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DOCUMENT RESUME ED 392 081 CS 509 175 TITLE Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (78th, Washington, DC, August 9-12, 1995). Advertising Division. INSTITUTION Association for Edpcation in Journalism and Mass Communication. PUB DATE Aug 95 NOTE 322p.; For other sections of these proceedings, see CS 509 173-187 and CS 509 196. PUB TYPE Collected Works Conference Proceedings (021) EDRS PRICE MF01/PC13 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS *Advertising; Computer Mediated Communication; *Educational Development; Ethnic Groups; Higher Education; Information Networks; *Internet; Journalism Education; Mass Media Effects; *Mass Media Role; Newspapers; *Online Systems; Periodicals; Persua'%re Discourse; Public Relations IDENTIFIERS *Advertisements ABSTRACT The advertising section of the Proceedings contains the following 14 papers: "Advertising versus Product Publicity: The Effects on Credibility and Purchase Intent" (M. Catherine Chew and others); "Introducing Introductory Advertising Students to the World Wide Web" (Beth E. Barnes); "In Defense of Puffery" (John H. Crowley); "Merging the Teaching of Advertising and Public Relations Campaigns onto the Information Superhighway" (Robert L. Gustafson and Steven R. Thomsen); "Breaking New Ground in the Virtual Marketplace: A Search for New Metaphors of Form and Structure Shaping Persuasive Communication in the New Media" (Tracy A. Irani); "Trends in the Use and Abuse of Advertorial Advertising in Magazines" (Bong-Hyun Kim and others); "Media Usage Patterns and Preferences of Hispanics in a Texas Market" (Wayne W. Melanson and Jerry C. Hudson); "Rankings of Advertising Programs by Advertising Educators" (Jef I. Richards and Elizabeth Gigi Taylor); "Information Source for Shopping Decisions and Idvertising Content Preferences of Malaysian Youth" (Jyotika Ramaprasad); "A Survey of Faculty Evaluation Practices in Journalism and Mass Communication" (Robert C. Sitz and Frank Thayer); "The Application uf Multidimensional Scaling to Advertising Education Programs" (Elizabeth Gigi Taylor and Jef I. Richards); "The Second Giant: Portrayals of Women in Japanese Advertising" (Anne Cooper-Chen); "Women's Editions of Newspapers: Marketing Baking Powder to the New Woman" (Ann Mauger Colbert); and "Portrayal of Women in the Advertisements in 'India Today'--India's Leading Current Affairs Magazine: 1984-1994" (Nilanjana Roy Bardhan). (CR) *********************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made * from the original document. *********************************************************************** PROCEEDINGS OF THE ANNUAL MEETING OF THE ASSOCIATION FOR EDUCATION IN JOURNALISM AND MASS COMMUNICATION (78th, Washington, DC, August 9-12, 1995). Advertising Division. U.S. DEPARTMENT OP EDUCATION Once or Educational Research and improvemant ED CATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION "PERMISSION TO REPRODUCETHIS CENTER IERIC) MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTEDBY tiThis documnt has bean reproduced as Waived I tom the person or organization onginating it 0 Minor changes have been made to improvt reproduction Quality Points ot view 0, opinions stated in thisdoCu- merit do oOf n.c.$MflIy risprissent official OE RI position or pohcy TO THE EDUCATIONALRESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC)" BEST COPY AVAILABLE g ADVERTISING VERSUS PRODUCT PUBLICITY: THE EFFECTS ON CREDIBILITY AND PURCHASE INTENT M. Catherine Chew (student author) Michael D. Slater Dept. of Technical Journalism Kathleen Kelly Dept. Of Marketing Colorado State University Fort Collins, CO 80523 970-491-5485 Submitted for presentation to the the annual conference of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, Public Relations Division, Washington, D.C., August 1995. This paper is based on the first author's masters' thesis, advised by the second author. ADVERTISING VS. PRODUCT PUBLICITY: EFFECTS ON CREDIBILITY AND PURCHASE INTENT Four core messages were each edited into an advertisement about a well-known or fictitious brand and into a brief news article &bout a well-known or fictitious brand. The subjects were college students. Each subject read four marketing communication messages about each of the four product categories, one message of each type. After subjects had viewed all four messages, they were asked questions designed to measure their involvement with the product class, familiarity with each brand presented and purchase intent. The type of communication (advertisement or article) did not affect credibility or purchase intent, nor did familiarity of brand. However, as predicted, type and brand familiarity did significantly interact with involvement to affect the credibility of the communication. The results suggest that as involvement with a product increases, the credibility of an ad for a familiar brand decreases. The credibility of an article about a fumiliar brand stays constant.Conversely, as involvement with a product increases, the credibility of an article about an unfamiliar brand decreases and the credibility of an ad for an unfamiliar brand stays constant. These effects were not reflected in purchase intentions, however. 