Keep calm and Die : Political satire in advertising, lessons from Slovakia

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Keep calm and Die

BACHELOR DEGREE

THESIS WITHIN: Business Administration NUMBER OF CREDITS: 15

PROGRAMME OF STUDY: Sustainable enterprise

development

AUTHOR: Kristina Talabova JÖNKÖPING May 2020

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Acknowledgments

I would like to express my gratitude to everyone who contributed with advice, kind words, and other support to make this thesis reality. Especially, I would like to thank my supervisor MaxMikael Wilde Björling for his guidance during the process of writing this bachelor thesis and his valuable insights. I would also like to thank Timur Uman for his feedback and advice on semiotics and Darko Pantelic for introducing me to marketing and sparking my interest in weird marketing topics. I am immensely grateful to the participants of the focus groups, who gave me their valuable time and brilliant thoughts.

Last but not least, I want to thank my two fluffballs Henry and Scarlett for moral support in the times of the greatest need and my friends Elin and Pepa for the constant supply of chocolate chip cookies and summer drinks.

Thank you! Ďakujem!

Kristina Talabova

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Bachelor Thesis in Business Administration

Title: Keep calm and Die: Political satire in advertising, lessons from Slovakia

Author: Kristina Talabova

Tutor: MaxMikael Wilde Björling

Date: 2020-05-18

Key terms: Political satire; Advertising; Attitudes; Marketing Communications; Millennials

Abstract

Background: In the age of Millennials, when traditional advertising no longer holds the same

power as before, an interesting trend has developed. Controversial politicians are on the rise and for-profit companies are starting to realize the opportunity to reach the hearts of Millennials with the use of political satire in advertising.

Problem: Political satire in advertising has not yet been properly conceptualized and the related

studies focus rather on its effectiveness in terms of virality. However, this controversial format of advertising needs to be studied in terms of consumer attitudes and several studies here provide mixed results depending on other considerations.

Purpose: This thesis aims to explore attitudes of Millennials towards political satire in

advertising used by for-profit companies together with related considerations and so to answer the question whether this format could be effective among the generation of Millennials.

Method: The research takes exploratory qualitative design and combines two data streams.

Data in the form of Facebook comments at the page Zomri where the satirical ads were posted were reinforced by data from three focus groups. Thematic analysis was then used to analyze them and compare them with the developed theoretical model. Given the controversial topic, ethical considerations were emphasized.

Results: The findings confirm the need for a more complex perspective on political satire in

advertising and validate the developed theoretical model. This format of advertising is capable to induce positive attitudes towards the ads, but more considerations play the role in attitudes towards the brands owned by for-profit companies. These include credibility of the company, message-specific factors and consumer-specific factors.

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1. Introduction

__________________________________________________________________________________________ This chapter includes background for the research topic followed by a more specific problem discussion, a purpose statement, research questions and delimitations.

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1.1 Background

It was a warm August afternoon and as a typical Millennial, I was checking out Facebook for the millionth time that day. A few posts from Zomri came up and I started to laugh at the new internet memes mocking our politicians when suddenly, I gasped. I was staring at an ad of a furniture company and the only thing I could utter in that moment was: “Wow!”

Traditional advertising media and formats such as print ads (flyers, newspaper ads, and billboards), radio and televisions commercials, etc., have been used by marketers to reach their customers for decades, however, they are being more and more disrupted by the trend of digitalization. Especially the last decade saw a fascinating development of advertising on the Internet and social media channels. Although this brings brand new means of advertising to customers, it has also become increasingly easier to avoid advertising, e.g. by intentionally blocking the ads via phone apps (Pelsmacker, 2016). As a response, companies are increasingly using various kinds of creative advertising formats such as humor in advertising, viral marketing, or the norm-breaking shock advertising, etc., to communicate with their target audiences (e.g. Parry, Jones, Stern, & Robinson, 2013; Eisend, 2009).

The issue is even more tangible when marketers try to target the generation of Millennials (also called Generation Y) with their advertising efforts. Although there is no general consensus on the precise interval of years when Millennials were born, definitions mostly fall within the range of the years 1980 and 2000 (Bolton et al., 2013; Ng, Schweitzer, & Lyons, 2010). This generation is of great interest to marketers, as Millennials comprise a significant portion of the population and are entering their prime spending years (Fertik, 2019). However, Millennials also pose a significant challenge to marketers, because they are often characterized by scepticism towards traditional advertising (Fertik, 2019; Valentine, & Powers, 2013). They differ from all the previous generations in that they are fully technologically adept with a “profound love” for social media and especially Facebook (“Teens aren’t using Facebook as

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much as millennials and Gen Xers”, 2018), they are highly interactive and also highly sensitive towards global issues (Valentine, & Powers, 2013; Ng et al., 2010). Further complications for marketers and researchers alike arise because of intra-generational differences caused by factors like political and economic situation, cultural background or access to technologies (Bolton et al., 2013). Thus, Millennials born in the 1980s will be different from those born in the 1990s. What possibilities do marketers then have to win this generation over?

In the last decade, we could witness a highly intriguing international trend involving a specific type of humor - satire, which is “a way of criticizing people or ideas in a humorous way, especially in order to make a political point” (Satire, n.d.). The trend is not surprising given the rise of controversial politicians and political parties across the globe. Of course, Donald Trump is probably the first example to come to one’s mind, however, Europe has also gotten its fair share in recent years. Think Boris Johnson, Matteo Salvini, Viktor Orbán or other politicians from CEE countries, and if we talk humor, especially one name cannot be omitted - Volodymyr Zelensky, the new Ukrainian president and a former comedian known for a political satire comedy TV series “Servant of the People”. Interestingly, Zelensky’s unconventional campaign succeeded in attracting 80% of people younger than 30, and 73.5% of those aged 30 to 39 (“More young voters support Zelensky”, 2019). These age groups coincide with the above-mentioned definition of Millennials, indicating their responsiveness to political satire. With the US elections on the way, we might expect to see even more political satire in the upcoming months.

