Journal of Advances in Economics and Finance

The Long and the Short of It: Maximizing the Impact of Public Service Announcements in the Age of the “Twitterverse”

Download PDF (369.2 KB) PP. 1 - 11 Pub. Date: February 1, 2018

DOI: 10.22606/jaef.2018.31001

Author(s)

Harper Roehm Jr.^*
Marketing, Entrepreneurship, Hospitality and Tourism, Bryan School of Business and Economics, University North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, NC, United States

Abstract

This article reports the results of an empirical study of current public service announcements. We apply a framework of communication norms espoused by Grice (1975) to identify a structural dimension of public service announcements – conciseness – that has been relatively understudied and that may be crucial to understanding the level of audience impact that is achieved. Further, recognizing the evolving concerns of sponsors in a marketplace flooded with novel modes of communication, we examine potential differences in the dynamics of conciseness as a function of the conventions of “new” (e.g., web-based) versus “traditional” (e.g., standard television, print) media environments. Results garnered from testing two forms of new media and two forms of traditional media suggest that persuasiveness varies with message length in opposing directions. For new media, messages that were briefer created a stronger impression, whereas for messages in traditional media, greater duration corresponded to greater impact.

Keywords

Public Service Announcements; new media; communication norms.

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