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Abstract
Advertisers often shy away from graphic, emotionally-charged programming under the assumption that the programming intensity will impair viewer recall, as well as negatively influence viewer perceptions. This paper empirically investigates this assumption and finds that advertisers are at least partially mistaken. We utilize war news programming as a fitting emotional context in which to embed advertising stimuli. Results from a four-group after-only experiment show: 1) more intense programming reduces the ability of both proponents and opponents of the war to recall advertisements; 2) proponents of the war are more likely to recall ads in lower-intensity programming than are opponents of the war; 3) the degree of polarization for or against the war (“against” versus “strongly against” and “support” versus “strongly support”) has a significant impact on recall for proponents, but not for opponents; and (4) across all sub-groups of viewers, multiple measures of viewer perceptions (ad effectiveness, product value, product quality, purchase intentions, affective connections to the firm) reveal no negative effects from viewing ads during intense war programming.