Despite its extraordinary surge in the past years, political satire is not a new phenomenon. Its roots go as far back as to Ancient Greece, and its usage was well-documented throughout the American War of Independence or the French revolution (Block, 2016; Heer, 2018). In fact, France can boast a strong tradition to the modern days with the world-known satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. Political satire is not novel even in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, its development fostered by years of political turmoil. Members of Slovak nation have used political satire since at least the early 19th century and it stayed popular during the events of the 20th century, even the long period of Communism when state-owned print media published satire against the Western world countries (Kopcsayová, 2009). Modern Slovak history post-1989 saw political satire move to the TV during the turbulent 1990s (Kern, 2016), while the newest revival came along the dissatisfaction with the former government in the second half of the 2010s and the steep rise of a satirical Facebook page “Zomri” (“Keep Calm and Die” -

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English translation) that is highly reliant on user-generated content in the form of internet memes. Once again, this page is popular especially among the Millennials demographic segment and represents moving the battlefield of satire to social media (Dvořáková, 2019). We will stay in Slovakia for a while now, as the phenomenon of political satire has outgrown the boundaries of media and user-generated content in this country. One could argue that the for-profit sector would keep away from using political messages, however, what might have been a truth in the past no longer holds. Beginning in late 2018 (Kosečeková, 2018) and continuing throughout the whole of 2019 (Harman, 2019), several for-profit companies used political satire in their advertising campaigns for the Slovak market, ranging from local ones to multinational corporations like Coca-Cola (Kosečeková, 2019). The campaigns could be viewed in the context of previously mentioned public dissatisfaction with the former government, especially following the murder of the investigative journalist Ján Kuciak and his fiancée in February 2018 linked to corruption in high-ranking political circles (Horský, 2020).

Figure 1 Möbelix

Source: Möbelix Slovensko (2018)

“A rack, where you can place all the literature sources for your dissertation”: Möbelix referring to the scandal of the Speaker of the Parliament and his allegedly plagiarized dissertation (Figure 1).

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Although some of these campaigns were originally placed on billboards, all of them quickly found their way to social media, got shared by “Zomri” and consequently went viral. With intense competition for the millennial minds and hearts (and wallets), should for-profit companies take this example and engage in such seemingly attractive but risky moves as using political satire in their advertising?

1.2 Problem Discussion

Building upon the previous section, marketers nowadays face a pending problem with advertising avoidance, the result of advertising fatigue from daily exposure to too many messages in this digital age (Pelsmacker, 2016). The generation of Millennials is even more tricky to target with advertising effectively due to their profound scepticism towards traditional advertising and frequent exposure to social media which differentiates them from all of the previous generational cohorts (Valentine, & Powers, 2013; Taken Smith, 2011). This generation is also growing in terms of purchasing power, which at the moment makes Millennials more attractive targets of advertising efforts than the younger generation Z (Fertik, 2019).

Rosengren, (2016) argues, that to tackle the problem, researchers and marketers should shift focus from advertising avoidance to advertising approach, which concerns getting consumers to expose themselves to advertising voluntarily. Perhaps the political satire ads introduced in the previous section could give a helping hand with targeting Millennials more effectively after all these ads went viral on Facebook, the social media network still significant for Millennials (Duffett, 2015). However, recent research suggests that virality itself might not be the best indicator of advertising effectiveness (Reichstein & Brusch, 2019).

Effectiveness of advertising can be measured in various ways, the most desirable would be in terms of sales, however, given the difficulty to gain access to the corresponding data, researchers often use other variables as a proxy, including brand recall, attention or consumer attitudes (Arrazola, de Hevia, & Reinares, 2016). Political satire in advertising has been so far regarded only as a type of humour in advertising and studied limitedly by the measure of virality (Botha, 2014). However, given the complexity of this phenomenon, other concepts might need to be taken into consideration to create a clearer perspective together with taking consumer attitudes as a measure of its effectiveness. Understanding the attitudes of consumers, which are

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generally defined as “evaluations of an object of thought” (Bohner & Dickel, 2011, p. 392), is highly important for marketers, as well as researchers, since the formation of negative or positive attitudes and their changes serve as indicators of buying behavior (Duffet, 2015).

There is a significant gap in the literature when attitudes of consumers are the central variable and the few studies on concepts related to political satire provide mixed results here, dependent on other considerations (Eisend, 2011; Parry, et al., 2013; Taecharungroj, & Nueangjamnong, 2015). For example, Horváth and Mitev (2016) who studied internet memes argue that although they might be effective in the non-profit sector and as user-generated content, credibility issues might impede their use in for-profit companies. The previous research on attitude change in the marketing context also suggests that the use of humor in advertising might have different effects on the attitudes towards the ad and attitudes towards the brand and thus need to be taken into consideration in future studies (Eisend, 2009).

Because of the relevance of political satire in current world developments, future research should work towards a better understanding of attitudes of Millennials towards political satire in advertising together with relevant considerations in the context of for-profit companies.

1.3 Purpose

Given the previously discussed problem, the purpose of this thesis is to explore the concept of political satire in advertising of for-profit companies and develop an understanding of attitudes of Millennial consumers towards this new advertising format. The ultimate aim is to answer the question, whether political satire could become an effective advertising format among the generation of Millennials. More specifically, I want to explore the attitudes of Millennials towards the ad and towards the brand as a measure of advertising effectiveness. In addition, the aim is to gain insights into what other considerations might need to be taken into account to make this new form of advertising effective.

1.4 Research Questions

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1. What attitudes do Millennial consumers have towards advertising of for-profit companies that uses political satire?

2. What kind of factors do Millennial consumers consider when evaluating advertising of for-profit companies that uses political satire?

1.5 Delimitations

Although the current developments around political satire and the challenges connected to Millennials are relevant for many countries, covering such a large scope is not in the ambition of this study. Instead, the focus will be on the Millennial consumers in the Slovak market, taking advantage of the pattern of political satire ads released in recent history. As was discussed in the background section of this study, definitions of the Millennial generation vary according to various environmental factors including the political situation in the country. For this reason, the focus is on the Millennials born between and including years 1980 and 1998, the former representing the traditional boundary supplied by research, and the latter representing the ending year of the political turmoil of the 1990s in Slovakia. Moreover, I will also regard possible intra-generational differences by dissecting this generation by the year 1989, which marked the end of Communism in Slovakia.

In this thesis, the terms “for-profit company” and “brand” will be used interchangeably since it technically focuses on brands owned by for-profit companies.

Lastly, although some of the political satire ads in this country were originally placed outside of the online space, in this study, I will only take into account those, that appeared on the Internet.

