WSFS Bank’s summer pet contest won the bank at least 1500 new accounts.
The bank ran a cutest pet picture contest and promised to donate a dollar to the Delaware Humane Association for every new checking account opened during the contest. This appears to be a fairly simple contest without much cost. Apparently it was also successful.
The article mentions professor JoAnn L. Atkin of Western Michigan University as the co-author of a 2006 analysis of animals in advertising called “Love dogs? Love the ad!” According to JoAnn L. Atkin it appears that “When there was a dog within the ad, people seemed to like it more, and those positive attitudes transferred over to the brand.” The 2006 analysis of animals in advertising was published in the Journal of Business Research.
For people who have a strong affinity toward dogs there seems to be almost a magnetic attraction to all things dog, including advertising and marketing. While this affinity is strong, advertisers should take care not to abuse it. As B.F. Skinner stated, if the cultural system that supports the behavior of attraction (paying attention) is exploited to gain a temporary personal advantage at the expense of the target, then the system itself will break down. Gaining a temporary advantage at the expense of potential customers is a common practice I find in modern advertising. When the considerate behavior of an interlocking cultural system is tricked, considerate behavior begins to break down. Soon that system will not work or will need major modifications. These modifications will make life for everyone less enjoyable. This is what happened with email. Spam is so bad it is difficult to trust anyone with an individual’s email address. We see this happen all the time within sales and advertising. Trickery and cultural exploitation are the main reasons most people hate talking to a sales person and it has a great deal to do with trust. Each time a really good sales person gains our trust and sells us on false promises we are less trusting of all.