A second goal of marketing communication is persuasion. Using persuasion, marketing professionals can stimulate consumers existing desire or create new desire to purchase a product. Talented persuaders can also attract buyers away from other sellers in the market. For nearly a century, researchers in psychology, the cognitive and neural sciences, communication, marketing, and advertising, have scientifically studied how persuasive messages can shape and change people's behaviors and attitudes. Researchers have many theories and have performed tens of thousands of scientific studies on this subject. The art and science behind persuasion is too big of a topic for this course. But in this lesson, I will focus on the impact that digital media has on persuasive marketing communication. At the most basic level, three major components of communication affect the process of persuasion: The characteristics of the perceived message sender, such that their credibility and attractiveness, the content of the message, including its strength and appeal, and the audiences capacity, motivation and willingness to process the message. Social psychologists, Carl Hovland and his colleagues, Irving Janis and Harold Kelley, first articulated this fundamental model of attitude change in 1953, when they studied the conditions under which people change their attitudes and opinions in response to persuasive messages. Their theoretical framework later became known as the Yale attitude change model. The Yale attitude change approach has not only formed a foundation for scientists to understand the process of persuasion, it also helped companies increase the effectiveness of their marketing and advertising strategies. Research has found that persuasive messages are more effective when they are delivered by an attractive, trustworthy, or relatable communicator. Based on this knowledge, marketers can manipulate the perceived source of a communication to consumers in order to achieve their persuasive goals. Widely used marketing tactics, such as using celebrity spoke persons, experts, endorsements, and user testimonials are all examples of this strategy. Media institutions can also be a source of persuasion. Although the main function of the media is to deliver and present information, the audience also perceives them as a source of communication. Media scholar and philosopher, Marshall McLuhan, famously declared that, the medium is the message. The media audience of past generations have developed mental shortcuts, such as, if it's in the news, it must be true, to help them quickly assess the credibility of information they receive from the media. This type of mental shortcuts is especially useful when they do not have much knowledge of the topic themselves. In marketing, savvy public relations specialists can leverage the credibility of news media to earn their companies or clients positive exposure. In the era of mass media and under the mass communication model of few to many, marketers manipulations of messages, perceived source of information, was an effective persuasion strategy. Because marketers in the few media institutions could control the messaging process from creation to delivery. Today, new media technologies have enabled individualized, interactive, and social communication at a massive scale. Some scholars refer to this new model of communication as the many-to-many model of communication. The many-to-many communication pattern is unique to the digital and online communication environment. Only there individuals can reach and engage a mass audience, but communicate to them with personalized messages as they were in a interpersonal or one-to-one communication setting. At the same time, on digital platforms such as social media, individualized, and personal communication can also serve the purpose of mass communication. A friend posting a happy birthday video she created for you on your Facebook page, is meant for you. But it can be seen by all your Facebook friends and perhaps even the whole world. This blurring of different types of communication to multiple audience in social and digital media is known as context collapse. Context collapse has upended the assumptions that underlie many conventional marketing wisdom. Most notably, the businesses and mass media institutions no longer have exclusive control over persuasive messaging. Any popular individual on social media can become a trusted spoke person for a product. A picture on Instagram or a short video on YouTube can have the same persuasive effect as a multi-million-dollar TV commercial. A group of carefully selected online influencers can become an army of brand advocates. They can save marketers tens of millions of dollars in securing celebrity endorsements and sponsorship deals. On the flip side, since anyone with a social media account can discuss a brand or product and reach millions, a negative product review or a renting tweet about an unpleasant consumer experience can instantly bring down the credibility of a brand that had taken years and millions of dollars to build.