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2. Frame of Reference

_________________________________________________________________________________________ This chapter provides a theoretical framework for the research topic. Firstly, the method of article selection is presented, followed by the theoretical framework itself. Lastly, a

summarized theoretical model is presented.

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2.1 Method

The following frame of reference is based on a systematic literature review of peer-reviewed articles and books. Three search rounds were conducted using key words summarized in Table 1. During all search rounds, only articles and academic books published from 2010 to 2020 were taken into account to filter obsolete knowledge since the topic of this thesis revolves around concepts largely connected to the rapid development of advertising on social media, which took place mostly in the last decade. One article on humour in advertising was picked from 2009 (Eisend), because it was highly influential and published in a journal with high impact factor, plus reasonably close to the search boundary.

Firstly, a preliminary search round was conducted to gain familiarity with the most important framing topics such as “marketing communication” and to uncover any existing research on political satire in advertising. For this search round, Google Scholar and Primo (JU library) databases were used due to their simplicity and easy access. Peer-reviewed articles, as well as books, were taken into account in this search round and chosen based on their relevance after skimming through the abstracts.

For the next search, only peer-reviewed articles were considered to gain the most recent knowledge and only Web of Science database was used since it allows to access impact factors of research journals and so control for the quality of the articles (mostly > 3, however some of the newer topics required to include articles with impact factor > 1 due to scarcity of published studies e.g. on satire in advertising). The articles were then chosen by their relevance after skimming through the abstracts. Articles from journals like Journal of Marketing and highly cited literature review articles were favored and given precedence over articles from journals with lower ratings. Keywords for the second search round were chosen based on ideas in the literature collected in the preliminary round.

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The last search was based on the same criteria as the second, but included also several relevant articles referenced in the already collected literature.

Table 1 Keywords summary

2.2 Role of advertising in marketing communications

2.2.1 Marketing communications theory

Marketing communications as defined by Fill and Turnbull (2016, p. 20) are “an audience-centred activity, designed to engage audiences and promote conversations”. This definition implies that marketing communication are closely tied to the promotion element of marketing mix (Lamb, Hair & McDaniel, 2017), however, Fill and Turnbull (2016) further state that

Search Keywords

1.

“political satire in advertising” “marketing communications”

“advertising” “Millennials” “generation y”

2.

humor OR humour AND marketing OR advert* advertising AND “social media”

“shock advertising” OR shockvertising attitude AND change OR formation

effective* AND advert* “viral marketing”

3.

“real-time marketing”

eWOM OR “electronic word of mouth” semiotics AND advert*

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marketing communications are a newer concept which emerged with evolution in available tools and media, as well as new goals to be accomplished.

Several models on how the communication process works were presented by Fill and Turnbull (2016), starting with the most traditional one, the Linear model of communications, which the authors based on works of Schramm (1955), and Shannon and Weaver (1962). This model contains a source, which (or who) encodes an intended message into a transmittable state, which is subsequently decoded (understood) by the receiver. In addition, the model includes noise,

realms of understanding and feedback, which are connected to the likeliness of successful

communication. The Linear model of communications is widely accepted, however, it represents only a simplified version of reality, especially nowadays with the ever-evolving technologies, which enabled multiple interactions among consumers. For that reason, Fill and Turnbull (2016) present the Interactional model of communications, which takes into account both, the individual and social behavior of consumers. This model shows the two-way communication of consumers with both, people and machines, as opposed to the one-way communication depicted in the Linear model of communications.

2.2.2 Contemporary definition of advertising

What is advertising and what is not? Have technological advances changed the traditional perception of advertising? Lamb et al. (2017) state that advertising is an element of the promotional mix, which includes public relations, sales promotion, personal selling and social media. The authors continue by pointing out the common characteristics of advertising, which include an identified source, message paid by the source and an aim to persuade the consumer to take an action. Fill and Turnbull (2016) cite a couple of definitions of advertising in line with the previously mentioned information, however, they also debate, whether these points still hold in the present world of technologies.

Campbell, Cohen and Ma, (2014) attempt to resolve this debate with a new perspective on advertising. They argue that if we asked a more than 40 years old person and a Millennial about the definition of advertising, their answers would differ significantly. The Internet has blurred the lines between the traditionally cited elements of the promotional mix and so Campbell et al. (2014) suggest a new typology nested in a matrix with two dimensions: who is the creator

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(source) of the message and whether the message is paid or not. According to this typology, the phenomenon studied in this thesis could be classified as native advertising. Native advertising is an unpaid type with the brand as the source and a good example is a post made by a brand on its Facebook page, which was the case of most of the political satire ads from Slovakia.

2.3 Conceptualizing political satire in advertising

The use of political satire in advertising being a novel phenomenon has not yet been properly conceptualized in previous research. The one existing study dealing with this phenomenon (Botha, 2014) only defines it as a type of humor in advertising which has no intention to shift political opinions. It is, however, possible to conceptualize it using other concepts, the traces of which political satire in advertising bears.

2.3.1 Electronic Word of Mouth (eWOM)

Word of mouth is one of the oldest ways of information sharing (Huete-Alcocer, 2017) and researchers agree that it is also one of the most influential ways of impacting consumer behavior (Huete-Alcocer, 2017; King, Racherla & Bush, 2014; Fill & Turnbull, 2016). With the emergence of the Internet, traditional word of mouth (WOM) evolved into the electronic word of mouth (eWOM). Henning-Thurau and Walsh (as cited in King et al., 2014) define eWOM as “any positive or negative statement made by potential or former customers about a product or company, which is made available to a multitude of people and institutions via the Internet”. Since WOM and eWOM have an undeniable potential in influencing consumer behavior, they are the subjects of the field of Word of Mouth Marketing (WOMM) defined by Kozinets, de Valck, Wojnicki, and Wilner (2010, p. 71) as “firm’s intentional influencing of consumer-to-consumer communications by professional marketing techniques”. Thus, we distinguish between endogenous eWOM and exogenous eWOM, the former occurring naturally and the latter being intentionally encouraged by a company through WOMM (López et al., 2016).

