Zaichkowsky (1985) definesinvolvement as the individual's perceived relevance of an object or person, basedon inherent needs, values and interests. Involvement in this context is applicableto advertisements, products and adoption decisions (Zaichkowsky, 1985).Leavitt's (1970) profile was designed to measure emotional reactions toadvertising. Items were drawn from Leavitt's (1970) sub-factors of "personalrelevance" included the three items of "important to me", "meaningful to me" and"worth remembering" The remaining two items, "accessible to me" and "relevantto me", were derived from Zaichkowsky's (1985) work.

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Semantic scaleA nine item semantic scale was used to assess respondent opinions towards theuse of the image of Princess Diana in road safety campaigns. Responders weregiven a five item semantic scale to assess the degree to which they found the useof Princess Diana's image in road safety campaigns to be "objectionable","offensive", "unethical", "ineffective", "manipulative", "unfair", "exploitative","inappropriate" and "persuasive".

Advertising assessment scaleWell (1964) Emotional Quotient (EQ) Scale was used to assess reactions to theindividual advertisement copy. The EQ scale consists of twelve Likert-style itemswith 6 positive and 6 negative items designed to discriminate between high appealand low appeal advertisements.

RESULTS

Attitudes towards Diana

Despite the large scale mourning at the time of her death, it is interesting to notethat to this sample, the Princess of Wales was not considered personally relevantor important. Overall, less than 20 per cent (18.8%) of those surveyed agreed thatDiana was important to them while only 12.6 per cent thought she was relevant tothem. Similarly, despite her reputation as the "People's Princess", just over 10 percent (11.7%) regarded the Princess of Wales as accessible. Despite this lack ofpersonal relevance, however, a large proportion of respondents (70%) agreed thatDiana was worth remembering.

When further analyses of these general attitudes were undertaken it was foundthat no significant differences existed when attitudes were tested against age,gender or ethnicity. This is an interesting finding in that it confirms Diana's statusas a global figure of international interest. The finding that, based on this sample,interest in her is not gender based is also important in that it indicates that therelevance of the use of her image would not be confined to any one segment ofthe market.

Attitudes towards the Advertisements

As well as attitudes towards the Princess of Wales, attitudes towards the potentialuse of her image in a road safety campaign were also tested. Overall, the figuresindicated fairly strong support for the concept. In particular the figures showedthat a large majority of respondents found the use of her image to be verypersuasive (84.2%) and very effective (79.0%). Whether or not the image shouldbe used, however, was more evenly divided with approximately a third ofrespondents (31.6%) finding the use of the Princess's image in such a campaign

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objectionable. A similar percentage found the concept of these advertisementsunethical (31.6%) or objectionable (26.3%).

Overall, the advertisements ranked reasonably equally in terms of appeal,likability, memorability and support for the cause being represented. Whenrelationships between attitudes towards Diana and the different advertisementwere calculated however significant differences emerged. Overall, a strongpositive correlation emerged between positive attitudes towards the Princess ofWales and the advertisement that took an emotional or ethos based approach.(Table 1)

Table 1: Relationships between attitudes to Diana and attitudes to the Ethosapproach to advertising using her image

Advert Appeal

Like Advert Campaign Support

Memorable Advert

Important 0.261** 0.242** 0.331** 0.381**Meaningful 0.260** 0.379** 0.289** 0.372**Worth remembering 0.241** 0.187* 0.277** 0.334**Accessible 0.281** 0.212* 0.281** 0.378**Relevant 0.222* 0.121 0.15 0.259**

** significant at 0.01 * significant at 0.05

With few exceptions, these relationships did not hold for the other advertisements.No significant positive relationships were measured between the differenceattitudes towards Diana and the shock based approach. The logos advertisementrecorded significant positive relationships between personal significance of Dianaand campaign support and memorability of the advertisement. There was also asignificant relationship for the logos approach between campaign support and thebelief that the Princess was worth remembering and the memorability of theadvertisement and meaningfulness. Again, when tested against the demographicprofiles of respondents, no significant differences were found on the basis ofgender, age or ethnicity.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS

Findings

The preliminary findings of this study indicate that there appears to be sufficientinterest in and support for a seat belt use campaign that uses the image of thePrincess of Wales to make this a viable area for further study. In particular, thepreliminary indications are that a campaign of this type would not only generateinterest, but would lead to an increase in support for the campaign it promotes.

