Module 3 Summary

I find it hard to believe we are already half way through our semester. I took several messages away from module 3 even though we did not have as much time as expected to cover the material. I found the use of humor and fear to stand out the most.

Over the past several years I was under the impression that fear based messages were not as effective as emotional, educational, or humor based messages. Therefore, I tend to shy away from this method. This weeks slides provided a refreshing perspective on fear based messages. I found it interesting to see that fear based messages work well with Latino populations and can offer viewers insight into what their life could be like without changing their behaviors. Again, know your populations!!

Next, I was surprised to see that humor is not used more. Only 1/4 of advertising is humor based. Its easy to remember what stands out to myself as a viewer and assume most people will share my sense of humor. For me, humor tends to grab my attention above all other types of messages. Prior to this weeks lecture, I would have used humor liberally. I will definitely conduct formative research prior to creating any humor based messages in the future to ensure the target audience will appreciate and understand the humor.

In summary, the big take away message is to understand your population, understand how to frame messages, and above all, know what type of messages your audience will remember and what will expedite audience buy in/behavior changes.

Cody