Presenter: Joanna Liu

The Duality of Humor: A Mixed-Methods Investigation of Attention Capture and Brand Impression in Advertisement

Type of Presentation: Oral presentation

Abstract

This oral presentation explores the duality of humor in advertisement, focusing on trade-off between attention capture and brand impression. Previous research implies that humor efficiently creates positive attitude (Eisend, 2009), but with eye-tracking technology, Strick et al. (2010) demonstrate that humor can also distracts audiences' attention from vital product information to the humorous content. However, there is still a gap in understanding the precise situations that which humor transitions from a persuasion into a cognitive distraction. This leads to my research questions: quantitatively, to what extent does humorous advertisement leave audiences an impression of the brand compared with non-humorous one, in addition, qualitatively, how do audiences describe the impact of humorous advertisement on their attention and memory. Data will be collected through a mixed-methods. Quantitatively, a randomized and controlled experiment will compare the scores of brand impression between humorous and non-humorous ads. Qualitatively, I will interview audiences and get comments about the humor attraction depth. I expect the quantitative data will show a high positive brand attitude, while qualitative interviews reflect that participants can recall the jokes instead of the brand information like its name. However, there is a limitation that this study focuses on whether the advertisement includes a humor, without the diversity of humor types, such as sarcastic, self-deprecating. Ultimately, this research aims to balance emotion and information in humorous advertisements.

Biography

Joanna is a first-year international student at the University of British Columbia, interested in how language shapes our perception of the world. Outside her academic pursuits, she enjoys photography and badminton. Joanna believes that both language and photography are useful and powerful tools for expression, allowing us to appreciate the world in diversity perspectives.