Are you researching how to advertise?
Then the article is for you. Cute children, happy families, and cats are not necessarily the right way to go.
However, Shock content doesn’t necessarily mean pools of blood, murder, and violence. Shock content can affect our psyche both instantly and for a short time, and after a short period of time. But at the same time, the advertising image will sink deep into the memory, as much as we would like to turn it off.
People who buy
People view shocking content in order to experience new emotions, indirectly relive those events that they would not want to experience in reality. For example, nobody would like to survive a car accident or become the victim of a maniac.
Therefore, after seeing how it actually looks, the Internet user experiences an adrenaline rush and possibly strong emotions. This is why thrillers and horror movies have always been popular.
A large amount of shocking content is uploaded to the internet, as well as a lot of scientific research on the topic of interest of such content is proof of this.
Advertising can shocks us, demonstrating those things that we are not used to seeing every day or have never seen before in our lives. Disregarding aesthetics and sometimes censorship is unusual for us and therefore attracts attention. Most often, shocking content is used in social advertising.
Shocking ad strategy
Shocking advertising, as a kind of trend, is approximately more than 20 years old. But some experts argue that it appeared even earlier and already in the 80s successfully manipulated the minds of people.
Top list of emotions for the shock content
It is important for an advertiser that the content may surprise, get emotions from potential customers, and be remembered.
Compassion
This emotion is mainly caused by social advertising. It is difficult for a person not to be emotionally moved by viewing suffering children, old people and animals.
Fear
This is the easiest emotion to manipulate in advertising. For example, an advertisement for a car, where the main focus is on the safety of the passenger, usually shows accidents with other cars and the consequences of which you can avoid.
Discomfort
Each person has their own comfort zone such as friends, work, familiar routes, favorite food and leisure time. What is seen outside the framework of usual way of life is what will fester in a person’s head. For example, these are unpleasant images of diseases, insects and natural disasters.
Disgust
The same limits of the comfort zone are violated. It can be something annoying, unaesthetic appearance or dirt. What the majority of people will avoid, but will remember.
Shock
Descriptions of tragedies that actually happened are another way to remind you that not everything in the world is safe, which can make you remember a certain advertisement.
Bewilderment
Any content that touches on issues that are not usually discussed, as well as going beyond censorship. More and more often in advertising, there are slogans where obscene words are changed in such a way that, when pronounced, they can resemble obscenities, but in fact they are not prohibited by censorship.
Sadness
Advertising is framed in gray tones, with a corresponding musical. The main thing is to set the correct, sad tone.
Hatred
An Advertiser can easily make us hate any person or phenomenon if he portrays a certain kind of information. Hatred is easy to arouse, but difficult to neutralize. It is common for a person to hate out of habit, even if can hardly remember why you begin to feel it.
In marketing, using shock content is one of the simplest ways to get a user’s attention.
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Covering personal issues that are uncomfortable to discuss with someone is a great publicity stunt.
Awakening the desire to know what will happen next or how it might have happened can also be a good advertising idea! Videos, icons on images also work well.
Fear for your health and life is a hot topic for most people. More and more advertisers are looking to use this trigger.
But what about the positiveness?
Of course, positive is good. But where there is advertising, all paths are good if they lead to a result. Advertising should be as thoughtful as possible and even “shock” should be served correctly and correspond to the product, service, or channel you are producing.
RELATED: How can entertainment content help promote your social media channel?
Photo by Mehdi
