Crossing the Borders. A Theory of Hybrid Advertising Formats PDF

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Chapter 14. Crossing the Borders. A Theory of Hybrid Advertising Formats By Nils S. Borchers Since the end of the 1980s, hybrid advertising formats like advertorials, native advertising, product placements, advergames, search ads, brand postings in discussion forums, or fake online reviews have steadily gained in popularity. Hybrid formats are marketers’ reaction to the decreasing effectiveness of traditional formats. By blurring the borders to their environment, especially to information and entertainment, hybrid formats discourage consumers from activating advertising-specific reception strategies. Such strategies reduce the probability of successful persuasion because they take into account that the communicator is self-interested and thus acts strategically. Yet, while serving the purposes of marketers, hybrid formats have far-reaching negative impacts on society. They erode willingness to trust corrupted communication forms such as journalistic articles or blogs, and they delegitimize modern society’s foundations by fostering forms of fake rationality. Despite their popularity and despite their negative impacts, hybrid advertising formats are surprisingly undertheorized. In this article, I will develop the theoretical concept of mimicry and position it as an analytical category in critical advertising studies. I do so because an adequate theoretical conceptualization of hybrid formats is important for a comprehensive understanding of the phenomenon. The remainder of the article is organized as follows: I will start with an overview of existing theoretical concepts of hybrid advertising formats. Based on a critical discussion of these concepts, I will present the concept of mimicry as an alternative and, as I will argue, more apt approach to theorizing hybrid advertising formats. To do so, I will first introduce an advertising definition that is grounded in the perspective of consumers. I will then employ this definition to develop the mimicry concept and demonstrate its potential by discussing advertorials and fake online reviews as prime examples of hybrid formats. This discussion makes it possible to criticize mimicry strategies on the grounds of their social impacts. Finally, I will conclude by discussing policy implications. Hybrid Formats as a Combination of Advertising and Publicity Advertising has a long tradition of mimicking other communicative formats. Observing this tradition, Wyss (1998) uses the metaphor of advertising mimicry to denote the imitation of other television texts in TV commercials as intertextual references. For example, Wyss speaks of mimicry if a commercial imitates specific content characteristics of a soap opera. At this level of mimicry, however, TV commercials can still be identified as advertisements easily because they retain the external features typical of TV commercials such as their short length, condensed narratives, the identification of a sponsor, and contextual clues such as being shown within a clearly designated commercial break. Yet, advertising’s mimicry attempts reach well beyond such cases of intertextual references. Hybrid formats also intermingle with their environments by adapting the external features of other communicative genres and by obliterating contextual clues (Matteo and Dal Zotto 2015). This deeper level of mimicry fuels the debate on hybrid advertising formats. Studies on hybrid advertising tackle issues such as identifiability (cf. Tutaj and van Reijmersdal 2012), effects on decision making (cf. Kim, Pasadeos, and Barban 2001), and ethical implications (cf. Köberer 2014). But although these studies have improved our understanding of hybrid formats considerably, much less effort has been devoted to strengthening our conceptual understanding. A notable exception is Serazio’s work on guerilla marketing, which he introduces as a “label for nontraditional communications between advertisers and audiences that rely on an element of surprise or surreptitiousness in the intermediary itself” (2013, 3). Borrowing from Foucault’s theory of power (2000), he argues that instead of controlling consumers, guerrilla marketing seeks to govern them by surreptitiously structuring consumers’ fields of action. In this way, marketers try to circumvent consumers’ ad-avoidance strategies because recipients experience their own agency without noting the structuring of their actions. Although Serazio’s approach does not offer a clear-cut definition of guerilla marketing, it still gives ample scope for strengthening the conceptual basis of hybrid formats by explaining how they can be successful in persuading their audiences. In his approach to hybrid formats, Balasubramanian (1994) takes a different angle by describing them as a fusion of advertising and publicity, with hybrid formats combining the advantages of both. While marketers pay for the publishing of hybrid messages and hence exert control on content and form, they are not identified as sponsors, with the result that their messages are processed with less skepticism. Accordingly, Balasubramanian (30) defines hybrid formats as “paid attempts to influence audiences for commercial benefit J.F. Hamilton, R. Bodle, E. Korin (eds), Exploration in Critical Studies of Advertising, Routledge, London-New York, 2017

