摘 要

在公益广告的制作过程中，抓住受众的心理至关重要。本文通过阐述基于认知心理学基础上的英文环保类公益广告设计，希望为国内的公益广告制作提供新的思路。文章以从杂志，报刊和网络上收集到的英文环保类公益广告作为研究对象。作者从认知心理学的角度出发，通过对诉求策略，视觉因素及情境三方面的分析，来说明英文环保类公益广告是如何达到宣传效果最大化的。通过研究，作者发现在英文环保公益广告中针对受众的不同需求选择相应的诉求手段有助于吸引受众注意，运用视觉因素可以激发受众情感，构建情境可以加深受众对广告的印象。

关键词：英文环保公益广告； 认知心理学； 广告诉求； 宣传效果

Abstract

To make public service advertisements successfully, seizing the audience's psychology is very important. Through illustration of English public environmental advertisements based on cognitive psychology, the paper will provide suggestions for the domestic public advertisements. The paper takes English public environmental advertisements as target and resources come from newspapers, magazines and the Internet. The author will analyze the appeal strategy, visual factors and situation from perspective of cognitive psychology to show how English public environmental advertisements maximize promotional effect. Through this research, the author concludes that selecting different appeal strategies to satisfy the demands of different audiences is conducive to attract audience’s attention; applying visual factors can inspire audience’s emotion; constructing situation can strengthen audience’s memory.

Key Words: English public environmental advertisement; cognitive psychology; advertising appeal; promotional effect

Contents

1 Introduction 1

1.1 Significance of the Study 1

1.2 Structure of the Paper 1

2 Literature Review and Theoretical Foundation 3

2.1 Research at Home and Abroad 3

2.2 Cognitive Psychology 4

2.3 Advertising Appeal 4

3 Psychology in English Public Advertisement 6

3.1 Audience’s Attention and Appeal Strategy 6

3.1.1 Audience Attention Process 6

3.1.2 Selection of Appeal Strategy 7

3.2 Audience’s Perception and Sensory Factors 9

3.2.1 Audience Perception Process 9

3.2.2 Application of Visual Factors 9

3.3 Audience’ Memory and Situation 11

3.3.1 Audience Memory Process 11

3.3.2 Construction of Situation 12

4 Conclusion 15

References 16

Acknowledgments 17

Psychological Interpretation in English Public Advertisement: A Case Study of Public Environmental Advertisement

1 Introduction

1.1 Significance of the Study

As one of the most important part of people’s life, advertisements have crucial influence on people’s thinking. Public advertisements aim to catch people’s attention to hot social issues. Chinese public advertisements started late. The first public advertisement “Saving Water” appeared in 1986 on Guangzhou television. Accordingly, the design of public advertisements were immature in psychology application. The reasons are as follows. On the one hand, it lacks theoretical innovation; on the other hand, Chinese public advertisers don’t have strong awareness to apply psychology to public advertisements. They neglect the audience’s psychology, which leads to audience’s negative response. If we know well and understand how to cater to audience’s psychology, we can promote the quality of Chinese public advertisements and maximize the promotional effect.

The paper studies the English public advertisements based on cognitive psychology. Cognitive psychology reveals that how audiences respond to advertisements psychologically; how audience perceive and feel; how they organize and receive information in their mind and what they can remember. Understanding these processes, advertisers can take appropriate measures to design more acceptable advertisements.

1.2 Structure of the Paper

The paper is made up of four parts. Part one is the introduction and objective of the study, purpose and significance of the paper as well as the structure.

Part two is the literature review and theoretical foundation. It provides the readers with some the basic knowledge of the cognitive psychology and advertising appeal.

Part three is the psychology in the English public environmental advertisement. This part can be divided into three main sections. Section one illustrates the relationship between the audience’s attention and appeal strategy in detail. Section two emphasizes the impact of sensory factors to perception. Section three focuses on construction of situation.

The last part is the conclusion including the findings and the limitation of the paper.

2 Literature Review and Theoretical Foundation

2.1 Research at Home and Abroad

Chinese advertising industry has developed rapidly in recent years. However, most of advertisers attach importance to the advertising planning and production and ignore the study of advertising effectiveness evaluation. A few people conduct large-scale survey on advertising effectiveness. At the same time, the theoretical contribution is also rare. In 1992, Professor Ma Mouzhong in Chinese Academy of Sciences carried out a psychological study of the evaluation system of advertising works. Through questionnaire and factor analysis method, he concluded six indicators of advertising effect: Attraction, Necessary information, Fitness, Credibility, Infection and Cognition. Domestic advertising research mainly is the introduction to the foreign advertising theory and digestion. The works such as “Practical Advertising”, “Advertising Knowledge and Skills”, "Modern Advertising" and so on. Basically, they are the research on advertising on the basis of communication science. Those content are generally the same as well as advertising idea. In general, domestic research of psychology in advertisement is in shallow degree and lack of innovation in theory.

In western countries, the American psychologist Scott in Chicago's northwestern university published a book “advertising principle” in 1903, which marks the advent of advertising psychology. After the 1960s, psychology itself also experienced significant historic change. Cognitive psychology was born. Under the practice of the advertisements, the influence of cognitive psychology and other science and technology, advertising psychology has achieved great development ever since. At present, advertising psychology in western countries has important position. There are some specialized psychological research association such as the famous American Association for Consumer Research, Society for Consumer Psychology and Britain's World Advertising Research Center (WARC). These research institutions have their own journals and regularly publish some advertising articles written by the authority to spread new information of advertising and marketing. Western advertising psychology research mainly includes the following several parts: The effect of advertising, on the one hand, this research mainly focus on advertising and sales; on the other hand, it studies the buying process; Research

of the brand. "Brand Elasticity” is increasingly becoming the core of attention; Cross-culture and globalization; the value realization later in the consumption cycle and so on.