Promoting sustainability on Instagram: How sponsorship disclosures and benefit appeals affect the credibility of sinnfluencers

Purpose When promoting sustainable products on Instagram, influencer marketing can be an effective tool when they are perceived as credible because consumers usually cannot verify the sustainability of products themselves. However, when they disclose their posts as an ad, their credibility might be weakened which can lead to less interest in the product. Moreover, influencer marketing strategies usually focus on personal benefits and experiences, while advertisements for sustainable products emphasize altruistic motives. The purpose of this study is to investigate if the interest in the product and the credibility might be affected by such different benefit appeals. Design/methodology/approach A 2 (sponsorship: no disclosure vs disclosure) × 2 (benefit: ecological vs personal) between-subjects experiment with influencer posts promoting a sustainable travel accommodation was conducted to investigate how ad disclosures and benefits appeals affect the credibility of sustainability influencers and the interest in sustainable products among young consumers. Findings Disclosures and benefits appeals have no direct impact on the interest in further information about the product but on the credibility of the influencer. If an Instagram post for a sustainable accommodation was labeled as sponsored, the perceived expertise and likeability of the influencer were diminished. However, highlighting personal benefits instead of ecological benefits increased the influencers’ credibility compared to appeals emphasizing benefits for the environment. Originality/value In addition to sponsorship disclosures, other strategies of advertising literacy might be required to show young consumers how to cope with influencer advertising. Furthermore, it seems to be more important that influencers are popular and liked by their followers than that they are trusted.

Gender Representation in TV Advertising for Children: Children’s perceptions and advertising literacy

Children are becoming consumers at increasingly younger age and are more influential in consumption decisions within the family. Television still is one of the main ways they are exposed to advertising. Our study focuses on gender stereotypes on TV advertisements for children and combines a content analysis of advertisements and focus groups with children between 7 and 12 years old. Our findings show that, during a period of 3 months, about 75% of TV advertisements for children contain gender stereotypes. In addition, children are able to recognize such stereotypes, and in general do not identify or agree with the way each gender is portrayed. Finally, children display good levels of advertising literacy, as they are able to recognize the intentions of the brands in the commercials.

CONCEPTUAL ADVERTISING LITERACY LEVEL OF CHILDREN IN INDIA

Market for children consumption is growing worldwide and hence the marketing effort. Marketers are keen to know the behavioural secrets to influence children’s consumptions. The promotional efforts are need to be more fruitful and focused, therefore imperative to understand the conceptual advertising literacy level of the targeted child consumers. In order to reveal the related facts, the study examines the conceptual advertising literacy level of children in India. In a computer assisted survey of 392 children between the age brackets of 8-12 years, the researchers examine their ability of advertising recognition, understanding of advertising selling intent and understanding of advertising persuasive intent regarding brand promotion efforts. Results confirm that advertising recognition and understanding selling intent is high in children but children do not acquire a clear understanding of advertising persuasive intent until the age of 9-10 years. Furthermore, children’s understanding of advertising’s selling intent emerges before their comprehension of its persuasive intent. KEYWORDS: Children, Advertising Literacy, Persuasive Intent, Selling Intent

