When planning a commercial, businesses have to consider whatever factors might have an impact on the success of their marketing. Different markets respond to an endless variety of stimuli in ways that can be difficult to predict. Interestingly, recent research has shown that something even as simple as an accent can have a huge impact on a campaign’s success.
The England based car company Jaguar recently unleashed a series of commercials for their luxury vehicles featuring men with British accents that played a variety of villains in different movies. The message of these commercials is that sometimes it feels good to be bad, and that something about driving a Jaguar invokes the imagery of a dastardly and devious villain.
However, the use of a British accent may have a larger effect than the villainous implications. A variety of different car companies have started using English accented actors to advertise their vehicles. The marketing strategy company Mother New York claims to know why.
According to Mother New York’s market research, a British accent conveys a sense of intellect and sex appeal that leads listeners to believe the person is inherently more sophisticated just by being British. 35 percent of Americans find British accents to be appealing, adding to the appeal of the car. Interestingly enough, this appears to be unique to the British accent and not only due to its foreignness to non British citizens. As an example, when British citizens were surveyed about American accents, only 11 percent responded that they found American accents to be appealing.
Research has continued to show that different accents can all portray a variety of different attitudes that can positively and negatively impact a marketing campaign. Marketing strategists would do well to pay attention to every element of their campaigns audio in an effort to maximize the effectiveness of their campaign.