Provocative advertising and its effects on brand building efforts of two fashion companies: Learning from Benetton and Diesel

ABSTRACT In today's consumer based economy, brands gained more importance than products. Having a distinguishable brand identity and using a different style of advertising campaign is needed to be heard and seen by the consumers in this communication cluttered and saturated market conditions. So provocative type of advertising is appeared as an effective way of communication to be distinguishable in the market. As it leads to high levels of awareness, brands benefit from using provocative advertising in their brand building efforts and differentiate themselves easily from the other brands using traditional advertising. In this thesis, the effects of provocative advertising on Turkish consumers were analyzed. Benetton and Diesel brands were chosen for the research, as they are the two most known companies using provocative type of advertising for their communication strategy. A personal questionnaire was conducted with 50 respondents each from Benetton and Diesel. Also the hierarchy-of-effects model was chosen to measure the communication effects of these brands. The three advertisements of Benetton and Diesel's 2003 campaigns were chosen to examine the brand awareness; consumers' attitudes towards the advertisements and their intention to buy the brand. As a result of this research, like other researches, it is found out that provocative advertising create high levels of awareness for the brands. Besides creating awareness, provocative type of advertisements does not mostly disturb Turkish consumers and these advertisements lead them to follow up the stages of hierarchy-of-effects model. The not-disturbed respondents liked the advertisements but the disturbed respondents showed negative attitudes towards the advertisements. There was positive and significant correlation between the disturbances of the respondents and their attitudes towards Benetton's advertisement, "Food for Peace", (chi- square=22,974, r=0,675, p=0,000) Also positive and significant correlation was found for Diesel's "The Wall" and "The Protest" advertisements. (chi-square=l 3,676, r=0,500, p=0,000) (chi-square=5,929, r=0,322, p=0,023) For the intention to buy the brand, the not- disturbed respondents showed an intention to buy the brand as a result of the advertisement. Also the disturbed respondents' negative attitudes towards the advertisements were not carried over into negative attitudes towards the intention to buy the brand and most of the disturbed respondents did not avoid buying the brand as a result of the advertisement. Only, there were positive and significant correlation between the disturbances of the respondents and their avoidance from the brand as a result of advertisements of Benetton, "Food for Peace" and "Food for Work", (chi-square-6,044, r=0,348, p=0,013) (chi-square=l 6,755, r=0,579, p=0,000) For Diesel's "The Shoes" advertisement again a positive and significant correlation was found. (chi-square=24,490, r=0,700, p=0,000) In these results the intensity, the degree and the type of exposure of provocation plays critical roles. If the provocative appeal is used in a clear and shocking way, like Benetton did, this disturbed the consumers and affected their attitudes towards the advertisement and the intention to buy the brand in a negative way. But if the provocative appeal is used in more ambiguous nature, which do not affect the consumers at first sight and make them think about the advertisement, like Diesel did, it was not reflected to intention to buy the brand in a negative way. vii