Thrill Me! Advertising Effectiveness in Extreme Versus Traditional Sports

Abstract

Millions of people enjoy extreme sports, and many brands use them as contexts for advertising. This chapter considers extreme sports through the lenses of edgework theory and cognitive adaptation theory, and develops two experiments that compare the challenge of leveraging advertising effectively and the degrees of difficulty in extreme and traditional sports settings with regard to high- and low-involvement products. Results suggest that challenge-based and difficulty-based advertisements positively affect persuasiveness, product attractiveness, intention to purchase, and willingness-to-pay only when set in an extreme sports scenario. Results are not influenced by the nature of the sports participation (i.e., active versus passive). Quantitative results are further supported by qualitative analyses based on follow-up interviews, which suggest the existence of relevant differences between extreme and traditional sports. An executive summary for managers and practitioners is provided at the end of this chapter.

Executive Summary

Following the massive growth in the popularity of extreme sports, and in a continuous search to find attractive contexts, marketers today are increasingly using such disciplines as an advertising setting; extreme sports are used also by a number of brands that often sell products unrelated to sports (e.g., watches, cameras, perfumes). This real-world evidence suggests the opportunity to investigate extreme sports from a managerial perspective, not only as a consumer phenomenon, but also as a context for advertising.

When advertising in extreme sports, literature on such sports disciplines and on the psychology of extreme participants suggests that these contexts are denoted by unique specificities, especially if compared to traditional sports. Hence, when investigating extreme sports advertising, the differences from traditional sport contexts for advertising should be highlighted. Such differences are likely to rely mainly on the mindset of the individuals who engage in extreme sports, as they behave and think differently from the average consumer (Buckley, 2012). For instance, they perceive painful challenges and threatening difficulties as positive rather than negative, have a high tendency to seek sensation, and enjoy watching and/or doing activities that push their physical and psychological limits due to such athletes attributing a cathartic value to difficulties and risky challenges (Laurendeau, 2011).

This chapter takes on the theoretical perspective of cognitive adaptation and edgework theory, and adopts an explanatory mixed method approach in order to understand the relationship between the type of advertising and the type of sport (extreme versus traditional). The main assumption is that, due to their specificities, as a context for advertising extreme sports work differently than traditional sports; thus, advertising must take different approaches and employ different psychological mechanisms.

On the one hand, extreme activities are sought precisely because they demand the pushing of one’s physical and mental limits to the edge, and are pursued to discover and push those limits (i.e., the “edge”: Milovanovic, 2005; Brymer & Houge Mackenzie, 2016). Pursuing increasingly risky challenges feeds an individual’s idea of belonging to an elite group of “superior” athletes (Lyng, 2014). In other words, risk-taking is a positive value in extreme sports, leading individuals to face extreme difficulties and undertake challenges (Brymer & Schweitzer, 2013).

On the other hand, according to cognitive adaptation theory (Taylor, 1983), difficulties and challenges are present in traditional activities but are not sought; instead, they are actively minimized to restore safe conditions. Actions that threaten self-preservation are often against the rules in traditional sports, where sensationalism usually stems from gameplay, extraordinary actions, choreography and such, rather than from athletes putting themselves in dangerous situations.

Following this theoretical base, we identify two core elements to interpret the link between the type of sport and the focus of an advert’s appeal: difficulty and challenge.

A between-subject experimental design was developed, using data from over 700 potential and actual consumers from data panels. Respondents were asked to assess: advert persuasiveness, product attractiveness, brand attitude and purchase intention with regard to mock-up adverts set in the contexts of extreme sports and traditional sports. The numerical data are further strengthened by means of a qualitative analysis (content-analyzed interviews).

Results show that advertising appeal based on difficulty and challenge works well for adverts set in the context of extreme sports, but not when applied to brands advertising in traditional sports. The results hold regardless of whether the viewer is an active or passive sports participant or the sporting context is their favorite sport, which aligns with recent findings in traditional sports (Bajramović, Zorić, & Mašanović, 2018; Masanovic, Zoric, & Gardasevic, 2017). The quantitative findings are further validated by qualitative interviews that emphasize the differences between the psychological meaning and valence of difficulties, risks and challenges in extreme sports as opposed to those in traditional sports, which the authors predicted after examining literature from general psychology and sport psychology.

Results suggest that managers should be aware of the psychological meaning that difficulties and challenges acquire in extreme sports. Further, advertisers should be aware that extreme sports enthusiasts do not deny that effort, training, dedication and challenge are required in traditional sports; however, they do not want “common people” to meddle in their disciplines. Additionally, managers may find it useful to know that traditional sport enthusiasts do not want to focus on pushing their limits by intentionally putting themselves in threatening situations, even though traditional sports are acknowledged as requiring considerable discipline, stamina and hard training. Advertising practitioners may take advantage of the theoretical lenses provided in the present research to assess their current advertising campaigns and to devise campaigns for the ones.