Individual Report

The purpose of this paper is to review an ad campaign and analyze it through the lens of a consumer behavior theory. The goal is to be able to explain the success of an ad campaign by the use of a certain consumer behavior theory. The campaign I chose to analyze is titled, “How BBL bashed through to a lost generation of Australians” which was being advertised by Cricket Australia. The concept of involvement plays a significant role in determining the success of this ad campaign, and determining the consumer behavior theory that best explains the success of the campaign. CA (Cricket Australia) emphasized the importance between the correlation of involvement and behavior change, “The degree of involvement has a very significant effect on consumer behavior.”(slideshare.net) I will first provide a short summary of the campaign and then link the success of the campaign to the Social Judgement Theory.
The concept involvement “has been discussed for over “two decades in the consumer behavior literature and even longer in psychology.” (Muncy, 1984) CA took aim in getting a specified target audience who was not engaged with the sport then raising their awareness about the sport and in turn getting them to take action by watching it through the television, or actually watching the games live. The goal was not simply to increase traffic in their television broadcasts or their live game turn ups, instead CA wanted the fans to ignite a passion for the game of Cricket. Finally after having consumers become more engaged and passionate with the game, additional revenue by having consumers spend more and also acquiring big Television deals. CA wanted to accomplish this by repositioning away from the mindset that cricket was a passive game for older folks.
CA developed a central message for the game that would spread to their target audience and anyone else who may grow interest in the game. The central messaged was, “BBL is more than cricket: it’s block buster entertainment you need to get involved with.” (effies.com.au). They wanted to get consumers more involved with the game so that the game can in turn appear to be more exciting and entertaining.
In order to raise the buzz of the repositioning CA was undergoing, a new media approach was put forward. CA created a sense of involvement by urging consumers to pick a team they felt most passionately about. The passion would derive from their own personality traits being compatible to one of the Cricket teams. Posters, billboards, and other outdoor channels were used to advertise the new stance cricket was presenting. Cricket also released a new television commercial that completely redefined the preconceived idea of what the game was about. Rather sticking with the traditional style of cricket uniforms, CA developed new uniforms with brighter colors and used younger male athletes to star in the commercial. This amplified the renovation that the game was undergoing. Consumers were urged to go on CA’s website to see what team they fit best with in order to ignite a passion between consumer and team. A whole new type of media was introduced in order to attract new target audiences.
The objective that CA had of repositioning themselves to a more exciting and entertaining form as well increasing involvement came out to a great success. The level of interest about the game rose as well as increased amount of people watching the game on both television and live. The difference between the campaign being a success and a great success for CA was the fact that, “the biggest increases in viewership were amongst our [CA] key target audiences.” (effies.com.au) The aims for this campaign were met; CA was successful in persuading consumers that their new position would be a more exciting and entertaining one.
The consumer theory that I chose to best explain how the ad changed behavior is the Social Judgement Theory. Scientists Muzafer Sherif, Carolyn Sherif, and Carl Hovland developed the theory of Social Judgment. (uky.edu) In the early 1960s, social scientists and psychologists sought out methods for “predicting how likely certain persuasive communications would be in altering peoples’ attitudes.” (wisegeek.com) Test participants were asked to take part of experiments where they would compare some aspect of an object, such as weight or color, to another, different object. (wisegeek.com) An example would be if a heavy object was used to measure the weight of other objects, the objects that are not as heavy would be considered light because that certain object would be the set standard for what would be considered to be heavy. The theory, “assumes that people assimilate new information about attitude objects in light of what they already know or feel.” (Solomon 2013, pg. 256) The theory basically says that when people receive messages they automatically compare the message with current held views then decide to accept or reject the message. An important aspect of the theory “is that people differ in terms of the information they will find acceptable or unacceptable.” (Solomon 2013, pg. 256) A concept of this would be latitudes of acceptance and rejection which means that things that fall within the acceptance are favored more than normal and things that fall on the rejection aspect have the possibility of being extra unfavorable.
Recent studies continue on supporting the Social Judgment Theory. One study suggests that the theory could be used to “aid understanding of the survey judgement policy of individual surveyors in terms of the importance they give to building elements and the underlying focus, or theme, of a survey.” (Kempton 2003) The article could amplify survey results and training requirements for surveyors through the use of the theory. Another article states that using social judgment theory is able to advance their “cognitive and sociopolitical legitimacy, reputation, and status” (Bitektine 2011) evaluation perspectives. The article in summary, theorizes that social judgment can result in them making decisions under conditions of bounded rationality. To go in more depth, a recent case study where three friends where having a discussion and all three where sales man, one guy was putting the theory into affect in order to make a decision. The sales guy was a guy selling a Multi Level Marketing Company that deals with a paid version of Facebook. He noticed that every time they reached an anchor point, a point of interest, the sales guy assumed they agreed on all terms, and when they didn’t reach an anchor point, the sales guy would try to bring it back to the anchor point assuming the buyers were completely disagreeing. One guy had a much farther latitude of rejection so he was immediately disinterested while the other friend had a smaller latitude of rejection and ended up being interested all the way to the end of the conversation. The friend who was the most interested ended up being the person who was more ego involved, a key component in the theory. The ego involvement and persuasion are essential in being able to convince a person or group of people to buy into the product or service that is being provided. These two components were key for Cricket Australia.
CA wanted to redefine the attitude the public had of the game, “attitude change is the fundamental objective of persuasive communication.” (encyclopedia.com) The theory was basically broken down into a two-step process. The first step was immediately recognizing what exactly fell in the latitude of acceptance of the target market that CA was aiming for. This was step was concluded that they had to make their consumers more involved and it was accomplished by readjusting their teams by making them have a distinct personality that consumers could relate to. CA concluded that through team branding, consumers would feel more passionate when choosing what team to root for and more involved because that team would fit his or her own personality. The second part was readjusting what the consumers had heard about cricket that was that it was a sport for old folks. They did so by remodeling their ads and putting them out in places where they knew their target market would see. CA also released a video that would be trendy towards their target market. They repositioned themselves as an a form of entertainment rather than just merely a sport. In short, CA used the Social Judgement theory to figure out what lied in the consumer’s latitude of acceptance and readjusted their services to fit that profile. The results were better than expected with their target market viewership being 20% higher than their goal. They repositioned themselves and then executed the marketing portion so that their target market would see this reinvented brand and have a new perception about CA and in the end, “ultimately, an audience that previously had rejected cricket embraced what was still just cricket at its heart.” (effies.com.au)