Two’s company, three’s a crowd: the interplay between collective versus solo anthropomorphic brand appeals and gender

Abstract

Anthropomorphism in advertising has been shown to create positive advertising and branding outcomes. In this research, we introduce an important internal variation in this ad strategy—advertising a brand as collective- versus solo-anthropomorphized (i.e., the presence of multiple anthropomorphized entities versus one entity). Four studies overall demonstrate that advertising a brand as collective- (versus solo-)anthropomorphized decreases advertising effectiveness. We further show that these two types of brand anthropomorphism significantly interact with gender. That is, our research reveals that women develop lower expectations of relationship closeness with a collective- (versus solo-)anthropomorphized brand, thereby resulting in lower effectiveness of collective anthropomorphic ad appeals. In contrast, we find no detrimental effect of this ad strategy for men. Importantly, our work establishes that explicitly incorporating relationship potential cues in collectively anthropomorphized ad copy or inducing no expectations of close relationships with a brand will attenuate the negative impact of a collective- (versus solo-)anthropomorphized ad appeals on advertising effectiveness.