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using communications that project a non-commercial character.” While Balasubramanian’s concept provides a sound foundation for theorizing hybrid formats, it remains within the boundaries of a marketing framework that in many ways is too restrictive from the perspective of communication scholars whose reference point often is society as a whole and not the interests of specific organizations (Borchers 2014; Krallmann, Scheerer, and Strahl 1997). Two shortcomings should be noted. First, hybrid formats are not limited to organizations’ mass-mediated communication efforts. Second, hybrid formats blur the borders with many phenomena other than journalism. For example, even Balasubramanian (1994, 32) identifies as a hybrid format the case of a physician who secretly receives payments for transferring patients to cooperating hospitals. The balance of this article reformulates Balasubramanian’s ideas in a more abstract way to overcome their shortcomings. In doing so, I will take up Wyss’s metaphor of advertising mimicry, generalize it beyond its original context of presentation strategies in TV commercials, and provide it with a solid theoretical foundation. This way, mimicry can be developed into an analytical category that can be employed for examining various hybrid advertising formats.

Theorizing Mimicry Strategies in Advertising Hybrid advertising messages owe their effectiveness to the manipulation of their targets’ expectations. By mimicking non-advertising formats, hybrid messages seek to be seen as an instance of the mimicked communicative genre, e.g., a journalistic report, a blog post, or an online consumer review. If recipients do this, they will process the message using reception strategies that, depending on the socially shared expectations, are adjusted to the mimicked genre because they are based on socially shared expectations about that specific genre. The crux is that the expectations about advertising differ fundamentally from those about journalism and other genres. Unlike journalism, advertising is expected to have ulterior motives and thus is commonly met with more skepticism (Obermiller, Spangenberg, and MacLachlan 2005). Due to the crucial role of recipients’ understandings of the messages, an explanation of hybrid formats requires an advertising concept that takes into account recipients’ perspective. This requirement disqualifies established marketing concepts of advertising from being a convincing foundation for theorizing hybrid formats. In marketing research, advertising is typically defined as “a paid nonpersonal communication from an identified sponsor, using mass media to persuade or influence an audience” (Richards and Curran 2002, 64). In adopting the perspective of marketers while ignoring that of recipients, such a definition exemplifies the goal of conventional marketing research, which is to explain the market performance of organizations. To do so, such a definition simply distinguishes advertising from other measures organizations can employ to influence their performance—the marketing tools (Borchers 2014). For example, in marketing research, advertising is defined as communication to distinguish it from marketing tools within the categories product, price, and place in the 4Ps marketing mix (Borden 1964). By calling attention to its distribution by mass media, advertising is distinguished from promotion tools that are not mass mediated such as personal selling and sales promotion, while payment is included to distinguish advertising from publicity/PR, which also are mass mediated but whose distribution is not paid for. In doing so, the marketing definition of advertising treats marketers’ intentions to advertise as a key criterion for identifying a message as advertising. In contrast to the marketing approach, an advertising concept that considers the recipients’ perspective has to identify the criteria that motivate recipients to categorize a message as advertising (Borchers 2014). In doing so, it has to be grounded in recipients’ life worlds. These life worlds are not limited to, but extend significantly beyond, organizational communication. Accordingly, a sociological approach to advertising seems to be most apt for developing a respective advertising concept because it takes into account the complexity of the social. (Hamilton, 20161026) In the vein of sociologists such as Luhmann, Parsons, and Durkheim who assume that social order by chance or nature is unlikely and thus has to be explained, I ask how advertising contributes to the emergence of social order. The mere fact that advertising is ubiquitous suggests that it has a social function and contributes to solving an existing social problem. From the perspective of social systems theory as advanced by Luhmann (1995), the problem of the contingency of the future is what advertising seeks to solve. Communication as the basic element of social systems is not time persistent but disintegrates continuously. Social systems must reproduce communication to prevent their collapse. Yet, doing so is far from a trivial act. At every moment, only one of all potential options can be realized. Selecting an option hence means that other options are not selected. J.F. Hamilton, R. Bodle, E. Korin (eds), Exploration in Critical Studies of Advertising, Routledge, London-New York, 2017

