A Procedure for the Development of Fictitious Advertisements in Multi-country Research: Crafting Messages with Hard-sell and Soft-sell Appeals

This chapter describes the detailed process of fictitious ad development for a multi-country advertising research project. Fictitious ads are frequently employed in advertising research in order to avoid the influence of attitudes toward established or recognized brands. Unfortunately, all too often, researchers do not pay sufficient attention to the development and pre-testing of such fictitious ads. In this contribution, the authors propose a detailed outline of the series of steps necessary in the development of fictitious ads, as well as a means by which to pre-test the various components of the ads (Figure 1). After pre-testing of the various components (such as general theme, visuals, fictitious brand name, slogan, selected product features and desired advertising appeal), as a last step, it is essential that researchers carry out a manipulation check with the finalized ads. This process helps to ensure that the messages conveyed by the various components selected for the ads are indeed the intended ones.