The UAE faces a road safety problem. A report by the World Health Organization (WHO) released in 2009 says the country has one of the highest road death rates per capita in the world, with 37 out of 100,000 people dying due to car accidents.
The persistence of road hazards has prompted new measures, like penalty points for traffic offences and new pedestrian crossings, to be introduced by the nation's authorities, in concert with media campaigns aimed at discouraging reckless driving, sometimes using grisly images of mangled cars to frighten potentially careless drivers.
An image of a car twisted beyond recognition after being crushed by a large orange truck is the lead image on the Web page of Dubai Police’s Traffic and Security Awareness campaign. The front of the truck is an imposing presence, obscuring all but a portion of the left side of the car. Broken doors jut out at impossible angles. There is little to be salvaged here, including life.
These apocalyptic messages have long been a feature of efforts to encourage more cautious behavior. Anti-smoking campaigns warn users of an impending collapse of their individual health towards lung cancer and heart disease, and humanitarian organizations use images of impoverished children to draw attention to their cause.
But psychologists and marketing experts remain skeptical that this type of marketing, intended to provoke strong emotions, and other forms of taboo-breaking “shockvertising” such as sexually provocative images, are effective at swaying consumer behavior.
COMFORT ZONES. In order to shock, ads first need to break with our world-view, one that psychologists say is deeply ingrained. “Our perception is often guided by existing schemas – mental frameworks based, for example, on our experiences or what we have learned from our parents and peers,” says Dr. Sabrina Tahboub-Schulte, a psychology professor at the American University of Sharjah (AUS). Individuals are generally likely to notice and absorb messages that reinforce or recall these schemas, she says.
Shock advertising is a way of shattering this familiar comfort by using images that challenge the status quo. “If a new experience, for example an image challenging acceptable social behavior, is very strong or intense, it is likewise possible to be noticed,” says Tahboub-Schulte. She adds that the effectiveness of the message will then depend on how much a person conforms to social norms, the social demographics of the viewer, whether the viewer identifies with the person in the ad, and how culturally sensitive the norm being challenged is. This could explain why even slightly sexual ads stand out more in this region than, for example, in more liberal France.
As a result, not all blatant attempts to garner attention by shocking the audience will work. Context is everything, says Dr. Mercedes Sheen, an associate professor of psychology at AUS. Sheen conducted a test in one of her classes that showed two anti-smoking ads to students. The first featured a smoking dog that asked the audience: “I'm a dog. What's your excuse?” Another ad showed gruesome inner body workings as smoke is inhaled.
The audience liked the humorous ad more. “The problem with showing younger audiences shocking images... is that they feel it is not relevant,” says Sheen. “Many people feel that they can still smoke for a few years but then quit.”
HITTING THE TARGET. Which is why knowing your audience is as crucial as ever. “Anti-speeding ads are much more effective because they mostly target the right audience – young men,” says Sheen. “They see guys like themselves in wheelchairs, needing help to go to the bathroom, and it brings the message home.” Similarly, “If you want women to donate money, then you should show pictures of starving children during Oprah.”
But marketers also need to factor in the inevitable realization that individual people are different. “Some people see starving children and they react by giving money, others react by saying that the governments are corrupt and you can't change anything. So the effectiveness depends on the cognitive ability of the audience to process the images and translate them to their own situations,” says Sheen.
However, the region's regular exposure to violence – through television news and violent movies – as well as exposure to shockvertising, can desensitize the audience, curbing the intended effect. “Newspapers in the Gulf regularly show graphic images so we get blunted, or our emotions get blunted,” says Sheen. It is no longer enough to simply witness wanton destruction. That won’t engage us as an audience. “We need to reconnect, know the story behind [people's] lives to feel something for them.”
“A classic example is Neda in Iran,” she says, referring to the young student whose death was captured on camera and became a sensation on YouTube during the country's tumultuous post-election protests. “She is not the only one to have died, but she is on YouTube and we see her life and we think about her as a possible friend, so therefore feel more.” Footage of Neda’s death was used to rally supporters of the opposition, spurring more protests in the streets to challenge the results of the election.
NO IDEA. Martino O'Brien, the creative director at Dubai ad agency AGA-ADK, feels marketers that resort to sensationalism are simply intellectually bankrupt and out of marketing ideas.
The objective is not so much to shock the audience as to surprise them in order to keep them engaged with a brand, says O'Brien. “Unless absolutely necessary, I feel there’s no need to get into shockvertising.”
Although there are shock ads in the region, they are not widespread. O’Brien says this is not the result of an unwillingness to challenge the status quo, he says, but rather because resorting to shock is a cop-out. “Forget regulations or consumer backlash, I think shockvertising is nothing but the lack of a big idea. Leave the gore for the zombies of Hollywood to feed on. Engage in relevant, meaningful conversation,” he says.
O'Brien sums up the dilemma facing advertisers vying for their audience's (slightly terrified) eyeballs, illustrating that when your audience sits transfixed to your marketing effort, it could be because they’re just fascinated by a train wreck.
“Imagine this,” he says. “I’m making a presentation in your conference room to your CEO and marketing team. Halfway through the presentation I notice that no one is paying attention to me. Well, I stop presenting, turn the lights back on, walk towards the plant in the corner of the room and urinate in it. I bet my ear wax that all of you will be shocked. I’ve certainly got your attention, but will I ever get your business?”