Abstract:
Advertisers often shy away from graphic, emotionally-charged programming under the
assumption that the programming intensity will impair viewer recall, as well as negatively
influence viewer perceptions. This paper empirically investigates this assumption and finds that
advertisers are at least partially mistaken. We utilize war news programming as a fitting
emotional context in which to embed advertising stimuli. Results from a four-group after-only
experiment show: 1) more intense programming reduces the ability of both proponents and
opponents of the war to recall advertisements; 2) proponents of the war are more likely to recall
ads in lower-intensity programming than are opponents of the war; 3) the degree of polarization
for or against the war (“against” versus “strongly against” and “support” versus “strongly
support”) has a significant impact on recall for proponents, but not for opponents; and (4) across
all sub-groups of viewers, multiple measures of viewer perceptions (ad effectiveness, product
value, product quality, purchase intentions, affective connections to the firm) reveal no negative
effects from viewing ads during intense war programming.