What WOM and eWOM both have in common are the same key elements taking part - a sender and a receiver (López et al., 2016; King et al., 2014), but there are also substantial differences caused by the different setting. While López, et al. (2016) regard eWOM rather as an internet-based version of WOM without major differences other than consumer reach, King et al. (2014) and Huete-Alcocer, (2017) draw a sharper line between the two concepts in their papers. eWOM is different in several aspects: much higher and faster reach of consumers including a broad

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range of different communities, easier accessibility and longer availability, eWOM is public and anonymous to some degree which, however, reduces its credibility compared to WOM. In addition, King et al. (2014) also find that eWOM is capable of forming communities and creating community engagement, which adds another layer of influence over consumer behavior and lastly, eWOM facilitates easier interpretation of evaluations made by other consumers, for example when ratings are expressed numerically.

The political satire ads circulated in Slovakia certainly encouraged an eWOM communication on social media and the receiver end, in this case, could be described as a consumer network or community.

2.3.2 Viral marketing, “valuable virality” and shockvertising

Viral marketing is closely related to eWOM (Schulze, Scholer & Skiera, 2014) and López et al. (2016) even argue that viral marketing is actually a form of eWOM used for increased diffusion of information. Indeed, Reichstein and Brusch (2019, p. 1064) agree with this view to a great extent, however, due to new technologies viral marketing evolved into “marketing strategies that permit exponential distribution of content in network‐based channels in the shortest time with comparatively little effort and additionally generate measurable added value through the content, which leads to a high cost‐benefit effect”. Various researchers also agree that viral marketing became popular simultaneously with the rise in popularity of social media (e.g. Reichstein & Brusch, 2019; Kulkarni, Kalro & Sharma, 2019).

López et al. (2016) state that the role of viral marketing is to increase the diffusion of information rather than increase the persuasiveness of the message, which is in line with views of other researchers (e.g. Berger & Milkman, 2012; Schulze et al., 2014). Reichstein and Brusch (2019), however, criticize previous research on viral marketing for not including a wider scale of “interactions” e.g. likes or comments which indicate attitudes held by consumers and are connected to the persuasiveness of the message. It is surprising that even though both Berger and Milkman (2012) and Botha (2014) find that not only positive emotions encourage virality of messages, but strong negative emotions are just as likely to do so, they do not point out the negative effect this could have on consumer attitudes contrary to Reichstein and Brusch (2019). It seems like consumer attitudes have started to be taken into consideration fairly recently in

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research on viral marketing (Kulkarni et al., 2019; Akpinar & Berger, 2017). Akpinar and Berger (2017) coined the term “valuable virality” to explain the need for inclusion of consumer attitudes into models of viral marketing to account for wider marketing benefit.

The previous debate relates to shock advertising (shockvertising) defined by Dahl et al. (as cited by Parry et al., 2013) as an attempt “to surprise audience by deliberately violating norms for societal values and personal ideals...to capture attention of a target audience”. However, Parry et al. (2013) see shockvertising more as useful for attitude change and argue that its acceptance by consumers reflects changes in society. The debate around “valuable virality” relates also to shockvertising as Parry et al. (2013) stated, that while exposure to shocking imagery helps in capturing attention, consumer response in terms of attitudes is of major concern.

The Slovak political satire ads discussed in this study can be described as viral according to the definition by Reichstein and Brusch (2019) and the concept of “valuable virality” is highly relevant in this case, as the ads are very likely to induce negative emotions as they breach social norms when controversial politics-related topics are deliberately depicted in the ads.

2.3.3 Real-time marketing

Growth of the Internet and especially social media facilitated the development of another marketing form called real-time marketing (Kallier, 2017; Willemsen, Mazerant, Kamphuis & van der Veen, 2018). Kallier (2017, p. 132) defines real-time marketing as “the use of various marketing communication media, such as social media, online marketing tools, and advertising, to engage with consumers or to respond to relevant current or cultural events in real time” and Willemsen et al. (2018) indeed point out that companies increasingly link the content of their messages with real-time moments discussed on social media. With real-time marketing, companies can offer the right content at the right time to break through the already cluttered social media space and get their message shared within consumer networks (Willemsen et al., 2018).

Willemsen et al. (2018) further argue that the events and occasions can be divided into predictable and unpredictable moments. Predictable moments are planned far ahead and could be for example Christmas or Super Bowl, while unpredictable moments are unforeseen and could be for example the death of a famous person or an internet trend which suddenly takes

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off. Unpredictable moments are characterized by the use of content with news value (Willemsen et al. 2018), which is characteristic for the Slovak political satire ads discussed in this study, because majority point towards highly publicised political scandals, although, at the beginning of the year 2020, an ad of an eye clinic was published reacting to the upcoming Slovak parliamentary elections featuring a blurred image of a person with the slogan “So that you can see who you give your vote to” (iClinic, 2020) and this could be categorized as a predictable moment since parliamentary elections were announced way ahead.

2.3.4 Semiotics in marketing communication

Another characteristic of the Slovak political satire ads discussed in this study is a heavy use of metaphors and other “signs”. These belong to a field of semiotics, which is “a study of signs as cultural symbols and as essential building blocks of language and communication” (Epure, Eisenstat and Dinu, 2014). Researchers agree that understanding semiotics is paramount to creating successful marketing campaigns (Kucuk, 2015; Ares et al., 2011) with Epure et al. (2014, p. 592) arguing that:

By looking at advertising campaigns as compositions of signs and understanding the underlying relationships with the meanings they may convey, marketers gain better control over the communication process, and thus, create the opportunity to communicate more effectively with the target population.

Referring back to the Linear model of communication, the main struggle with the use of signs in advertising comes down to decoding of messages by consumers because meanings which companies want to convey are not always interpreted by consumers in a desired way (Kucuk, 2015; Ares et al., 2011; Epure et al., 2014). Given the persuasive potential of signs in that they have the ability to influence consumers’ cognition, emotions and behavior intention (He & Shao, 2018), decoding of messages in negative ways might in some cases lead to a phenomenon coined by Kucuk (2015) as consumer-generated antibranding semiotics, when consumers attack brands with messages using signs and often humorous undertone.

2.3.5 Humour, parody and political satire in advertising

Speaking of humour, this phenomenon is quite commonly found in advertising (Eisend, 2011) and often used in combination with metaphors since they both serve as mechanisms of

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evaluation and persuasion, but while metaphors use duality based on analogies (similarities), humour uses duality based on tension and opposites (Piata, 2015). The combined use of both, metaphors and humour, applies also to the Slovak political satire ads.