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Furthermore, every option has its specific consequences, by leading to specific future options while not leading to others. Moreover, realizing an option is an irreversible process and so is the non-realization of the rejected options. When considering that social actors distinguish preferred from non- or less-preferred options, it is easy to see how risky choice eventually is. Therefore, it is rational to select options no randomly, but deliberately. Yet actors often have to make decisions under time pressure, because options have to be realized before they expire so the system will not collapse. This combination of the complexity of decisions, the riskiness of selections, and the time pressure to make decisions renders actors susceptible to hints on specific options. Such hints highlight single options as preferable (or not preferable) and, in this way, they support actors with arguments for their selection. I refer to these hints as appeals. Appeals have the social function to motivate (or de-motivate) the selection of a specific connecting option. Thus, they make the re-production of communication more likely. The specific appeals can be characterized by two criteria: self-interest and threat of sanction. The issue of selfinterest is closely connected to the fact that oftentimes, an actor’s decision determines the future options of other actors. In such cases, the other actors may suggest only those options from which they will benefit. If appealing actors benefit from the realization of options they suggest, they might be motivated to present the option as attractively as possible and to exploit the decider’s susceptibility for hints on how to evaluate the preferability of a specific option. In terms of Marxist theory (Haug 1971), the appealing actor is interested in the exchange value of the option and, thus, will attempt to maximize its use-value promise. By contrast, impartial appellators take the perspective of a peer user and therefore focus on the use value. Orientation toward use value or exchange value in turn can motivate different appeals. If appellators estimate that the use value of option A is higher than that of option B, they will propose realizing option A if they are impartial, but option B if they benefit from option B and thus are self-interested. Therefore, deciders are well advised to control for the appellator’s motivation. The risk of exchange-value oriented biases can only be ruled out if the appellator is not motivated by self-interest. Accordingly, the criterion of self-interest touches upon issues of trust. Self-interest has already been acknowledged as a defining criterion of advertising. In macroeconomics, advertising is usually regarded as a source of market information. As such, it has to be distinguished from other sources, particularly from information by experts (e.g., product tests by consumer organizations) and by acquaintances (word-of-mouth). Compared to these two phenomena the existence of ulterior motives and thus of self-interest appear as constitutive trademarks of advertising (Kaldor 1950). The self-interest of advertising lies within the blind spot of marketing definitions because all marketing tools are self-interested. A second criterion that can be used to characterize appeals is the threat of sanctions. The probability that a suggested option will be realized depends on possible negative sanctions for rejecting the suggestion. If deciders are not threatened with sanctions, it is easier for them to reject an appeal. While explicit threats can be made, the deciders’ anticipation of sanctions is often sufficient, particularly if deciders feel they are relevant and their realization is possible. Since deciders are interested in avoiding sanctions they may be willing to accept even suggested options which they do not prefer. Thus, the criterion of negative sanctions touches upon issues of power. Threat of sanctions has been acknowledged as a defining criterion of advertising. Approaches that identify advertising as a general mechanism for influencing the actions of others distinguish it from phenomena such as education, order, instruction, manipulation, and plea (cf. Lysinski and Seyffert 1920; Plenge 1922; Schweiger and Schrattenecker 2009, 385–90). In this context, freedom from coercion thus can be recognized as a constitutive trademark of advertising. Advertising’s freedom from coercion lies within the blind spot of marketing definitions because—due to ideological factors—marketing regards all marketing tools as free from coercion. The combination of the two criteria—self-interest and threat of negative sanctions—leads to four basic types of appealing communication: order, advertising, recommendation, and instruction (see Figure 14.1). The types differ in terms of the conditions under which a recipient makes a decision about accepting or rejecting a suggested option. Recipients activate type-specific reception strategies that account for the type-specific combination of power and trust. They do so on the basis of their individual understanding of a message. For example, if they understand a message as recommendation, they will use a recommendation-specific reception strategy. This implies that the intention of the communicator has only an indirect impact on the response; it may affect but does not determine the understanding of the message.

