UDC

Authors

Abstract

This article dwells on the concept of shock advertising as a special type of social advertising that is becoming more widespread in advertising studies. Social (shock) advertising raises important public and social problems, trying to, as quickly and clearly as possible, communicate them to the audience, sometimes neglecting not only aesthetics, but also speech ethics. This type of social advertising is designed to shock the public both visually and verbally. Scholars and practitioners argue not only about the most effective methods of shock advertising, but also about the adequacy of the various approaches to creating such advertisements. Shock advertising is usually presented in a neutral tone contrasting with the video and/or text content, or in a didactic tone intended to frighten and intimidate the addressee. This article describes and analyses key factors affecting the emotional state of the addressee (obscene or substandard words, sexual comments, demonstration of violence and its consequences, artificial situations with tragic results, etc.). The authors note that the normative and ethical aspects of advertising are still poorly studied and legally rather unregulated. For instance, there are no clear criteria for determining the extent of the use of shocking elements in social advertising. The examples of shock advertising provided in this article demonstrate that the most regular in a language are such models as metaphorization, exaggeration, vulgarization, and others. Shock advertising is based entirely on the function of emotional impact aiming to generate fear, terror, and rejection in the target audience. An emotionally and morally depressed addressee is unable to withstand such a shocking advertisement.

Keywords

References

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