The way humour in advertising works can be described by three models: cognitive, affective and affective-cognitive (Eisend, 2011; Crawford & Gregory, 2015). These models refer to humour in marketing via its effects on consumer attitudes, which will be discussed further in the next chapters. In short, the cognitive model considers thinking processes such as attention and distraction, while affective model considers feelings (Crawford & Gregory, 2015). The affective-cognitive model integrates the two previous models and the main idea is that cognition is also indirectly influenced by affect (Eisend, 2011). Both Eisend (2011) and Crawford and Gregory (2015) highlight the importance of using the integrative model because it provides better explanation of effects of humour in advertising on consumer attitudes and reflects the dynamic consumer behavior more accurately.

Moving to the type of humour central to this thesis, satire, it differs from other types in that it involves a certain degree of aggression and aims “to both educate and entertain as it tries to persuade” (Holbert, Hmielowski, Jain, Lather & Morey, 2011, p. 191). Holbert et al. (2011) further emphasize two types of satire, Horatian satire and Juvenalian satire, the main difference between them being that Juvenalian is considered “more acidic” (Holbert et al., 2011, p. 192). The existing study on political satire does not distinguish it differently than a type of humour and focuses on its virality (Botha, 2014), however it has been studied regarding its potential to affect political attitudes (Boukes, Boomgaarden, Moorman & De Vreese, 2015).

An interesting and related concept could be parodic ads, which are created by companies to parody advertising of other companies, often competitors (M. Roehm, & H. Roehm, 2013). The ads contain three elements: mockery, truth and playful humour. Parodic ads could be related to the previously mentioned consumer-generated anti-branding semiotics, except now the creator of the message is a company targeting another company. This concept is relevant to the phenomenon from Slovakia since the ads were essentially aimed against political figures and entities, and some of them parodied political advertising discussed in further chapters.

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2.3.6 Internet memes and user-generated advertising

A concept somewhat connecting all the previous is called Internet meme, the main point of which is combining two seemingly unrelated ideas or putting an idea into a seemingly new context (Horváth & Mitev, 2016). Internet memes also combine humour and metaphors in a complementary way and those using political satire are capable of conveying political criticism in a comprehensible and amusing manner (Piata, 2015). In addition, Horváth and Mitev (2016) also state that internet memes can be defined by other common characteristics such as rapid multiplication on the Internet and in that, they are up-to-date with current events and immediate in response, but also short-lived.

Traditionally, we would think about internet memes as concepts created by consumers (Horváth & Mitev, 2016; Taecharungroj & Nueangjamnong, 2015). From this point of view, they could be classified as a form of user-generated content, which is described by Stoeckel, Rohrmeier and Hess (as cited by Campbell et al., 2011) by referring to ”situations, whereby consumers freely choose to create and share information of value”. Campbell et al. (2011, p. 88) go one step further and introduce the concept of user-generated advertising, which is “any publicly disseminated, consumer-generated advertising message, whose subject is a collectively recognised brand” and it can reinforce, oppose or make fun of advertising of companies. Horváth and Mitev (2016) relate internet memes to brands, however, internet memes are traditionally built bottom-up and are much faster to react to the changes in the digital world. These authors wonder if companies could successfully take on internet memes without the loss of credibility and use them for strengthening their brands.

Illustrating the connections on an example from Slovakia, several such memes referred to the former prime minister of Slovakia Robert Fico and Coca-Cola. It was about a leaked audio-recording featuring a person with “a voice similar to that of Fico” (Bárdy, 2019) being corrupted by oligarchs and asking for a bottle of coke to drink.

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Figure 2 “Best Pepsi advertising ever”

Source: Zomri (2019)

Coca-Cola soon reacted with a picture featuring text “You can finally hear it too”, moving into the territory of traditional user-generated content, which is, however, a thin ice, as Campbell et al. (2011) point out that trying to pass off advertising as user-generated content might hurt credibility of the company. Nevertheless, those partaking in this form of advertising in Slovakia did so with full disclosure that it was indeed created by a for-profit company.

2.3.7 Political advertising

Lastly, I want to shortly touch upon political advertising. Although political advertising as we know it from elections campaigns is thought to differ from the advertising used by companies (Hughes, 2015), some of its characteristics and recent evolutions could actually help us understand the phenomenon of political satire ads better. Scammel and Langer (as cited in Van Steenburg, 2015) find that political advertising is rather a hard-sell approach without much regard for its audience pleasure, while advertising of companies provides an aesthetic appeal. In another study, Hughes (2015) argues that political advertising does not last beyond election campaigns (contrary to the advertising of companies, which is rather continuous) and uses negative messages extensively in addition to positive. Yet, these characteristics can also be applied to the political satire ads and related concepts like eWOM or parodic ads.

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The most interesting insight from the recent development of political advertising is, that voters are no longer passive receivers of political messages due to access to social media (Hughes, 2015) and so the question to ask is whether there is any difference between voters and consumers anymore (Van Steenburg, 2015). Political satire ads blur just this exact line and what is even more fascinating, politicians and political parties frequently write comments under Zomri posts from their official accounts and on several occasions this applied also to the political satire ads.

2.4 Theory of attitudes

2.4.1 Advertising effectiveness and attitudes

Although the most desirable way to measure advertising effectiveness would be in terms of sales, researchers often use other variables for feasibility reasons such as brand recall, consumer attention or consumer attitudes towards brands (Arrazola, at al., 2016). Attitudes are generally defined as “evaluations of an object of thought” (Bohner & Dickel, 2011, p. 392) and their understanding is important for marketers as well as researchers because they are used as a measure of advertising effectiveness (e.g. Eisend, 2009; Seo, Kim, Choi, & Li, 2019). As was already discussed in chapter 2.2.2, recent research suggests that attitudes as a proxy for likeability of the message (Taecharungroj & Nueangjamnong, 2015) should become a preferred way to measure advertising effectiveness over variables like consumer attention and this is particularly relevant for the subject of this thesis as conceptualized in chapter 2.2.

According to Fill and Turnbull (2016), attitudes are composed of three elements: cognitive, affective and conative. Cognitive element refers to the knowledge and beliefs held by consumers, affective is concerned with emotions, and conative is about intentions to behave in a certain way. Although these authors suggest that the affective element might be the only significant one, other studies have mainly included both cognitive and affective elements in their research models (e.g. Eisend, 2011). In addition, the conative element needs to be considered in this case, since the phenomenon of political satire ads also involves forms of engagement on social media like comments and likes, which were taken into account in some of the reviewed studies (e.g. Taecharungroj & Nueangjamnong, 2015).

