What makes an ad enjoyable? Analysing advertising appeals as viewed by Portuguese consumers

Nowadays, consumers are faced with a variety of media that convey myriad advertising messages, which struggle amidst a highly competitive environment, with a view to drawing the viewers’ attention, raising awareness, creating interest and inspiring desire and, ultimately, leading to the purchase of the product/service at stake. For this, advertising professionals deliberately intertwine their selling arguments with emotionally-charged creative concepts. It is the aim of this study to analyse the impact of the main creative appeals and to identify groups of consumers based on their attitudes towards them. We have undertaken a quantitative study, by means of a survey administered to a convenience sample with a list of creative appeals, which had to be classified by the respondents according to their attitudes. Globally speaking, the preferred appeals were humour, music and animation. Nonetheless, it was possible to divide the respondents into three groups. ‘Advertising fans’, the ‘rationally-minded’ and the ‘emotionally-minded’. This study presents some limitations, especially as to the sample used. Apart from the reduced number of respondents and lack of more widespread geographic reach, some academic qualifications were underrepresented. The results of this study offer some avenues to be explored by marketing and advertising professionals when it comes to deciding on the best creative approach to select for their advertising campaigns. Besides, this study paves the way to the development of future research on the issue of advertising appeals and its relationship with the psychographic characteristics of consumers.

Mn-doped II-VI quantum dots: artificial molecular magnets

The notion of artificial atom relies on the capability to change the number of carriers one by one in semiconductor quantum dots, and the resulting changes in their electronic structure. Organic molecules with transition metal atoms that have a net magnetic moment and display hysteretic behaviour are known as single molecule magnets (SMM). The fabrication of CdTe quantum dots chemically doped with a controlled number of Mn atoms and with a number of carriers controlled either electrically or optically paves the way towards a new concept in nanomagnetism: the artificial single molecule magnet. Here we study the magnetic properties of a Mn-doped CdTe quantum dot for different charge states and show to what extent they behave like a single molecule magnet.