Using guilt appeal to promote the donation events

The effectiveness of the guilt appeal in encouraging donations is the most interesting knowledge that I have learned in the Introduction to Advertising course when we studied about emotional appeals in advertising content. Our team had a small activity that required choosing appropriate emotional appeal to promote the donation events for the disabled children. After doing some research, the guilt appeal was the most suitable choice.

Guilt appeal is a communication strategy to persuade the audiences’ behaviors and attitudes (Turner & Rains 2021). When using this strategy, individuals are exposed to the messages inducing feelings of guilt. Subsequently, the proposed solution to reduce these feelings is introduced to influence the audiences’ behaviors (Graton & Mailliez 2019). By using guilt appeal, empathy toward the situation is generated leading to the charitable donation intention (Basil, Ridgway & Basil 2008). Besil, Ridgway, Basil & Basil (2006) found that guilt appeal is different from other emotional appeals since it mediates a sense of responsibility in the audiences’ mind. Hence, the audience will behave more prosocially toward the donation event (Graton & Mailliez 2019).

This knowledge is beneficial for me when planning any campaign having charitable-donation activities in the future, especially in the public relations campaign in my assignment 3. I will use this guilt appeal to promote the donation for children’s heart surgery called "One breakfast, one heart". I will show how urgent the surgeries are for the children. However, due to the lack of money, their surgeries cannot be implemented. Therefore, they need the viewers’ donations, even if the amount of money is only equal to their daily breakfast. At the end, I will propose that if the viewers don’t take action, the children may live in pain or pass away to create a guilt feeling in the viewers’ minds to encourage them to take action.

References:

Basil, DZ, Ridgway, NM & Basil, MD 2006, ‘Guilt appeals: The mediating effect of responsibility’, Psychology & marketing, vol. 23, no. 12, pp. 1035–1054, viewed 1 January 2022, EBSCOhost database.

Basil, DZ, Ridgway, NM & Basil, MD 2008, ‘Guilt and giving: A process model of empathy and efficacy’, Psychology & marketing, vol. 25, no. 1, pp. 1–23, viewed 1 January, EBSCOhost database.

Graton, A & Mailliez, M 2019, ‘A theory of guilt appeals: A review showing the importance of investigating cognitive processes as mediators between emotion and behavior’, Behavioral sciences, vol. 9, no. 12, viewed 1 January 2022, PubMed Central database.

Turner, M & Rains, S 2021, ‘Guilt Appeals in Persuasive Communication: A Meta-Analytic Review’, Communication studies, vol. 72, no. 4, pp. 684–700, viewed 1 January 2022, Taylor & Francis Online database.