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.

KINDER: how Ferrero mislead Italians for years (and still does). For those who don’t know, Ferrero is an Italian company that produces branded chocolate and confectionary products that are distributed worldwide. It was founded in 1946 and its most renewed brand line of products (excluding Nutella), is Kinder. In Italy, Kinder products are amongst the most sold and Ferrero’s success was constant increasing as I was growing up. Parents, grandparents, baby-sitters, who pick up children from school bring them kinder products as a snack. It’s tradition. With the knowledge I have now, I believe that Ferrero’s immense success is probably due to its powerful marketing strategy.  First of all, In italy you will never find a supermarket that doesn’t display Ferrero products on very visible shelves. They are always placed at optimal heights and effective corners. Moreover, you will always find more next to the tills. This final strategy in particular gives customers a second opportunity for purchase in case they missed out, which in other words means… another opportunity to sell. Customers in this situation will most likely buy if in doubt, for two reasons: 1) due to time restraints they most likely won’t be able to evaluate pros and cons effectively (it is almost their turn) and 2) kinder products are cheap so price is not a factor they may take into account and that may prevent them from buying the products.Secondly, Ferrero perfectly knew their targe t audience and what kinder products were bought for throughout. They were targeting people exactly like my grandparents, who they knew were going be around children after school and before sports activities. So they simply designed packaging accordingly. They achieved this by, showing a large glass of milk on all products, which, obviously, they did not contain (only milk powder is actually present and in very small amounts), which made the products seem like a healthy choice for children, in the eyes of customers. Secondly, by choosing a child as the model, who made the products relatable/similar to the final audience.  Thirdly, Ferrero always focused on tv campaigns to boost sales. Customers saw tv adverts very often, which, due to mere exposure and familiarity effects, made them recognise the products and  consequently increase the chances of purchase References Fang, X., Singh, S., & Ahluwalia, R. (2007). An examination of different explanations for the mere exposure effect. Journal of consumer research, 34, 97-103.Parker, J. R., & Lehmann, D. R. (2011). When shelf-based scarcity impacts consumer preferences. Journal of Retailing, 87, 142-155.

Stevie Wonder’s hit song “Superstition” exemplifies the presence of superstitions even in an era where science and logic dominates the pursuit for knowledge.The Cambridge dictionary online (2016) defines superstition as a “belief that is not based on human reason or scientific knowledge, but is connected with old ideas about magic”, which allows a wide range of  beliefs and practices to fall under this term. Examples include fortune telling, folklore, horoscope, witchcraft and luck-related rituals, all of which are still being practiced today. Beck and Forstmeier (2007) proposed that superstition is born from the adaptive associative learning style of identifying patterns and attempts to explain them. This has been proposed to not only apply to humans but animals as well. Skinner (1948) found that after a period of time, pigeons would perform specific movements when they had been put in a cage with a food hopper that presents food at regular intervals. The pigeons happened to be performing a specific behavior when the food hopper appeared, thus linking that behavior with presentation of food although food was given independent of their behavior. As a result, they repeat the behavior whenever they want food (operant conditioning) due to the representativeness heuristic causing perceived causality between the behavior and food (classical conditioning).This behavior is reflective of many superstitious acts in humans. For example, the customary practice of saying “God bless you” or variations of the phrase following a sneeze which originated from the Middle Ages. Pope Gregory VII was said to have used it as a short prayer against diseases during times of the Great Plague in Europe (Kavka, 1983). The effectiveness of the phrase in warding off diseases is definitely questionable with at least a third of the European population being wiped out by the plague (Benedictow, 2004). However, the practice has been normalised today even though most people using it may not know of the phrase’s function.One possible reason why superstitious acts persist in current society is the effect of performing such acts on the perceived self-efficacy of the person. Damisch, Stoberock and Mussweiler (2010) conducted a series of experiments to test the interaction between superstition, performance and self-efficacy. They found that those who had a lucky charm with them did better at a memory task (Figure 1) as well as reported higher levels of self-efficacy at the task (Figure 2) than those who did not. A follow up experiment showed that this increase in self-efficacy improves performance by increasing task persistence (Figure 3). Figure 1. Mean performance on memory task for participants with and without lucky charms.Figure 2. Mean self-efficacy ratings reported by participants with and without lucky charms.Figure 3. Mean time spent by participants with and without lucky charms on anagram task.The results of Damisch et al.’s (2010) study can be fit into the Theory of Planned Behavior (Figure 4) in explaining how superstitions affect behaviors and attitudes (Ajzen, 1985). Indulging in superstitious acts causes an increase in self-efficacy which results in stronger intentions to do well in a specific task. The strengthened intentions then increases persistent behavior, indirectly increasing task performance. This phenomena causes superstitious people to make an illusory correlation or causality between superstitious acts and their performance, further reinforcing the behavior and increasing the likelihood of displaying such acts.Figure 4. Schematic diagram of the Theory of Planned Behavior.Now that we are informed of the way superstition persists, does it mean effort should be directed into breaking them?  While superstitions are not logical nor cause their intended effect directly, perhaps they should be left alone simply because they do improve performance. Michael Jordan himself always wore his old University of North Carolina shorts during games even if he had to wear them underneath his official uniform, and that did not stop him from becoming one of the best basketball players in the world. Perhaps when you “believe in things that you don’t understand” you may not suffer but instead succeed.   ReferenceAjzen, I. (1985). From intentions to actions: A theory of planned behaviour. In Action control (pp. 11-39). Springer Berlin Heidelberg.Beck, J., & Forstmeier, W. (2007). Superstition and belief as inevitable by-products of an adaptive learning strategy. Human Nature, 18, 35-46.Benedictow, O. J. (2004). The medieval demographic system. In The Black Death, 1346-1353: the complete history (pp. 245-256). Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer.Cambridge dictionaries online. (2016). Retrieved from http://dictionary.cambridge.org/Damisch, L., Stoberock, B., & Mussweiler, T. (2010). Keep your fingers crossed! How superstition improves performance. Psychological Science, 21, 1014-1020.Kavka, S. J. (1983). The sneeze—blissful or baneful?. The Journal of the American Medical Association, 249, 2304-2305.Skinner, B. F. (1948). ‘Superstition’in the pigeon. Journal of experimental psychology, 38, 168-172.