Short / Instant / Mobile messaging apps compete fiercely. It has about 5 year history and has a numerous players (e.g., WhatsApp, Line, Wechat, QQ, and Kakao Talk, Snpachat, Telegram, and Viber, to name a few). Some focus on simple communication and others provide interesting features including stickers and animated figures.
I visited YongPyong ski resort recently and learned how popular mobile messaging apps (MMA) are among young Asians. Tourists who are staying over Seoul and want to have a one-day trip to this ski resort can book their round-way bus tickets via four MMA including QQ and Wechat (for Chinese), and WhatsApp and Kakao Talk (for English).
There is nothing much skiers can do while they are sitting on the lift. Although some chat with other skiers sitting next to them or make/receive a few phone calls, others keep quiet and desperately search for something to kill their ten-minute boredom.
I have met an interesting OOH (Out-Of-Home) advertising at Yongpyong, a Korean ski resort. The marketers of the Tiguan at the Volkswagen made its back side using paper and then attached it to the lift. Most skiers including me who take this lift cannot help but look at the rear side of this car for over ten minutes until they get off the lift and hit the slope. Cutting/painting papers like a car may not cost much but doing so seems to work; I now become very familiar with this car, at least, its back side!
More importantly, I find this advertisement interesting and infer that the brand, Volkswagen, might be interesting as well. This way of thought is well established in a classic paper in which the attitude toward the advertisement (Aad) plays a key role in shaping the attitude toward the brand.
This article presents the results of a study designed to obtain a better understanding of the effects of using valenced visual information in advertising. In the study, subjects saw advertisements for hypothetical products that contained affect-laden photographs with different valences (Picture Type Manipulation). The results indicate that the affect-laden photographs had an effect on both attitude toward the advertisement (Aad) and brand attitudes; however, no differences were found in the product attribute beliefs that were formed. Photographs that were evaluated positively created more favorable attitudes toward the advertisements and brand attitudes, whereas the reverse was true for photographs that were evaluated negatively. The results of an analysis of covariance indicate that the inclusion of both the predicted attitude from structured scales (ΣΣbi,ei) and elicited beliefs did not eliminate all the reliable Picture Type effects on brand attitudes; however, the inclusion of Aad did eliminate these effects. In addition, Aad was found to affect brand attitudes for advertisements that contain only copy, and evidence is presented that Aad and brand attitudes are separate hypothetical constructs. Finally, a Dual Component model is presented to explain the effects of visual and verbal information in advertisements.
At the Gleneden ski resort, lift tickets (above) contain full information only on one side. Date, type, and bar-code number are above and the legal notice is in the bottom. Then, skiers fold the other half of the lift ticket over so the sticky sides stick together over the wicket.
Interestingly, at the Yong pyong ski resort, one of the biggest ski resorts in Korea, lift tickets (below) contain information on the front as well as the back side. Instead of using sticky glue and wicket, skiers simply use plastic to attach it to their ski wears. Yongpyong resort seems to deliver more detailed information to its skiers by changing the design of the lift ticket; date, type, hour, price, and tax information are printed in the front side, and usage information, notice, emergency contact, and resort phone number are printed in the back.
