In China, advertisements posted by online influencers on social media platforms have become a new trend of marketing. Through the lenses of art-infusion theory and the entertainment overcoming resistance model, this study focuses on a specific advertisement posted by a Chinese online influencer and explores whether this advertisement appeals to Chinese young people and why. Five focus group sessions were conducted with 29 Asian college students to explore the impact of artwork in advertising on participants' attitudes toward the ad and the advertised product. The results showed that 1) participants' attitudes toward the ad were affected by the presence of artwork, and 2) entertainment features such as narrative structure and liking of the author contributed to overcoming resistance to advertising. The findings of the study suggest practical implications for advertising professionals as well as art promoters. / Master of Arts / Mengzhe Gu, as one of the most popular online influencers with over one million followers on Chinese social media, applies a special advertising tactic in his blog advertisement: he associates background stories of artists or paintings with advertised products. Despite the popularity of these ads, researchers have not yet investigated the effectiveness of these ads or explored the reason why these ads appeal to the audience. This paper thus aims to explore whether Gu’s advertisement appeals to people and why. We conducted five focus group sessions to discuss the impact of artwork and entertainment features in Gu’s advertising with 29 Chinese students. The results showed that 1) participants’ attitudes toward the ad were affected by the presence of artwork, and 2) entertainment features such as narrative structure and liking of the author contributed to overcoming resistance to advertising.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/78373 |
| Date | 19 July 2017 |
| Creators | Peng, Huihui |
| Contributors | Communication, Ivory, Adrienne Holz, Waggenspack, Beth M., Ivory, James Dee |
| Publisher | Virginia Tech |
| Source Sets | Virginia Tech Theses and Dissertation |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | ETD, application/pdf, application/pdf, application/pdf |
| Rights | In Copyright, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
Page generated in 0.0021 seconds