However, as the finding have shown, Princess Diana's appeal even in such a shortperiod of time after her death has already begun to fade. Her value as a celebrityendorser was most evident in the ethos style advertisement. The limitation

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inherent in these advertisements is that their impact is related directly to thestrength of appeal generated by the message source. In order to maximise thegains presented by such a social marketing opportunity, the road safety campaignsusing her image should have been implemented at the height of the her emotionalappeal.

Ethical Considerations

An action, such as using her image within weeks of her death, raises a series ofethical questions for social marketing. Is the use of Diana's image in a road safetycampaign ethical given the psychological effects that it may have on her childrenand the Royal Family? The question becomes one of utilitarian ethics as towhether the use of her death as a social marketing opportunity has sufficientbenefit for the greater good to outweigh the trauma felt by a minority.

Based on the results of this study it appears that there is a reasonable level ofsupport for the use of Diana’s image to promote the use of seat belts, supportwhich increases significantly amongst those who admired her and identified withher. Despite this, however, the persistent public outcry at the perceivedexploitation of her image may prevent such a campaign from being developed inreality.

The arguments against the use of the image of the Princess of Wales in such acampaign are based largely on the ethical implications. In particular, concern hasbeen expressed regarding the potential adverse effect such a campaign may haveon her family and especially, the psychological impact it could have on her sons.The extent to which the use of her image in a road safety campaign would have amore or less significant impact on her family and friends than its current use incommercial activity is a matter of debate.

Related to this is the ethics of using someone’s image without their permission.Had she lived and not been involved in a fatal accident it is unlikely that roadsafety would have been an issue with which Diana would have explicitlyconcerned herself. Nothing in her past behavior indicates a special support orinterest in the issue. The ethical question arises then as to the appropriateness ofusing her image to promote a cause that she did not openly support. It could beargued that this use of Diana’s image is unethical in that it is misrepresenting herand her priorities.

It could also be argued that by emphasizing Diana’s death over her life as is theimplicit message in such a campaign diminishes the value of the work sheundertook during her lifetime. Concentrating on the manner of her death could beinterpreted as an invasion of privacy and undermining of her dignity.

In any case, the use of a person’s image to promote a campaign is inevitablybased on the objectification of the person concerned. In this case, the person who

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was Diana, who was a mother, family member and friend to many has beensubsumed into the image that is Diana, Princess of Wales. This dehumanizationof Diana is also likely to contribute to the distress of those who knew her as aperson not a public figure.

Finally, the use of the Princess of Wales in a campaign to save lives through theuse of seat belt implicitly blames her for her own death. By promoting the factthat a seat belt might, and probably would, have saved her life, Diana’s death isbeing portrayed as something over which she had direct control. In effect, such acampaign is accusing the Princess not only of irresponsible behavior but also ofinvoluntary suicide.

Given the substantial ethical arguments against using Diana’s image in a roadsafety campaign to promote seat belt usage should such a program be developed?There is only one argument in favor of progressing the idea of such a campaign.However, the strength and importance of that argument is greater than thecombination of arguments against the concept.

Based on the results of this survey it appears that the example of Diana’s deathhas the potential to save lives. The question of whether or not to use her imagebecomes one of utilitarian ethics. Are the benefits accruing to society as a wholefrom the use of Diana’s image greater than the costs that will bedisproportionately felt by a relatively small number of people?

No-one can underestimate the distress that the thought that their mother’s deathwas avoidable could have on her children. However, based on the concept offurther the public good and reducing the likelihood that other families willexperience the pain that the Spencers and the Royal family have endured, theanswer as to whether or not to use her Diana’s image in this way is “yes”.

Further, the question of when and how her image should have been used asks thequestion of whether social marketers should focus on performing actions thathave the greatest benefit, even if these actions are not socially popular. Bydelaying road safety campaigns using Diana's image until people are lessemotionally involved with the Princess is self-defeating. The findings of the pilotstudy indicate that those people with higher emotional involvement with thePrincess are more likely to become involved in the campaign. The success andsupport generated by the ethos campaign is also related to the level of emotionassociated with the source of the message. By consciously choosing to delay theimplementation of a emotion based campaign that is reliant on source credibility,until there is less emotion associated with the source seems counter productive.Whilst some individuals, including social marketers, may feel that the use ofDiana's image in a road safety campaign is personal offensive, the question of thegreater good arises once more. Should we, as social marketers allow our personalfeelings to interfere with our efforts to maximise social benefit?

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