2016 has been a memorable year across the globe, from Brexit to Protest against South Korean President, and from the Turkish coup d’état attempt to the Nice attack. Somehow Trump became the President of the US by winning 278 electoral votes, but how come Hilary Clinton did not win the election despite having so many celebrity endorsements?Figure 1. Michelle Obama, Barack Obama, ex-competitor Bernie Sanders, Katy Perry supporting Hilary Clinton.Figure 2. Leonardo DiCaprio, Beyonce, Lady Gaga, George Clooney supporting Hilary Clinton. Figure 3. Kendall Jenner, Miley Cyrus, Kim Kardashian, Kanye West, Oprah supporting Hilary Clinton.As shown above, Hilary Clinton was able to get support from both celebrities and famous politicians. Research indicates that celebrity endorsements have positive and effective impact on preference from the audience (Dean and Biswas, 2001; Silvera, & Austad, 2004), and celebrities are viewed as highly trustworthy, believable, and persuasive in terms of endorsing the targets (Freiden, 1984). Curiously, with all the celebrity supporting Clinton, why didn’t she win? Well, the reason is partly due to the ‘Just-Plain-Folks’ propaganda and peripheral route in the elaboration likelihood model.1.     ‘Just-Plain-Folks’ propagandaPoliticians often act as plain folks rather than a posh and wealthy congressman, in order to communicate the message of ‘I am just like you and I understand you’ across to the audience that they want the votes from. When presidential candidates act ordinarily, down-to-earth and participate in normal activities, it gives the voters a sense of trust and comfort, believing that the candidate and the voters share common grounds and they therefore should agree with the candidate. People vote for political candidates that they feel empathic towards (McCue & Gopoian, 2000), and people are more likely to show empathic concerns and helping behaviour to someone who they believe are similar to them (Batson, Duncan, Ackerman, Buckley & Birch, 1981). In the experiment, when the participants are told that the sufferer had similarities in attitudes, they chose to offer help and replace the confederate that was given electric shocks, even in situations where participants could easily leave without being irritated and stressed by observing the sufferer’s painful appearance. If people felt that they are similar to Clinton, they would have been more empathic towards her, and hence potentially helped her by voting for Clinton in the election.Figure 4. Results from Batson, Duncan, Ackerman, Buckley & Birch (1981).However, seeing celebrities posting pictures with Hilary Clinton on multiple social media sites, voters tend to gain the impression that Hilary Clinton is another one of those wealthy politicians instead of a more practical plain folk comparable to voters, therefore the empathy/similarity votes that could’ve belonged to Clinton went to Trump (or maybe not).2.     Elaboration likelihood model plays a big part in the election Campaigns fundamentally change voters’ decisions and propaganda techniques prime people’s view on candidates (Iyengar & Simon, 2000; Druckman, 2004). To determine candidate liking and vote choice, voters’ perceptions of character and personal attributes have large impact on the vote (Aylor, 1999). Also, voters evaluate presidential candidates on the basis of a set of general criteria, which they use to judge the candidates’ personal attributes before voting (Miller et al., 1986). Stokes (1966) argued that personality best explains for shifts in the vote from one presidential election to the next, which is an example of voters utilizing peripheral route of persuasion in the elaboration likelihood model (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986). When voters go down the peripheral route of persuasion, they use cues such as characteristics and attractiveness of the candidate to make the voting decision, and decisions are generally unrelated to the logics of the presidential speech or partisan quality. Figure 5. Results from Aylor (1999). Figure 6. Two distinct routes in the Elaboration Likelihood Model.Surprisingly, research has shown that highly educated individuals are more prone to use the peripheral route by focusing more on personal attributes of the candidate and using personality categories rather than the candidate quality to make the decision, compared to less educated individuals (Glass, 1985; Miller et al., 1986). The reason might be because educated individuals view political elections sceptically, as policy making depends not only on the president. Hence, educated individuals would pay more attention to the candidates’ personal attributes as they give a true and clear picture of the potential president. Figure 7. Results from Glass (1985).Therefore, Trump’s very ‘strong’ personality attracts voters’ attention, and those who were using the peripheral route of persuasion would ignore the candidate quality of Trump, despite some of his messages and opinions on multiple issues were disrespectful and outrageous. In other words, if voters were attracted by Trump’s personal attributes and his unique enthusiasm, they would have forgotten about Clinton and supported Trump instead, and it seems like they have. Although Hilary Clinton did a good job getting support from all of her celebrity friends, these factors might have prevented her from becoming the president. Next time she runs for presidency, it is best to remind her of taking a Behaviour Change course before any campaign begins.Sijia Zhou (Katie)ReferencesAylor, B. (1999). Source credibility and presidential candidates in 1996: The changing nature of character and empathy evaluations. Communication Research Reports, 16(3), 296-304.Batson, C. D., Duncan, B. D., Ackerman, P., Buckley, T., & Birch, K. (1981). Is empathic emotion a source of altruistic motivation?. Journal of personality and Social Psychology, 40(2), 290.Dean, D. H., & Biswas, A. (2001). Third-party organization endorsement of products: An advertising cue affecting consumer prepurchase evaluation of goods and services. Journal of Advertising, 30(4), 41-57.Druckman, J. N. (2004). Priming the vote: Campaign effects in a US Senate election. Political Psychology, 25(4), 577-594.Freiden, J. B. (1984). Advertising spokesperson effects-An examination of endorser type and gender on 2 audiences. Journal of advertising research, 24(5), 33-41.Glass, D. P. (1985). Evaluating presidential candidates: Who focuses on their personal attributes?. Public Opinion Quarterly, 49(4), 517-534.Iyengar, S., & Simon, A. F. (2000). New perspectives and evidence on political communication and campaign effects. Annual review of psychology, 51(1), 149-169.McCue, C. P., & Gopoian, J. D. (2000). Dispositional empathy and the political gender gap. Women & Politics, 21(2), 1-20.Miller, A. H., Wattenberg, M. P., & Malanchuk, O. (1986). Schematic assessments of presidential candidates. American Political Science Review, 80(02), 521-540.Petty, R. E., & Cacioppo, J. T. (1986). The elaboration likelihood model of persuasion. In Communication and persuasion (pp. 1-24). Springer New York.Silvera, D. H., & Austad, B. (2004). Factors predicting the effectiveness of celebrity endorsement advertisements. European Journal of marketing, 38(11/12), 1509-1526.Stokes, D. E. (1966). Some dynamic elements of contests for the presidency. American Political Science Review, 60(01), 19-28.

