A STUDY OF SOCIAL ADVERTISING

(With special reference to its effectiveness in Andhra Pradesh)

I. Introduction:
The word advertising comes form the latin word "advertere meaning to turn the minds of
towards". Some of the definitions given by various authors are:
According to William J. Stanton, "Advertising consists of all the activities involved in
presenting to an audience a non-personal, sponsor-identified, paid-for message about a product
or organization.
"According to American Marketing Association "advertising is any paid form of non-personal
presentation and promotion of ideas, goods and services by an identified sponsor.
Advertising is used for communicating business information to the present and prospective
customers. It usually provides information about the advertising firm, its product qualities, place
of availability of its products, etc. Advertisement is indispensable for both the sellers and the
buyers. However, it is more important for the sellers. In the modern age of large scale
production, producers cannot think of pushing sale of their products without advertising them.
Advertisement supplements personal selling to a great extent. Advertising has acquired great
importance in the modern world where tough competition in the market and fast changes in
technology, we find fashion and taste in the customers.
Social Advertising: What does social advertising mean? It could be said that social advertising
is a younger sister of commercial advertising, which is one of the tools of marketing
communication mix. Social advertising identifies social problems and it informs about them, but
it does not try to offer immediate solutions. Social advertising does not promote any products,
firms or services; its main goal is to evoke a sense of responsibility or to make people do a
change in their behavior and attitudes.
Social Advertising is the first form of advertising that systematically leverages historically
"offline" dynamics, such as peer-pressure, friend recommendations, and other forms of social
influence.

Social Marketing Sells a Behavior Change to a targeted Group of Individuals.

Accepts a New Behavior

Modify a Current Behavior

Reject a potential Behavior

Abandon an Old Behavior

It's about applying marketing and advertising principles to promote social issues and bringing
about positive behavioral change.
Definition:
Dejan tajnberger says that "social advertising must hit the head and then must hit the heart of
consumers.() Its main task is to make a man think about himself, it aims to reach into peoples
conscience and to help somebody"( Museum of Art, Beneov, 2004, [online]).
The first definition of social advertising is taken from American Marketing Association website,
where social advertising is described as "The advertising designed to educate or motivate target
audience to undertake socially desirable actions" (Marketing Power, [online]).
2. Importance of the study:
Social advertising is also known as Public Service Announcement. PSA are made basically to
make people aware of the societal values. To make us realize that what is good for our society.
There are a number of social issues on which awareness is required in the society. Government
on a regular basis gives messages to stop practicing the Child Marriage, early marriage,
Pollution, Child Labour, Child Abuse, and Female Foeticide etc.
Public service advertising is a potentially powerful tool in the effort to address the many public
health and other social challenges facing this country. Whether its tackling childhood obesity,
recruiting community volunteers, raising awareness about global warming, promoting HIV
testing or raising money for medical research, PSAs have the potential to reach a large audience
to get the message out.

Social Advertising represents ad formats that engage the social context of the user viewing the ad
whereas in traditional, non-social, in social advertising the ad is targeted based on what it knows
about the individual users social network.
Today the advertising world is witnessing a sudden increase in advertisements with social
messages. Social advertising is all about applying marketing and advertising principles to
promote various social issues, such as healthcare, wildlife protection, environment protection,
etc. Traditionally, only the government and non-profitable organizations have been involved in
promoting these issues. The scenario has, however, changed with many commercial
organizations also initiating campaigns for social causes.
Lot of research has been done on social advertising in western countries but the developed
countries are radically different from the developing countries like India. The developed
countries have already found solutions to the problems and moved on to other issues while the
developing countries are still grappling with the basic social evils like poverty, illiteracy, health
etc. The meaning and scope of social marketing in developed countries is markedly different
from that in developing nations. Therefore, the study on social advertisements from the Indian
perspective is most important. The present study is an attempt to study the effectiveness of social
ads in Andhra Pradesh.
III. Review of literature:
Kelley Eugene J (1971) observed that the traditional role of marketing and its scope has changed.
While earlier marketing was limited only to the selling of products, now it has evolved to
embrace various disciplines like Sociology, Psychology etc. To strengthen this idea he cites the
example of using technology to promote advertising. He advocates the use of advertising to
promote certain beneficial ideas in society. To the marketers he suggests that everyone would
benefit if they designed advertisements for social ideas in an appealing manner so that they can
be adopted by the people for their betterment readily.