2 INTRODUCTION This study investigates whether publicity is more effective than advertising with respect to consumer products. While one might argue that the two are not comparable, many people do just that when they say that publicity is more valuable than advertising. Consider the following description of the difference between publicity and advertising: Advertising and publicity both attempt "to create consumer awareness, change attitudes and influence purchase behavior. The difference is, however, that marketing communicators must pay for advertising space . but publicity is a ponpaid form of communications. Moreover, consumers tend to regard publicity as more credible than advertising, because advertising is perceived as inherently manipulative, whereas news media . are considered to be non-manipulative and more objective" (Shimp & DeLozier, 1986, p. 499). Gage (1981) asserts that news releases and feature stories are used to enhance the credibility of established or new brands. Goldman (1984) also suggests that third-party endorsements lend credibility to a company's sales message. Each of the references mentioned above presuppose some sophistication on the part of consumers. Goldman (1984) explains that viewers know the advertiser can say almost anything he wants to about his product because he pays for the advertisement. That belief, Goldman claims, diminishes the credibility of the advertising message. Similarly, Shimp and DeLozier (1986) imply that the believability of an advertisement suffers because "advertising is a . communication that is non-personal and paid for by an identified sponsor. Publicity, like advertising, is non-personal communication . but unlike advertising, publicity is not paid for by the company; publicity usually comes in the 3 BEST COPY AVAILABLE form of news items or editorial comments about a company's products or services" (p. 4). From the preceding definitions, it would seem that credibility is the most important difference between an advertisement and an article resulting from publicity. However, the most obvious differences are visual. Advertisements are constructed to facilitate reading. Advertising desiTiers use bullets, white space, multiple sizes of type and large visuals to help the reader through the material. Wills (1971) says advertising text should be divided up appropriately so that distinct concepts are more clearly separated. Editorial messages, on the other hand, are usually a solid block of copy, broken only occasionally with small photographs and graphics. Wills further suggests that dividing up advertising text also underscores the reading rhythm contrived by the copywriters. In addition to such rhythm, copywriters also use everyday language and short phrases to make their advertisements easy to understand. Editorial articles, however, are presented in complete sentences, rather than short phrases. Such structural and linguistic concerns should not be overlooked when comparing advertisements with editorial copy. Structure and linguistics play a large part in the readability of text, the third consideration in comparing advertisements with editorial copy. Readability is defined as the 'ease of understanding or comprehension due to the style of writing" (Klare, 1963, p. 1). Readability research has long held that word and sentence length are the most important determinants of readability (Flesch, 1943; Gunning, 1952; Carson, 1979). However, Selzer (1983) contends that limiting word and sentence length is too simplistic and that other factors more strongly affect readability. He suggests that words are more readable if they are concrete rather than abstract and familiar to the audience. He also suggests that sentence structure and complexity are more likely to 4 affect readability than is sentence length. Similarly, Coleman (1965) suggested that sentences with short clauses are easier to read than sentences with longer clauses. In any case, it is likely that advertisements are generally more readable than is editorial copy. Most magazines and newspapers write to an eighth grade level, while advertisers attempt to appeal to the lowest reading level in their target audience (Wills, 1971). Cameron (1994) experimentally compared editorial copy with advertisements in an "advertorial" format in an effort to test the impact of the third-party