The historical trend of negative appeals in advertising

Abstract

All the advertisements, covering at least a fourth of a page, for food products and beverages, toilet articles, proprietary medicines and goods for medical purposes, and articles for the purpose of personal sanitation, appearing during the first six months of the years 1912, 1917, 1922, and 1927 in The Literary Digest, The Saturday Evening Post, and the Ladies' Home Journal, were classified as to negative appeal. Tables and graphs are presented to show the percentage of those having negative appeal in the advertisement as a whole, in the illustrations, headlines, and text. These showed an increase in the per cent of negative appeal used during this period. These results were contrasted with those of Kitson who used different material. Since negative advertising showed an increase, it must be profitable. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)