Mehta and Purvis (2000) evaluated how consumer attitudes to advertising in general affect
response to specific advertising. The study answers these questions: Do general attitudes towards
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advertising influence advertising reactions? If so, then in what ways? Findings of the study
reveal that respondents with more favorable attitudes toward advertising recalled a higher
number of advertisements the day after exposure and were more persuaded by them.
OLwin et al. (2002) focused on organ donation scene in Singapore and explored the range of
marketing activities and responsibility of the primary organ procurement agency in Singapore,
the National Kidney Foundation. They are of the view that there is a positive relationship
between altruism and attitude toward organ donation, and those who sign up as organ donors to
relay the facts about organ donation to family and friends. Web sites can serve as useful
destinations for informational seekers. The misperceptions of people that organ donation would
Interfere in after life or reincarnation can be reduced by public awareness and education. All
organ procurement agencies should institute a strong marketing program aimed at changing
attitudes.
Randy W. Elde and Ruth A. Shults (2004) conducted a systematic review of the effectiveness of

mass media campaigns for reducing alcohol impaired driving (AID) and alcohol-related crashes
for the Guide Community Preventive Services (Community Guide).In the study they found that
there was no clear difference in the effectiveness of campaigns that used legal deterrence messages and
those that used social and health consequences messages and the economic analyses of campaign

effects indicated that the societal benets were greater than the costs.
Jones et al. (2005) examined the results achieved and the cost involved in the immunization
campaigns launched in the United States of America, with special reference to the state of
Oklahoma. They found that according to the report of the united nation Small Pox had been
eradicated from the world and immunization programs have significantly reduced the number of
cases in the United States. Measles too had all but disappeared from America. But later events
were to refute these contentions. In 1990, 97 deaths from measles were reported and in 1989 an
outbreak of measles claimed many lives. These outbreaks were attributed to breakdowns in the
vaccine distribution system and/or poverty. But later research showed that this was not so.
Parents delayed completing the course doing so only when the child was about to go to school.

The authors stated that it would be beneficial for each state to design its own campaigns to reach
the target immunization rates.
Jones and Iverson (2006) found that breast cancer is the most prevalent form of cancer in
Australia. Where women are confronted by the threat of this malady they have to face numerous
difficulties and take many decisions. They have to be continuously aware and vigilant to check
for signs of this disease. They also have to decide whether to participate in screening programs
and to take up the most effective method of combating cancer when diagnosed with it. The
authors are of the opinion that Social Marketing can play an important role in controlling this
disease by designing effective communication on this issue. This can be done with the help of
two disciplines: Marketing and Behavioural Science. These can be used most effectively through
a systematic approach wherein the segment audience is targeted by age and literacy level and
clear objectives are set and Theory of Planned Behavior is utilized for developing the message
and last but not least the findings are used to enhance the programs for a better use in the future.
Evans (2008) voiced that social marketing has been successful at changing a wide range of
health behaviors especially in the domain of tobacco use, nutrition and physical activity HIV
AIDS etc. But social marketing faces a major challenge and at disadvantage as compared with
commercial marketing because social marketing lacks funds, It can succeed only if it develops
more socially powerful and persuasive competing messages, multiple channels and focus on
social and health policies that affect individual behavior. Social marketing faces a daunting task
in the light of rising media use by children. The policy makers can follow the same policies as
followed in tobacco control, diet control and physical activity.
Ganeshasundaram and Henley (2009) conducted a study to investigate the effectiveness of
Super nanny reality television programme in teaching parenting techniques. For this, they
conducted a telephonic interview of 400 western Australian adults. After submitting the
information about the demographics, they had to respond to a number of questions related to
teaching parenting techniques as shown in the reality show Super nanny. They found that this
programme was watched by parents, children and grandparents. The majority of the respondents

watched this show for information and was able to recollect many parenting techniques. Most of
them had also tried some of the techniques shown in the programme. They concluded that reality
television can be used to effectively market social messages.
.

