1. The Impact of Persuasion
Four benefits of studying persuasion

2. The pervasiveness of persuasion
More than $260 billion per year is spent on advertising in the U.S. (Kardes, 2005)
The average person is exposed to persuasive messages per day from the media alone (Rosseli, Skelly, & Mackie, 1995)
The average person watches 1,000 commercials per week (Berger, 2004)
An average of $800 per person is spent on advertising in the U.S. each year (Berger, 2004)

3. Obvious forms of persuasion
A 30 second spot for Super7Bowl XLIII costs $3 million for a 30 second spot.
Product placements in movies and TV amounted to $2.5 billion in 2005 (PQ Media).
Morgan (2005) “between products are inserted in every half hour of television programming”.
Product placement on American Idol

4. Product Placement http://www.brandchannel.com/brandcameo_films.asp
Featured Brands: Apple, Bell, Cadillac, Chock Full O’Nuts, Chrysler, Cisco, Ford, Ford Mustang, Hill-Rom, HP, Lacoste, Listerine, Los Angeles Dodgers, Mercedes, Motorola, Pepsi, Philips, Pontiac, Pyrotect, Rolls Royce, San Francisco Giants, Sharp, The North Face, The Riviera Hotel and Casino, Timberland, Toyota, United States Parachute Association
Featured brands: Apple, Belstaff, BMW, Citibank, Datascope, Ford, Ford Mustang, Hamilton, Honda, Hummer, JVC, Kleenex, Loews, Magnavox, McDonald's, MetLife, Mobil, Nautilus, NBC, Nissan, Panasonic, Ronzoni, Salvatore Ferragamo, Sbarro, Spam, Staples, Tic Tac, Time, Verizon, Viking, XM Satellite Radio

5. Less obvious forms of influence
“buzz” marketing or “stealth” marketing:
Based on word of mouth endorsements
two-thirds of all consumer goods sales are now directly influenced by word-of-mouth (Middleton, 2001)
Endorsements are disguised as personal, spontaneous encounters with a product’s users
Relies on “product seeders” or trendsetters
Ford gave trendsetters free cars and asked them to be seen in trendy places with them

6. Viral marketing in action
YouTube’s staggering popularity was not driven by commercial advertising
Marketers are scrambling to get onto MySpace.com and Facebook.com
Live Strong bracelets became an overnight fashion sensation

7. New media and persuasion
Texting, IM
YouTube
Facebook
Myspace
Twitter
Digg
Podcasting

8. Not so obvious contexts for persuasion
science
art
architecture and environmental design
traffic engineering
Picasso’s Guernica (art as persuasion)

9. Weird persuasion
The town of Clarke, Texas renamed itself Dish, Texas in exchange for 10 years of free satellite TV
GoldenPalace.com paid $25,000 for William Shatner’s kidney stone and $28,000 for a grilled cheese sandwich with an image of the Virgin Mary.

10. Pervasiveness of persuasion
Anti-war persuasion: Getting naked for peace
Billboards
Celebrity endorsers
Infomercials
Logos, insignia
TV commercials
Merchandising
Print ads
Product placement
Spam, pop-up ads
Sponsorship
Telemarketing
Social media

11. 1. the instrumental function
Learning about persuasion assists one in becoming a more effective persuader
The ability to persuade is one important dimension of communication competence
Communication competence involves acting in ways that are perceived as effective and appropriate (Spitzberg & Cupach, 1984)
the fact that you’ve been engaging in persuasion your whole life doesn’t mean you’ve been doing it as well as you can.

12. 2. the knowledge function
Enquiring minds want to know
Learning about persuasion increases one’s understanding of how persuasion works, or “what makes it tick.”
Overcoming habitual persuasion: Individuals are often unaware of their own habitual, reflexive patterns of persuasion.
underlying social forces and rhetorical exigencies that give rise to persuasion

13. 3. the defensive function
Learning about persuasion makes one a more savvy, discerning consumer of persuasive messages
One is less likely to succumb to telemarketers, infomercials, mail-order scams, and high pressure sales tactics.
study of persuasion can expose strategies, tactics, unethical approaches

14. 4. the debunking function
Learning about persuasion helps to dispel folk-wisdom, false stereotypes, and outmoded concepts of how persuasion functions
Example: gaze avoidance and deception
Persuasion research has yielded a host of non-obvious, counter-intuitive findings
Example: logical-emotional dichotomy