Something for the weekend

Financial Times:

It is estimated that this year the worldwide spend on advertising will be around $530bn. For advertisers it is vital that they spend their money wisely – targeting the right consumer to get their message across.

Traditionally advertisers tailor their campaigns to specific demographic groups, retired professionals or young mothers for example. But now new research has highlighted an alternative approach – targeting personality profiles.

Academics from North America selected five personality traits: agreeableness, extraversion, emotional stability, openness to experience and conscientiousness. Each of these traits is associated with certain attitudes, for example the open individual tends to value intellectual pursuits, while the agreeable person values a sense of belonging. Once the traits were selected the researchers then designed five different advertisements for cell phones, with each advert targeting one of the personality dimensions.

Participants were then asked to rate the effectiveness of each advertisement and also to assess their own personality on a questionnaire.

The researchers found that all the advertisements were deemed to be more effective when they aligned with the participant’s personality.

“We were impressed by the range of motives that can be brought to bear on a single object,” says Jacob Hirsh of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto.

Read the whole story: Financial Times