Janet (2011) explored the tussle between voluntary social marketing and regulating social
marketing. He concedes that social marketing aims at changing behavior without the use of
coercion. Any change in behavior has to be voluntary. But during his research he found that
many times even though the target audience appreciated the message in the advertisement and
also recognized the importance of its incorporation in their lifestyles, they were reluctant to
change their behavior or habits.
Helmig and Thaler (2011) conducted a survey to examine the role of social marketing in
combating social problems that are prevalent in any society. Towards this aim they selected 337
articles related to various aspects of social marketing. These articles dealt with social issues like
smoking, using contraceptives, health behavior, drug and alcohol use, etc. the most important
factor in determining the effectiveness of any social campaign is the methodology adopted. In
their study they found that most of the methodology applied was experimental in nature. Most
papers gauged the effectiveness of social marketing by measuring the behavioural change while
the others focused on intention change. They suggested that since social marketing is a multidisciplinary field, the use of state of the art in these fields would be of immense benefit. They
also recommended the elaboration of holistic models for the same due to the presence of
theoretical underlying models in any approach.
Wayman et al (2012) conducted an online survey among 600 social marketing professionals
who came to attend second world non-profit and social marketing conference.. The findings of
the survey suggest that social marketing has been widely recognized and applied around the
world in achieving socially desirable changes. The majority of the respondents agreed that social
marketing is at a critical stage of its development because of growing and diverse social
problems and challenges.
Ferguson and Phau (2013) conducted an investigation into the fear factor as initialized by antismoking campaigns. The results showed that fear existed in the minds of the respondents and
they were sensitive to the effects of smoking shown in advertisements. What the authors found
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from the results was that young adolescents were more sensitive to the fears than young men
who were more fixed in their habits and attitude towards smoking. They suggested that antismoking campaigns should be more directed towards the adolescents as they showed a more
positive response towards anti-smoking campaigns.
IV. Research Gap:
This study focused on rural and urban areas, nearly seventy five per cent of the population lives
in villages and this population is characterized by low literacy levels, fatalistic attitude, less
means and less exposure to mass media. Rural population not only differs in these characteristics
but in ideology also. But it is surprising to note that there are very few studies that focus on these
factors pertaining and particular to the rural populace. As there is a huge gap between the
sensibilities and levels of awareness of the urban and rural population, social advertisements
need to cater to them. But the same types of advertisements are being broadcast for both the
urban and rural population. It is seen that there is no clear cut segmentation while delivering
social messages through ads. Because of this lacuna, the rural people are sometimes not even
aware of the issues and their seriousness. Thus they not only fail to see the relevance of the issue
in their lives, but the social advertisements also fail to have the desired effect on the minds of the
target audience.
Therefore, a humble effort has been made through this research to find out the effectiveness,
impact, awareness, perception and effective media of social advertisements in the urban and rural
context. Awareness throws light on the knowledge about social ads, perception talks about social
issues favored by people and reasons for those issues to get preference. By knowing the
effectiveness that will guide the ad makers and other agencies involved in social marketing how
to use awareness and impact to make advertisements more influential. The litmus test of any
social advertising campaign is its ability to initiate people into something new i.e. to bring about
behavioral change which has been also studied in detail. There are very few studies regarding
social advertisements in India. This research study will try to fill these gaps.

Research Methodology:
This study is an effort to understand the effectiveness of social advertisements that brings desired
change in people. For this purpose, level of awareness and perception of respondents, their
likeability and factors which contribute to impact have been studied. The effectiveness of social
advertising and the level of behavioral changes which social advertising brings have also been
studied. In order to develop a sound theoretical framework for this research, a review of
literature has been undertaken. It revealed that there are very few studies regarding social
advertisements in India. Given the fact that social advertisement is important to influence values
and attitudes, this research gap needs to be addressed. An effort has been made to include the
social advertisements which are very important in the Indian scenario

Objectives of the study:

1. To study the trends and developments in social advertising in India
2. To study the effectiveness of Social Advertising in bringing behavioural change.
3. To study the awareness and perception of the respondents regarding various social
advertising campaigns.
4. To study the impact of social advertisement on demographic and psychographic factors of
respondents
5. To find the effective media for social advertisement in rural and urban areas .

Research Design:

Research Statement:
The problem studied in the present context is entitled - "A study of social advertiseing-with
special reference to its effectiveness in Andhra Pradesh." The research work focuses on
effectiveness of social advertisements that brings desired change in society.
Nature and sources of Data:
The study covers both primary and secondary data. Primary data was collected with the help of
questionnaire which was distributed and collected from the respondents from rural and urban
areas of Andhra Pradesh.
Sample Design:
Population: - Population includes people from rural and urban areas of Andhra Pradesh..
Sample Unit: - Villages and towns of, Andhra Pradesh.
Sampling technique: - Multistage Cluster Sampling.
Sample size: The sample size of 2000 respondents each was taken from four districts of
Andhra Pradesh , from each district five villages and five towns are taken by using simple
random sampling and again each from village and town 50 sample are taken for the study.

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