Framing effect  is one of the significant components in the marketing field. The L’Oréal advertisement is one of the best examples of framing effect.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n43sPhVL1uMFraming effect is considered to occur when equivalent description of a decision problem lead to systematically different decisions. (Shafir & LeBoeuf 2002.)  In other words, it means that customer’s decisions can be affected by any phrases in the advertisement. The Loreal campaign for marketing its brand of women’s cosmetics is very popular for its phrase “Because you are worth it”. This phrase affect issues that women may have about self-esteem and beauty. It also addresses the issue of a woman’s independence. Why does a woman buy the cosmetics form Loreal? It is because they are worth it !.There are some empirical evidences for the framing effect. Levin, Schneider, and Gaeth’s (1998) found a valence- consistent shift. This means that objects described in terms of a positively valenced proportion are generally evaluated more favorably than objects described in terms of the corresponding negatively valenced porption.For example, when the participants were exposed to those phrases,A; If this program is adopted, 200 people will be savedB: If this program is adopted, there is a one-third probability that 600 people will be saved and a two-thirds probability that no people will be saved.they tend to prefer the sure thing when given options A and B.On the other hand, when the subjects were exposed  to phrases likeC; If this program is adopted, 400 people will dieD: If this program is adopted, there is a one- third probability that nobody will die and a two-thirds probability that 6000 people will diethe participants tend to choose more risky one for this negative phrases containing the word “die”.This empirical evidence clearly supports how important it is to have a positive or a negative phrase in the advertisement. Depending on the phrases, the customer’s behaviour can be changed.ReferencesShafir, E. & R. A. LeBoeuf. 2002. “Rationality.” Annual Review of Psychology 53: 491- 517.Levin, I. P., & G. J. Gaeth. 1988. “How Consumers are Affected by the Framing of Attribute Information Before and After Consuming the Product.” Journal of Consumer Research 15: 374-378

Following the release of the company Jack Will’s Spring Catalogue was released in this year of 2016, accompanied by a television advert, the advertisement project was banned. The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) deemed it inappropriate due to it’s overt sexual suggestiveness that may directly or indirectly reach audiences younger than Jack Will’s target demographic of 18-24. This uncontrollable sexual exposure, said to be potentially influential to impressionable youth, was enough to persuade the marketing team of the company to completely withdraw the advertising campaign to prevent a potential drop in sales. The sexualisation of this banned advert as well as the reasoning behind banning it both portray very clearly the effects of using sex as visual persuasion tool and how it is potentially dangerous to use.King, McClelland, and Furnham (2015) conducted a study addressing a similar topic which in fact, questions whether ‘sex sells’ and it’s effectiveness in viewer recall. In the context of Petty and Cacioppo’s (1986) Elaboration Likelihood Model, the message was well retained by the target audience of 18-52 through testing free recall, prompted recall, and brand recognition. This a result of sexual appeal or visual motivation causing a shallow and short lived, yet immediate influencing change.Fig.1: Results of the King, McClelland, and Furnham study regarding the recall measure of different             variants of sexual exposure in television and advertisements.As evidently put in Figure 1, the results clearly shoe a higher measure of recall of the brand itself, and the nature of the imagery freely and when prompted when a sexual advertisement is contrasted after following a non-sexual programme. This evidently shows us how that in spite of standard deviations weakening the effect, the conducted Repeated Measures ANOVAs reveal that sexual advertisements did significantly influence peoples short term recall, of not just the imagery, but the branding/ message being intentionally advertised. This is the understandable effect we can see Jack Will’s aspired to achieve.However, in spite of a potential peripheral effect, this campaign overlooks the over side of the Elaboration Likelihood Model in which those that are motivated to perceive the advertisement critically. As sexual imagery is a topic of controversy, being perceived as inappropriate to specific audiences, it has a boundary in which, if crossed, becomes too visibly inappropriate and taboo, and becomes more of a sexual statement rather than a tool for expressing the appeal of the message/ products at hand. The advert was evidently over the line, as put by the APA, and the marketing was commented on as unnecessary. Evidently, sex is something to use with caution in persuasion.REFERENCES:King, J., McClelland, A., & Furnham, A. (2015). Sex really does sell: The recall of sexual and non‐sexual television advertisements in sexual and non‐sexual programmes. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 29(2), 210-216.Petty, R. E., & Cacioppo, J. T. (1986). The elaboration likelihood model of persuasion. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (vol. 19, pp. 123-205). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.