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It is also important to distinguish between attitudes towards the brand and attitudes towards the ad itself. Several studies measured these two variables separately and indeed found differences in how the various forms of advertising presented in chapter 2.2 affected these attitudes and so provided different results as for the effectiveness of advertising (e.g. Eisend, 2011; M. Roehm, & H. Roehm, 2013). Detailed findings will be presented in the following chapters.

2.4.2 Attitude change

So how exactly are attitudes used to measure advertising effectiveness? The answer to this question lies in the concept of attitude change. As Fill and Turnbull (2016, p. 122) point out, attitude change is considered “the main way to influence audiences through marketing communications”. However, views on how the change is conducted differ. Fill and Turnbull (2016) view attitudes as “predispositions to respond in an anticipated way” (p. 88), which is in line with the file-drawer perspective presented by Bohner and Dickel (2011). This perspective views attitudes as memory-based stable entities, while for an opposing constructionist perspective, attitudes are constantly constructed anew on the spot based on the surrounding context. There is also a third perspective, an integrative, whereby “attitude change involves both the retrieval of stored evaluations and consideration of new evaluative information to varying extend” (Bohner & Dickel, 2011, p. 397).

Bohner and Dickel (2011) cite the work of Petty et al. (2006) as an interesting perspective on attitude change. The work of these researchers culminated in the PAST model of attitude change, which considers attitudes stored in memory that can be tagged as valid or invalid after encountering new information in persuasive marketing messages. In this thesis, the PAST model will be used as a conceptualization of attitude change since it seems to explain well the findings of other researchers when it comes to the particular advertising forms presented in chapter 2.2.

2.4.3 Consumer attitudes towards political satire in advertising

In this section, I will present the findings from previous studies concerning consumer attitudes towards the concepts presented in chapter 2.2.

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At first glance, the literature on humour in advertising might appear the least problematic. Eisend (2009) found that humour leads to positive consumer attitudes towards both the ad and the brand, mostly through the affective element, although, the effect on attitudes towards the brand was weaker. In a later study, Eisend (2011) reconsidered this view and found that the cognitive element also contributes to more positive attitudes through the affective-cognitive model. Problems arise when we move into other concepts. Although research on parodic ads (M. Roehm, & H. Roehm, 2013) supports the positive effect of humour on consumer attitudes, overall, these ads were found to evoke positive attitudes towards the ad itself but had no effect on the attitudes towards the brand. The researchers explain this stating: “Taking on another advertiser in a parodic ad might lead to negative perceptions from the consumers, which counteract positive effects of the humour, mockery and truth in the message“ (p. 30). Other studies dealing with different types of humour, political advertising and political satire, found rather ambivalent results depending on several other considerations (Boukes et al., 2015; Holbert et al., 2011; Taecharungroj & Nueangjamnong, 2015; Marks, Manning, & Ajzen, 2012).

The same ambivalence applies to the literature on viral marketing that integrated consumer attitudes into research models. These studies also found that effectiveness of viral advertising depends on several considerations and that effectiveness in terms of virality, or shareability, does not automatically indicate positive consumer attitudes (Kulkarni, Kalro & Sharma, 2019; Reichstein & Brusch, 2019).

Interestingly, viewpoints also differ when it comes to non-profit companies and for-profit companies, where literature on shockvertising found favourable results for non-profit companies, but not for for-profit (Parry et al., 2013). In addition, although Piata (2015) suggests that consumers might be biased to interpret internet memes containing metaphors in humorous ways, Horváth and Mitev (2016) question whether internet memes could be effective when used by for-profit companies and Epure et al. (2014) also points out that effectiveness of metaphors in advertising depends on consumers’ interpretation.

An especially intriguing notion comes from the literature on user-generated content. Campbell et al. (2011) point out dangers of trying to push advertising as user-generated content and moreover bring up the concept of a brand with a point-of-view, which could both expose the brand to hostile reactions from consumers. Meanwhile, the literature on consumer-generated

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antibranding points out just how difficult it is to stop these hostile reactions (Kucuk, 2015). The political satire in advertising definitely takes a point-of-view and therefore needs to be taken cautiously.

Generally, the findings appear to be mixed, with some studies offering more complete results, while others being somewhat inconclusive and dependable on other considerations, which will be discussed in the next chapter. This is understandable given that some of the subjects are rather under-researched when it comes to consumer attitudes.

2.5 Factors to consider

The following three sections represent three categories of factors influencing attitude change, which need to be considered before engaging in the use of political satire in advertising as conceptualized in chapter 2.2. I created the three categories according to their logical connection with the elements of the model of communication presented in chapter 2.1. Credibility is connected to the source, or in other words the company which creates the message. Message-specific factors are connected to the message itself and can be controlled by the company. Consumer-specific factors are individual, social and cultural characteristics, which need to be taken into account by the company and are connected to the receivers, in the case the Millennials.

I also decided to include factors cited in literature predominantly focused on virality contrary to attitudes because the ads from Slovakia indeed went viral and so it would be useful to gain a richer spectrum of ideas. At the same time the literature does not mention that the same factors influencing virality do not have anything to do with influencing attitudes.

2.5.1 Credibility

Several researchers have mentioned the credibility of the source as an important factor when using the concepts from chapter 2.2 (e.g. Eisend, 2009; Kozinets et al., 2010). Credibility can be regarded in two ways. On one hand, companies need to have a certain degree of credibility in the eyes of consumers to be able to yield positive results from their advertising efforts (Horváth & Mitev, 2016; Parry et al, 2013; Kozinets et al, 2010). On the other hand, if companies engage in the risky advertising formats presented in chapter 2.2 and this for some

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reason backfires, the credibility of that company is likely to suffer (Kucuk, 2015; Parry et al, 2013; Campbell et al., 2011). More specifically, Epure et al. (2014) argue that advertising messages need to be constructed in such way that consumers would not find them manipulative and very importantly, Eisend (2009) found that humour in advertising reduces source credibility.