Pelatihan Literasi Iklan Pada Ibu-Ibu PKK di RW 07 Mustikajaya Bekasi

Advertising literacy is the ability to recognize, evaluate, and understand advertisements and other commercial messages. The freedom of the public when using a social media will have an impact on the lack of supervision of an information content that will be broadcast. Thus, errors arise from the information obtained so that it can trigger hoaxes. The existence of fake news circulating refers to certain themes or topics. The activity took place at RW 07 Mustikajaya, East Bekasi. Advertising literacy activities were carried out by two lecturers of the Faculty of Computer Science. The activity was divided into two activity sessions, namely Understanding Literacy and Hoax Applications. In practice, we carry out Community Service (PKM) as a manifestation of the Tridarma of higher education, and mothers fill out a list of questions before and after receiving material conducted in Google Classroom and in its implementation using Google Meet. To improve understanding, advertising literacy materials are equipped with one of the hoax applications, namely Hoax Buster Tools. With this training, participants can increase their knowledge as well as stimulate them to get ideas and take appropriate actions in filtering the information obtained. Keywords: Advertising Literacy, Hoax Buster Tools, PKM Abstrak Literasi iklan merupakan kemampuan untuk mengenali, mengevaluasi, serta memahami sebuah iklan dan pesan yang berbau komersial lainnya. Bebasnya masyarakat pada saat memanfaatkan suatu media sosial akan berimbas dengan kurangnya pengawasan dari suatu konten informasi yang akan ditayangkan. Sehinggal, muncul kekeliruan dari informasi yang didapat sehingga bisa memicu hoaks (berita palsu). Adanya berita bohong yang beredar lebih merujuk pada beberapa tema ataupun topik tertentu, Kegiatan berlangsung di RW 07 Mustikajaya Bekasi Timur. Kegiatan literasi iklan dilakukan oleh dua orang dosen Fakultas Ilmu Komputer. Dalam kegiatan tersebut dibagi menjadi dua sesi kegiatan yaitu Pengertian Literasi dan Aplikasi Hoax. Praktiknya kami melakukan Pengabdian Kepada Masyarakat (PKM) sebagai salah satu perwujudan Tridarma perguruan tinggi, serta ibu-ibu melakukan pengisian daftar pertanyaan (Assessment) sebelum dan sesudah menerima materi yang dilakukan di Google Classroom dan dalam pelaksanaannya menggunakan Google Meet. Untuk meningkatkan pemahaman, materi literasi iklan dilengkapi dengan salah satu aplikasi hoax yaitu Hoax Buster Tools. Dengan adanya pelatihan ini peserta dapat meningkatkan pengetahuan sekaligus sebagai stimulasi dalam mendapatkan ide dan melakukan tindakan yang tepat dalam menyaring informasi yang didapat. Kata kunci: Literasi Iklan, Hoax Buster Tools, PKM

Brand Endorsers with Role Model Function

Social media influencers (SMIs) are taking on new roles in the communication environment of their followers as persuasive agents, opinion leaders, brand endorsers, and role models. Taking a look from the perspective of SMIs as agents in the persuasion attempt and their advertising literacy, our study has three aims. First, we provide insight into SMIs‘ self-perception as opinion-leading brand endorsers. Second, we discuss the extent to which SMIs use this awareness of and knowledge about their role model function for their particular young followers. Finally, we show how SMIs actively construct their media persona and how their relationship with their followers is based around this identity. The results from 15 semi-structured, guideline-based interviews conducted in 2019 with German SMIs working in different subject areas (e.g., fitness, fashion, travel, and family) show that SMIs are advertising literate. SMIs are aware of their multiple roles (understanding of one‘s roles: conceptional dimension), and reflect about their media persona‘s role model function (role interpretation: attitudinal dimension). Therefore, the majority of SMIs create their content and their media persona, as well as actively construct their relationship to their followers, based on their knowledge and awareness (role construction: performance dimension).

The Visual Self

This article analyzes adolescents’ self-presentation on Instagram, the role influencers might play in such content, and adolescents’ advertising literacy, defined as recognizing and evaluating advertising presented by influencers as well as using advertising knowledge. Based on 32 in-depth interviews and think-aloud protocols, this study identifies five types of self-presentation (staged, natural, covert, changed, and two-sided). Influencers were important benchmarks for almost all the adolescents interviewed; the participants each followed one or more influencers on Instagram and were inspired by the advertised products. Furthermore, they recognized influencers’ commercial interests and presentation strategies. Their positive or negative evaluations of these strategies were linked to their self-presentation and ranged from approval to rejection. A negative evaluation of advertising did not automatically lead to a rejection of the implied advertising message. A discrepancy between the adolescents’ knowledge and actions became clear when they admitted buying advertised products despite being critical of advertising or knowing which advertising mechanisms were being applied.

‘Alexa, Adv(ert)ise us!’

Digital assistants increasingly infiltrate the world of children. The way they function reminds us somewhat of playmates, nannies and tutors. So far, educators have only marginally dealt with this new media phenomenon, yet the use of smart speakers by young people offers many opportunities as well as challenges. These are elaborated in this article and classified in terms of media education. Firstly, we will address a definition of smart speakers and digital speech assistants, and then examine their use by means of usage data. We will then concentrate on examining the extent to which these smart technologies play a role in the environments of young people. What forms of advertising are there? What data do digital assistants collect? And finally, how can parents, educators and companies ensure that smart technologies are used in a child-friendly manner that complies with data protection regulations? Our aim is to nudge the phenomenon of smart speakers and speech assistants into the media-pedagogical focus. Dealing with the specific characteristics of smart speakers requires a high degree of (child) user competence. As we will show in the conclusion, there are further pedagogically beneficial approaches from the point of view of promoting advertising literacy.