Consumer attitude study of five awarded advertisements in 2016's Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity

Consumer attitude is the mental position a person takes to a topic, person, or an event which influences his/her feelings, perceptions, learning processes and behaviors. It can be categorized as affect, cognition and conation. Consumer' positive or negative attitude towards a product decides mostly whether it is worthy of buying or not. As a result, adopting suitable marketing strategies to bring up positive consumer attitude is definitely an important but difficult task for marketers.  

The Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity is a global event for those working in the creative communications, advertising and related fields. It is considered the largest gathering of worldwide advertising professionals, designers, digital innovators and marketers. In 2016, there were many advertisements awarded. In this article, I will pick three of them to analyze and find out the strategies they use to effect consumer attitudes.

1. Affect, Cognition and Conation

Affect is certain feeling customers hold towards brands or other subjects. Marketers sometimes will not directly present what products they are selling. They create scenarios which may arouse audiences' moving, amusing, sad or other feelings.

Cognition is people's knowledge, understanding and interpretation of a topic, person or thing. It can be also called as belief. Marketers will sometimes provide audiences with information through telling a story, news or facts. After that, audiences will have basic knowledge which can help marketers promote their products or services better.

Conation is people's intention, action or behavior. It is about what consumers plan to do with respect to the product, service or brand. Sometimes marketers will let target customers try their products first through trial products or coupons. After customers use the product, they will find out whether it is worthy for them to repurchase or not.

2. Cognitive- Affective- Conative

For example, the advertisement of LUKI's life-saving school bag, won Bronze Award among all direct sales' ones.

(video: http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMTczNzE4NjA2OA==.html?firsttime=1)

At the beginning of the advertisement, it tells audience a news about children in some villages of Columbia have to cross rivers everyday to get to schools which is really dangerous. It arouses audiences' awareness of this situation and then provides a solution which is the creative life-saving school bag. Through this way, the advertisement gives the audiences basic idea of what is this bag made for and then it continues to explain more about the design and use of the bag. Finishing the cognition part, the advertisement also presents scenes where staffs of the company go to the villages and teach children there how to use the bag which helps build a great brand image and will definitely affect audiences in a good way. Combining all these feelings together, people will be more willing to buy this bag.

3. Affective-Cognitive-Conative

For example, an advertisement of Cardstore, an American store selling holiday cards, won the Creative Effect Bronze Award.

The purpose of this advertisement is to ask people to buy the Mother's Day cards. But instead of directly saying that, it firstly arouses audiences' curiosity about what exactly this ridiculous job is and when the answer turns out to be "Mom", audiences are affected and moved by the idea behind. After affect part, it is time to tell audiences the products which is the cognitive part. Then with these emotion and information, audiences may easier get to be last step and become consumers of the card.

4. Conative-Cognitive-Affective

For example, an advertisement of Egypt Vodafone, the largest mobile phone company in Egypt, won the Outdoor Advertisement Gold Award.

(video: http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XNTczMDQyNjg0.html?firsttime=0)

This advertisement is actually about an outdoor campaign. Marketers use mirco-recharge phone cards to replace small changes in shops. When people go to these small shops to buy something, they will get several cards as changes. As a result, when they accumulate a lot of cards, they will go to Vodafone or recharge counters around or in the shops to recharge their phones. This campaign brings a huge increase of revenue. It is a sample of letting target customers have and try the product and then when they become familiar and feel satisfied with it, they will continue use it and probably become loyal customer. 

In conclusion, manipulating these three consumer attitudes well is the key to successful marketing. Consumer attitudes determine consumer behaviors. Marketers are the people who have to build or rebuild consumer attitudes in order to let consumers accept and even fall in love with products and brands.

Jun XIN, Nicole

1155082004

References:

1. Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannes_Lions_International_Festival_of_Creativity

2. 2016戛纳广告节获奖作品

http://iwebad.com/news/1152.html

3. Attitudes

https://www.consumerpsychologist.com/cb_Attitudes.html