2.5.2 Message-specific factors

Previous studies largely agree that an effective advertising message needs to convey emotions in consumers (e.g. Akpinar & Berger, 2017; Eisend, 2011), but a question lies in what kind of emotions should be conveyed, in other words, what valence the message should have, positive or negative. Generally, it seems like positive emotions have more favourable results as for increasing the effectiveness of advertising (Berger & Milkman, 2012), however numerous researchers also found negative emotions just as capable to do so, even though they need to be handled with more cautiousness (Reichstein & Brusch, 2019; Marks et al., 2012). The most interesting results find that positive and negative emotions can be equally effective, but what really matters is the intensity of these emotions (Botha 2014; Berger & Milkman, 2012). The more intense and activating emotions (e.g. anger) the message brings, the more effective it is (Berger & Milkman, 2012).

Furthermore, a portion of the previous chapter was devoted to humour in advertising and the ambivalent findings. To clear them out, the differences between types and styles of humour (Taecharungroj & Nueangjamnong, 2015) and details about the satire in particular (Holbert et al., 2011) need to be considered as well. Although Taecharungroj and Nueangjamnong (2015)

do not find the types of humour such as sarcasm, pun or surprise differ in their effects on attitude change, variations between styles of humour used in internet memes are a completely different story. These researchers identify four styles of humour of which the aggressive is the most relevant for political satire ads because it uses negative content aimed at others. This style was found to be the second most effective behind self-defeating, which uses negative content aimed at oneself. The other two styles use positive content aimed at either others or oneself and it is interesting to point out, that these were found less effective although as was previously mentioned, some researchers find positive content in the message more favourable over negative (Berger & Milkman, 2012). We also need to differentiate between Horatian and Juvenalian satire, because both Holbert et al. (2011) and Boukes et al. (2015) found that when

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we take into account the ability and motivation of the consumers to process these messages, the more motivated they are, the more effective Juvenalian satire is.

Several researchers also cite creativity of the message as an important factor for effectiveness (e.g. Botha 2014). Originality and meaningfulness, which contribute to creativity, were found important as well by Willemsen et al. (2018). Similar results were presented by Horváth and Mitev (2016) who found uniqueness and recognisability of internet memes as important, similar to Kucuk (2015), who pointed out that clarity of the message is relevant. As the subject of this thesis can be connected to real-time events and social issues, research also found that the more the current event is integrated into the message, the greater the effectiveness (Willemsen et al., 2018). Lastly, an extent to which the message exposes truth about an opponent (in this case politicians) and balances between playful humour and mockery also contributes to effectiveness according to the literature on parodic ads (M. Roehm, & H. Roehm, 2013).

2.5.3 Consumer-specific factors for Millennials

Several researchers noted that what attitudes consumers develop towards different forms of advertising, depends also on individual, social and cultural characteristics of consumers (e.g. Bolton et al., 2013). Since this thesis is oriented towards Millennials, in this section, I will discuss previous literature on characteristics of this generational cohort in general, but also characteristics of Millennials from Slovakia, or alternatively Czech republic, which are two closely related countries.

The main difference between Millennials and all the previous generations lies in their use of the internet and social media, especially Facebook (Duffett, 2015) and subsequently the interactivity in these environments, as Millennials look for the chance to network (Bolton et al., 2013; Taken Smith, 2011). This is interconnected with their scepticism towards traditional advertising as they are constantly enveloped by the constant information flow from the Internet and so they use word of mouth to make sense of it due to its perceived credibility (Taken Smith, 2011; Valentine & Powers, 2013). It is interesting to note, that the generation Z constituting consumers younger than Millennials does not possess the same interactivity, and are rather dubbed the “silent generation” (Bejtkovský, 2016).

Other relevant characteristics cited in literature, are a fondness for interesting, unique graphical elements in advertising (Taken Smith, 2011) and that they are not as loyal to brands as the

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previous generations (Valentine & Powers, 2013). Highly interesting point of view is presented by Bolton et al. (2013), who argue, that the use of social media is likely to foster civic engagement in Millennials, although this is also dependent on political culture across countries. Plus, Taken Smith (2011) finds Millennials also very socially and environmentally conscious indicating that they take interest in happenings around the world and Twenge (as cited in Bolton et al., 2013) argues that Millennials are prone to go against social norms more than previous generations. This is highly relevant for Millennials from Slovakia, as in the recent years, many large anti-government protests were organized with the use of Facebook events feature by younger Millennials and after the recent parliamentary elections, one of the main organizers even became a vice-president of parliament.

Speaking of Millenials from Slovakia, some researchers present slightly different characteristics, for example, Bejtkovsky (2016) argues that the range of years when Millennials are born must take into account historical development and so suggests that Millennials in Slovakia are unique in that they can range from the 1980s up to 2000 opposed to researchers from English-speaking countries, who cut the range around 1995-6 (Bolton et al, 2013). Bolton et al. (2013) also point out that we need to take intra-generational differences into account. Krbová (2016) also finds that for Millennials from Slovakia, the brands represent a symbol of quality, but are also perceived as uselessly expensive.

2.6 Summary

Based on the frame of reference, I was able to create a model of political satire in advertising in relation to attitude change shown in Figure 3. The basis for this model is the linear model of communication from Fill and Turnbull (2016), which I simplified and modified the receiver end to account for the development of eWOM with its interactions in consumer networks. The message part stands for the conceptualization of political satire in advertising. Another layer representing the theory on consumer attitudes was added on the top. The three categories of factors shown at the top of the model, with arrows pointing to the parts of the original linear model of communication. The positioning of these factors is done in this way to show, that while credibility and message-specific factors can be relatively influenced by the company, consumer-specific factors are already given by characteristics of Millennials and must be taken into consideration when the message is being created.

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Figure 3 Model of political satire in advertising and consumer attitudes

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3. Methodology and Method

__________________________________________________________________________________________ This chapter presents the methodology, method and ethical considerations for the research.

___________________________________________________________________________

3.1 Methodology

3.1.1 Research Paradigm

As stated by Collis and Hussey (2014), every research starts with a determination of a research paradigm. This thesis is framed around the research philosophy of interpretivism because I find the subject of satire in advertising dependent on the interpretation and psychological attributes of a particular individual within a particular socio-cultural setting. It is fitting since interpretivism centers around the views that the reality and knowledge are subjective, depend on values and beliefs of the researcher (Collis & Hussey, 2014) and are, as Ryan (2018, p. 4) further stated, “culturally and historically situated, based on people’s experiences and their understanding of them”.

