Courtney Carpenter Childers

How Sex in Advertising Varies by Product Category: An Analysis of Three Decades of Visual Sexual Imagery in Magazine Advertising

This study documents the presence and prevalence of visual sexual imagery in advertising for different product categories through an analysis of 3,232 ads in six mainstream magazines from the years 1983, 1993, and 2003. Ads were coded for sexual imagery on two visual dimensions, model dress and physical contact, and for product category using the Rossiter–Percy Planning Grid (RPPG) as a theoretical framework. Findings revealed that visual sexual imagery increased from 1983 (15%) to 2003 (27%), with much of that growth driven by increases in alcohol, entertainment, and beauty advertising. Of 18 product categories, those containing the highest percentage of visual sexual content included health/hygiene (38%), beauty (36%), drugs/medicine (29%), and clothing (27%). Overall, visual sexual imagery was most prevalent in ads for low-involvement products. As predicted, ads for informational/high-involvement products (e.g., financial, appliances, computers) contained the lowest proportion of visual sexual stimuli.

The evolution of self-regulation in food advertising: An analysis of CARU cases from 2000–2010

The FTC envisions the Children’s Advertising Review Unit (CARU) and the Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative playing lead roles in self-regulatory efforts to address advertising’s contribution to childhood obesity. Peeler (2009) notes that CARU’s decisions provide comprehensive guidance to advertisers. Limited research has investigated those decisions. Using thematic analysis, this study examines CARU case reports from 2000 to 2010 involving food marketers from a longitudinal perspective. This study found that CARU has been responsive to the emergence of childhood obesity as evidenced in its increased pursuit of nutrition-related complaints, case language and Guidelines revisions. Suggestions for strengthening CARU, the CFBAI and media clearance are offered.

Digital Technologies and Hopeful Monsters

Shortly after the dawn of the commercial era of the Internet, Rust and Oliver (1994) predicted the death of advertising as we know it. They warned advertising educators to transform themselves into departments of information transfer or face extinction by 2010. Doomsday has passed, and few advertising departments have been eliminated. Yet most scholars and practitioners would agree that digital technologies have affected advertising. This special issue of JIAD examines broad questions of change in advertising scholarship and practice. Is it evolutionary or revolutionary? Incremental or fundamental? Continuous or discontinuous? Productive or destructive? Each article grapples with these and other questions in interesting ways. The issue opens with “Trapped in the Filter Bubble? Exploring the Influence of Google Search on the Creative Process.” The study examines the role of search engines in advertising creativity through discourse analysis of practitioners’ Google accounts. The potential benefits and disadvantages of Google search during the ideation process are explored via in-depth interviews with Australian advertising art directors and copywriters. The impact of Google algorithms and filters in exposing creatives to only certain kinds of information is discussed. Surely this process has some parallels to traditional brainstorming, but there is a fairly significant leap from “spitballing” to search algorithms. The next two articles address long-standing concerns related to persuasive messaging and tobacco use. The first, “The Influence of Social Media Influencers: Understanding Online Vaping Communities and Parasocial Interaction through the Lens of Taylor’s Six-Segment Strategy Wheel,” investigates advertising message strategy in relation to commenters’ parasocial interactions with social media influencers (SMIs) who are a primary means of product information for many in the vaping community. It’s sort of like traditional word of mouth but with fewer geographic boundaries. The second tobacco-related article, “Interactivity Benefits Low Self-Efficacy Smokers More: The Combinatory Effects of Interactivity and Self-Efficacy on Defensive Response and Quitting Intention,” examines a very “old” question about how to stimulate quitting intentions among smokers. The study begins with a highly interactive website that uses several “new” technologies to increase a sense of telepresence and then manipulates the same content in two other formats to isolate effects of different levels of interaction. “Extremity Bias in User-Generated Content Creation and Consumption in Social Media” details findings from three studies. Support for extremity bias in social media in the context of makeup-related consumer behavior is found in all three studies. Like legacy media channels, social media content may be biased toward extremity. Authors suggest bias could be the result of motivational differences between creators and consumers and may result in the shifting of social norms to extreme levels based on social media exposure and usage. “Reactance to Personalization: Understanding the Drivers behind the Growth of Ad Blocking” explores the advancements in data tracking that have enabled advertising to become much more personalized. But as advertisers develop new mechanisms in their “hunt” for targeted audiences, consumers also adapt in new ways to evade persuasive messages. Rooted in the theoretical foundation of psychological reactance theory (PRT), the study examines key cognitive and affective factors driving consumers to reject personalized advertising messages and install ad-blocking software. The issue closes with a focus on the business side of advertising. “Seeing Native Advertising Production

A Decade of Change and the Emergence of Digital Media: Analysis of Trade Press Coverage of the Advertising Industry, 2005–2014

ABSTRACT This study uses Harold Inniss concepts of space- and time-biased media to examine digital media for 10 years beginning in 2005. Both syndicated spending data and industry trade press were used to assess trends and changes. After the recession of 2008, spending for online media surpassed spending on print for the first time. Digital was the dominant medium covered in most years of trade articles; however, the coverage of the rise (and fall) of media types was not as linear as was the actual change in spending. Additional analysis showed that trade press coverage focused mostly on the advertising agency business and that digital media were more central to core topics than were other media types. Concepts of time and space (Innis 1951, 2007) were also explored as overarching themes within the sample. Implications for theory, practice, and pedagogy are discussed.

Bringing the digital world to students: partnering with the university communications office to provide social media experiential learning projects

Courses: Semester-long activities involved a Social Media course and PR Writing course; recommendations offered for other communication courses. Objectives: To provide students in advertising, public relations and related majors the opportunity to participate in a social media experiential learning project via partnership with the university communications office.