Does Humor Work in Advertising of Pharmaceutical Products?

Informações

Código: MKT1619
Divisão: MKT - Marketing
Tema de Interesse: Tema 01 - Comportamento do Consumidor

Autores

Carlos Roberto Francisco Bara, Delane Botelho

Resumo

This article evaluates whether humorous television commercials (TVCs) areeffective for OTC (over-the-counter) drugs, a category that is extensively advertised ontelevision in most countries as in Brazil.Theory: The effectiveness of the construct “humor in advertising” is controversial since itinvolves complex and broad typology, and depends on the audience characteristics. Severalstudies indicate that some consumer goods are better suited for humorous TVCs depending onthe product category, such as beers or candies; nevertheless, for others, as expensive jewelryor OTC drugs, it is expected that humorous TVCs do not bring advantages from its use (Gulasand Weinberger 2006). This conclusion for OTC drug was based in its product characteristics,since specific studies are non-existent in current literature. Paradoxically, drug announcerscontinue to spend billions of dollars worldwide in humorous OTC ads.Method: a laboratory experiment with real consumers was conducted in Brazil, designed asbetween and within-subjects, to test three hypotheses. Sixty women were exposed to pairs ofhumorous and non-humorous TVCs, for each of three drug categories (analgesics, vitamins,and laxatives). We used fictional brand names and real ads, edited for the purpose of theexperiment, and measured four dependant variables (attitude toward the advertising, attitudetoward the brand, purchase intention, and brand choice), after respondents being exposed tomanipulations of two independent variables: (non)humorous TV commercials and drugcategories. Conditional logit model and t-tests were used to test the hypotheses.Results: humor did not help to persuade respondents, whose choices, attitudes and purchaseintention were reduced with humorous TVCs, in comparison to non-humorous executions.Thus, hypotheses 1 and 2 were partially confirmed, with reduced TVC effectiveness for thethree OTC drug categories. Hypothesis 3 on possible differences among analgesics, vitamins,and laxatives, was not confirmed.Conclusions: these findings were in line with the literature, once OTC drugs belong to aproduct category where humor may not be effective; the reasons behind that may lay in lackof credibility and/or inappropriateness resulted from humorous TVCs for OTC drugs. Thesetwo possible explanations remain as open avenues for future research, as well as othermentioned aspects regarding marketing for pharmaceutical products and humor in advertising.We present insights for future research, considering theoretical, managerial, and public policyimplications.

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