Purpose

This paper aims to analyse the prevalence of emotional and rational appeals in social advertising campaigns. There are studies about the effectiveness of these tones of appeals in social marketing, but there is no evidence about their prevalent use in social advertisements.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors conducted a content analysis of forty social advertisements promoting attitudes and behaviours regarding social causes. The selected ads were in video format and were extracted from the YouTube channels of Portuguese governmental and non-governmental organisations. The ads were coded according to the characteristics of each tone of appeals and classified as emotional, rational or a mix of both.

Findings

The authors classified 25 social ads as rational appeals, 8 as emotional and 7 as a mix of both appeals. The results of the research show that social marketers have preference for the use of rational tone in social advertising campaigns.

Originality/value

This study shows that there is a disruption between theory and practice in social marketing, considering the higher prevalence of rational appeals in contexts where theory recommends emotional appeals for higher effectiveness. This evidence is surprising, considering a previous study that evidenced a higher use of emotional appeals in advertising connected to social causes than in commercial advertisements. This paper focus on how practice may disrupt theory and explores possible reasons for the phenomenon.

中文翻译：

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社交广告诉求中情感和理性基调的盛行

目的

本文旨在分析社交广告活动中情感和理性诉求的盛行。有关于这些呼吁语气在社交营销中的有效性的研究，但没有证据表明它们在社交广告中的普遍使用。

设计/方法/方法

作者对四十个宣传社会事业态度和行为的社会广告进行了内容分析。所选广告为视频格式，摘自葡萄牙政府和非政府组织的 YouTube 频道。广告根据每种诉求基调的特征进行编码，并分为情感、理性或两者的混合。

发现

作者将 25 个社交广告归为理性诉求，8 个归为情感诉求，7 个归为两种诉求的混合。研究结果表明，社交营销人员更喜欢在社交广告活动中使用理性的语气。

原创性/价值

这项研究表明，在理论推荐情感诉求以提高有效性的背景下，理性诉求的流行率更高，因此社会营销的理论与实践之间存在中断。考虑到之前的一项研究表明，与商业广告相比，与社会原因相关的广告更多地使用情感诉求，这一证据令人惊讶。本文重点关注实践如何扰乱理论，并探讨造成这种现象的可能原因。