Consumer Behavior: Major Project Blueprint
You are required to conduct a comprehensive review of a brand’s advertising campaign (choose a company/ country of your choice) and develop a report using the concepts and theories discussed in class. Considering the changing marketing environment, you are supposed to provide recommendations on how the brand has, and further can adapt its advertising strategy during the post COVID-19 pandemic era. The report must include secondary research, integrating academic sources.
So this is a group project and we chose Apple +1 for our topic. Here is the link for Apple Watch Ad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOHj5kGU4fY
My part is COVID-19 Recommendations:
How can the brand adapt its advertising strategy to succeed in the changing environment post-COVID-19 era?
The three strategies we chose is:
– Emotion (What emotions is Apple trying to target with this ad?)
– Classical Conditioning (Person in danger is stimulus, Apple Watch saved their life is response)
– Fishbein Model (Apple is trying to increase the importance that a consumer puts on trustworthiness in regards to its products)
Include in-text citation if you use any.
” Advertising Campaign
The specific advertising campaign under review is an Apple Watch ad named “Dear Apple.” This ad was released on September 7, 2022, the same day of the live Apple Event which announced a new Apple Watch Series 8, the Apple Watch Ultra, along with the new lineup of iPhone 14 smartphones. Apple has 16.7 million YouTube subscribers on its main account, which is mainly targeted to its United States audience. The ad has accumulated 807,872 views as of November 13th, 2022.
The advertising campaign “Dear Apple” does not include an Apple Watch as the main focus. There is not even a mention of the term “Apple Watch” until 1 minute into the video. Instead, the ad features real people reading letters of thanks to Apple’s CEO Tim Cook. They describe a situation in which the Apple Watch saved their life or the life of a loved one. In each situation, a unique Apple Watch feature was used. These features include an emergency 911 call without the use of a smartphone, heart rate sensors that can detect atrial fibrillation and irregularly high heart rates.
Apple is trying to display several different emotions exhibited through a variety of affects the watcher can visualize. Apple is trying to express happiness, fear, and anxiousness in one advertisement by triggering certain feelings in the viewer. The video highlights true stories when the Apple Watch product saved a certain person or peers life. The video starts by using emotions of fear and negativity which can be called “negative state relief” (Solomon, 2017). The negative state relief can be described as, “helping others as a means of resolving one’s own negative moods” (Solomon, 2017). It can be described as products such as chocolates or sweets but can also be considered with an object like an Apple Watch. The Apple Watch can be seen as a negative state relief because of the way they are marketing towards helping friends/family in life or death situations. A product like chocolate makes a person feel certain emotions of happiness but the Apple Watch using negative state relief to a more enhanced extent and the advertisement Apple created makes viewers have a feeling of content when they find a product that can help a family member be increasingly safe in any dangerous environment. Viewers could first experience a feeling of nervousness listening to the true stories viewers are listening to and share a similar feeling for someone in their life. Apple is smart in the way they express this as many other advertisements only share one story that not everyone can exactly relate to. But, since Apple shares stories from around the world and in different seasons, the chances increase of a person relating to the nervous feeling for a person close to them and then the feeling of safety/content when the Apple Watch product helped save the person’s life in the stories being told. Secondly, Apple expresses emotions through specific styles of happiness and guilt. Apple has to monitor the level of guilt they are trying to make the viewer feel in the advertisement because it can easily turn into envy. A person watching the advertisement could feel a state of envy if they have lost someone in a similar story told in the advertisement and express negative feelings towards another person making though the same situation they did not make it through. The feeling of envy can be effective but in this advertisement strong feelings of guilt and happiness are much more effective. Guilt is described as, “an individual’s unpleasant emotional state associated with possible objections to his or her actions, inaction, circumstances, or intentions” (Solomon, 2017). An individual watching this advertisement could feel unpleasant hearing near death stories and feel guilty about a family member in a similar situation and make the viewer feel an incentive to buy the product so the person close to you never has to go through a similar situation and the nervousness/guilt can go away. Furthermore, happiness can be defined as, “mental state of well-being characterized by positive emotions” (Solomon, 2017). The positive emotion comes towards the end of the video when the stories are finished and the person survived. The social connections people can make with a person through one video is intense and seeing the person in the video share how they survived or a friend survived due to the Apple product only grows the current incentive to purchase the product no matter how expensive or difficult it is to get. Overall, the Apple advertisement is smart in making the viewer take a “rollercoaster” of emotions from guilt to happiness and can have the viewer thinking about the usefulness of the product for a long time after first viewing the advertisement.
