Psychological Effectiveness of Obscene Vocabulary Use in Advertising

The purpose of this study is to investigate, whether obscene vocabulary advertising impacts advertising effectiveness in a negative way. By the means of experimental design (n=221), we examined differences between brand recognition, preliminary and current brand attitude and hierarchy of effects components: attitude toward the ad, attitude toward the brand and purchase intention in experimental (exposed to obscene advertising) and control (not exposed to one) conditions. Our findings suggest that brand recall is not affected by exposure of the subject to obscene vocabulary advertising. However, obscene vocabulary advertising does impact attitude toward the brand in certain cases (1 out of 4 obscene vocabulary advertisements in an experimental condition had such effect). At the same time, attitude toward the ad and purchase intention variables were not significantly different for control and experimental conditions. Limitations of the study are discussed and directions for future research are suggested.