J.F. Hamilton, R. Bodle, E. Korin (eds), Exploration in Critical Studies of Advertising, Routledge, London-New York, 2017

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Self-interest

+ -

Threat of sanctions + Command Instruction

Advertising Recommendation

Figure 14.1 Basic types of appellative communication

By using this theoretical framework, one can distinguish advertising from the other types of appeals and from other types of non-appealing communication. Advertising is the self-interested attempt to motivate (or demotivate) the selection of an option without the threat of negative sanctions. This recipient-based concept of advertising helps in turn to theorize mimicry strategies as the underlying principle of hybrid advertising formats. Compared to other types of appeals, advertising has the most challenges to meet. In contrast to recommendations, advertising is seen to be self-interested and therefore biased in its own favor. And, in contrast to commands, advertising cannot levy sanctions against deciders who reject its proposal. To overcome these challenges, appellators can communicate their suggestions in a format typical not of advertising but of recommendation, command, or instruction. They do so in the hope that the recipients will categorize the message as the respective type and thus process it in a non-advertising-specific way. This theoretical framework helps ultimately generate a clearer understanding of mimicry as an advertising strategy. I define mimicry as a communicator’s attempt to provoke a desired understanding of a message by employing a message format that prompts a categorization of the communicated information that differs from the communicator’s own understanding of the message. The use of mimicry strategies thus lies at the core of hybrid advertising formats. From the perspective of advertising, it is possible to distinguish strategies of recommendation mimicry, command mimicry, and instruction mimicry—depending on the appeal type the message format mimics. Moreover, appellators can even mimic seemingly non-appellative, entertainment-based message formats like movies, computer games, or vlogs. For example, if a vlog by a popular YouTuber features a specific product, the viewers might infer that it is part of the YouTuber’s brand world. If they decide to act on the grounds of this information, they treat the respective detail of the video as an appeal. Appellators use mimicry strategies to increase the probability that the option they propose will be selected. Mimicry strategies increase this probability in two steps. First, they increase the probability that recipients pay attention to an appeal because many recipients avoid messages only because they identify them as advertising messages (Ducoffe and Curlo 2000). Second, mimicry strategies increase the probability that the appellator’s proposal will be accepted because they indicate an orientation toward the use value of the option (recommendation mimicry) or the danger of being sanctioned (command mimicry), or both (instruction mimicry).

Recommendation Mimicry Mimicry strategies offer marketers the advantage of higher efficiency due to greater effectiveness. However, from the perspective of the recipients, they have serious disadvantages. Recommendation mimicry is probably the most popular strategy among marketers. As command and instruction require threatening credibility with negative sanctions, they are harder to mimic than recommendations, which “only” require the depiction of impartiality. This is not to say that command and instruction mimicry would be irrelevant. Even if the straightforward appeal to fear has become rather unusual in mainstream advertising, marketers often employ less-obvious threats. The ideal worlds that commercials present refer at least implicitly to the negative consequences of rejecting the suggested options. They claim that if we simply used this shampoo, wore these sneakers, and drank this beer we would be attractive, popular, and successful. However, as Möller (1970) highlights, all these promises imply the threat that if we refuse to do so, we will be unattractive, unpopular, or unsuccessful. It is an empirical question whether some recipients identify the implicit reference...