To continue on with the relevance of safety in the product Apple is advertising, being the Apple Watch a great example to explain the great advertising of the product is classical conditioning. Classical conditioning consists of, “learning process creates a conditioned response through associations between an unconditioned stimulus and a neutral stimulus” (Cherry, 2022). The unconditioned stimulus in this commercial would be the person in danger, the neutral stimulus would be the Apple Watch product. Classical conditioning is very important in this advertising campaign for several reasons. Firstly, is the viewer of the commercial having a similar response to the person in the real life danger situation. The use of pleasant stimuli in this commercial consists of interesting backgrounds like a bear wandering around, night skies, or great lighting with a person remaining in eye contact with the camera. Each person is talking about a difficult situation where they had to use the watch to save one’s life but the background of each speaker can also be used as a stimuli to keep the viewers attention. Once this is done and the viewers attention is kept which would be the unconditioned stimulus, the neutral stimulus would be the relatable situations that can happen at any time to anyone. In one study/experiment the researchers found the more times they viewed the advertisement the more the viewer responded and reacted to it, “as the number of CS-US exposures increased, affect and product beliefs had an impact on brand attitude”. This experiment was exposing the viewer multiple times to the same product to enhance the viewers understanding. The Apple ad does not need to be replayed multiple times though, as the advertisement showed multiple people discussing how the Apple Watch saved their own or someone in their life. As more people continue to discuss and talk about the product in the advertisement there is an increased percentage chance that one of the people talking about their real life situation and the product itself will create an unconditioned and neutral stimulus. Having an ad that continuously discusses more than one situation is more effective as it can be more relatable while also showing all the features of the talked about product. This can also be important for the target market as more teenagers are increasingly being diagnosed with ADHD. People with ADHD have increased significantly in this generation, “In the 1980s, one in 20 U.S. children were diagnosed with ADHD. Today, that number is roughly one in 9” (Frye 2021). People with ADHD have trouble focusing on even a short advertisement for a product so having multiple people talking with changing backgrounds for pleasant stimulus is important to try to keep as many viewers attentive as possible. Overall, classical conditioning can play a big part in effective marketing of a product as without knowing a successful ad like this Apple on will create a unconditioned stimulus for the viewer that will at some point throughout a changing advertisement hit a core with the viewer for a reaction of a neutral stimulis.
Market Segment
A famous marketing concept states that “A firm exists to satisfy consumer needs , which can be satisfied only to the extent that marketers understand the people or entity that would use the product and service they are trying to sell”. To achieve this, apple watch marketer segmented their consumers, which can be defined as the process whereby marketing segmentation identifies a group of consumers who are similar to one another in one way or the other and then devices a marketing strategy that appeals to them . This was achieved through the five following ways which includes; Age, Gender, ethnicity, lifestyle and geography.
Firstly, Age, as always consumers of different age groups obviously have different needs and wants but there are certain areas different age group needs correlate like the need of safety (security, shelter and protection) as stated in the Abraham Maslow hierarchy of wants. Which was the core message apple watch reflected .From the ad we could see that their target age group was 10- 99 year (we could see from the ad an 18year old high school senior, a kid of about 10, a 27 year old high school teacher, and a 99year old world traveler…) , and the were able to perfectly navigate this and spread a message that would impact their customer because the targeted a subjected that is rational since no matter how old you are you would always want the reassurance of safety and someone or something to lin on , to guarantee your safety which the able watch provide which the apple watch provide.
Secondly,Gender , many product from fragrance to foot wear are targeted to either female and men.Despite the fact that 2 of this gender where shown through out the ad, the wasn’t really a variation in the message( like pink for girls and blue for boys) , it was theysame for both the female and male highlighting the fact that safety and security is a subject matter for everyone.
Thirdly, Ethnicity, from the ad, we could see that Apple tried as much as possible to include other races, like we could see a black female and male and other ethnicity. Which is a very important aspect in this day and age with the black live matter issue.
More so, Lifestyle , consumer often have different lifestyles even if the show theysame gender and characteristic.This was clearly shown through out this ad campaign from a country boy from mississippi to a world traveller, this was done with the core aim that each customer could see the comparison with their own lifestyle hence captivating their interest.
Furthermore, in terms of geography they targeted different cities in the United states from Atlanta Georgia to San Diego each with a different climate . This was to show that it doesn’t matter whether it is the freezing temperature of the north pole or the sunny whether in the carribbeans, Apple watch got your back and could save you.”