Of course, there are more philosophies to draw upon, positivism regarded as the opposite of interpretivism (Ryan, 2018) is the prime example. However, I do not find this particular philosophy appealing in this case, as the main criticisms of positivism are that it aims to separate people from their social and cultural backgrounds and does not take a researcher’s values and beliefs into account (Collis & Hussey, 2014). In addition, positivism tends to study phenomena in artificial locations, while interpretivism tends to use natural locations (Collis & Hussey, 2014) and I believe that best quality insights to answer my research questions can be gained from studying this phenomenon in its natural location, that is social media, but more details on that will be presented in the following sections.

Other philosophies, which are somewhat trying to integrate both of the already discussed ones are for example critical theory and pragmatism (Collis & Hussey, 2014; Ryan, 2018). Instead of adopting these hybrid philosophies, I view the positivism versus interpretivism as two sides of spectra, a view supported also by Collis and Hussey (2014). Therefore, I acknowledge, that some of the results might apply more generally to the larger population, which is a feature of

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positivism (Collis & Hussey, 2014), however, there will always be the subjective factor of my own interpretation and interpretations of the study subjects to a varying extent.

3.1.2 Research Approach

This thesis employs deductive approach. Although the usual practice often associates interpretivism rather with induction, this is not presented as a rule in literature (Collis & Hussey, 2014). I decided to overcome the lack of previous studies on political satire in advertising, which would otherwise impede the use of deductive logic, by bringing together the already existing knowledge from related fields of research. This allowed me to build the research model, which would be used to interpret the collected data. I did not find an inductive approach appropriate since the unexplored nature and complexity of this topic could mislead my steps during the theory-building process undertaken after data collection.

3.1.3 Research Design

After conducting a review of previous literature and considering options for data collection and analysis, I decided to use exploratory qualitative design. Orientation towards qualitative data is in line with both, the interpretative philosophy and the exploratory research purpose (Collis & Hussey, 2014).

This research follows exploratory design as mentioned in the Purpose section since it is flexible and suitable when there is a limited amount of existing knowledge about the study subject (Collis & Hussey, 2014). The aim of this thesis is to gain familiarity with the subject, study the patterns in reactions of consumers and gain insights for a more conclusive study in the future, which is line with the description of exploratory research presented by Collis and Hussey (2014), but can also be related to the research design by Botha (2014) on the virality of political satire in advertising, which too used exploratory design for its flexibility. Explanatory or predictive research would not be suitable for this study, the main reason is the lack of research on this specific subject.

A mix of two qualitative data collection methods will be implemented, which was inspired by Botha (2014), Campbell et al. (2011) and Willemsen et al. (2018). These authors used data in the form of comments under posts at social media for purposes relatable to this thesis. I found

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this method appealing because this way, I could capture consumer reactions from the exact time when these ads became viral. On the other hand, I wanted to avoid mixing qualitative and quantitative data for the interpretivist philosophy of this research and since the Facebook comments would not provide answers to any additional questions, I decided to reinforce these data with data collected from focus groups. Focus groups were also used to measure attitudes towards shocking advertising by Parry et al. (2013).

3.2 Method

3.2.1 Data Collection - Facebook comments

According to Horváth and Mitev (2016) and Kallier (2017) internet memes and real-time marketing are about the one moment experienced at the particular time when the content is socially relevant. For that reason, I found it appropriate to collect data from reactions in the form of Facebook comments left right at the moment, when these ads went viral. The data would be collected from the Facebook page Zomri, where most of the previously mentioned ads were posted. Collecting data from this particular Facebook page has two advantages. Firstly, the audience of consumers visiting the page can be expected to be rather stable over the short period of time when these ads were posted there and so I will be able to compare the data from different ads without big differences caused by changes in audience. Secondly, the audience of this page is composed mostly of Millennials (Dvořáková, 2019) and given the interactivity of Millennials on social media (Valentine, & Powers, 2013), I will assume that most of the comments were left by people belonging to this generational cohort. Some bias might arise if the comments contain several reactions of a younger or older audience, however, this possibility will be taken into account during analysis.

The sample of particular ads, the reactions to which would be used, was selected based on the following criteria:

• the ads are directly connected to a particular political party or a particular politician

• the ads were posted at Zomri

• the ads promote a for-profit company/brand and their products

• the ads do not feature a person since this has a substantial effect on consumers according to semiotic theory (Epure et al., 2014) and could, therefore, bias the results

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Based on these criteria, I selected four ads from the brands Sadkay, Möbelix, Coca-Cola and Kaufland and they were always presented in this order.

3.2.2 Data Collection – Focus groups

I chose focus groups data to fill the limitations of the Facebook comments. Focus groups are often paired with other research methods and are beneficial when it comes to gaining insights about a range of ideas and feelings, factors influencing differences between groups of people or when a high value is placed on comments and use of language (Krueger & Casey, 2009). A different possibility would be to conduct individual interviews, which were used e.g. by Kucuk (2015). However, the reason for choosing focus groups instead of individual interviews was inspired by Parry et al. (2013), who suggest that this method is more useful in getting deeper insights when dealing with controversial topics.

Originally a multiple-category design was considered to control for intra-generational differences between Millennials born between 1980 and 1989 and Millennials born between 1990 and 1998, however, due to the complications caused by Covid-19, I reverted to simpler single-category design. Krueger and Casey (2009) suggest conducting three to four focus groups as a rule of thumb, therefore this research design is based on three focus groups mixing the two intra-generational groups. This will ensure that there is enough data to analyze for the whole cohort and still a good chance to capture the intergenerational differences although the results might be weaker.

Since exploratory research allows a certain degree of flexibility, I decided to use a slightly unconventional means of conducting the focus groups. Krueger and Casey (2009) suggest interviewing participants via the internet as a relatively new approach. In line with the interpretative research philosophy, I wanted to keep the location of the study as natural as possible and since the aforementioned ads were published on social media, namely Facebook, I decided to conduct the focus groups via Facebook Messenger video chat. This has consequences for both, the sampling procedure and the questions.

As for the sampling, Krueger and Casey (2009) suggest that the most efficient way of identifying participants is using an existing list. In this case, I decided to use the list of my