Sunday, March 16, 2008

Irritation Advertising

Irritation Advertising is used more in local media campaigns than at a national level. It is involved in making product name recognition by being annoying or obnoxious. Though our commonsense would suggest that irritating ads might never be effective but there had been several special cases which have indicated otherwise. The Head-On ad which shows a woman repeatedly applying Head-On on her forehead is seemingly very annoying but thus strategy seems to have worked. It was found that people actually bought the product to get relief both from their headache and also from the ad itself. For years, Charmin tissue used the annoying Mr. Whipple, a stickling store clerk who commanded the customers, "Please don’t squeeze the Charming." It was found that people disliked the ad but bought the product anyway. Thus, this type of ad worked because of its annoying nature and non-reliance on logic or analogy.