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European Journal of MarketingPreliminary investigation of the communication effects of “taboo” themes in

advertisingOuidade Sabri

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Preliminary investigation of thecommunication effects of “taboo”

themes in advertisingOuidade Sabri

Sorbonne Graduate Business School, Paris, France

Abstract

Purpose  – The purpose of this paper is to fill a gap in the literature of taboo imagery in advertisingby drawing on cognate disciplines to build a conceptual framework and identify the characteristics of taboo-challenging advertisements and the audiences who react to them.

Design/methodology/approach – Data collected by 22 in-depth individual qualitative interviews

in Morocco and France were subjected to two-stage formal content analysis.Findings  – This study reveals the importance of normative social influence, the properties of thetaboo, contagion from the content of the ad to the brand and to customers, and ambivalent emotionalreactions. The valence and the intensity of the responses to such advertising depend on personal,interpersonal and situational factors.

Research limitations/implications  – The conclusions are based on findings from a relativelysmall number of respondents reacting to one type of taboo only, but they offer a useful theoreticalframework and an empirical basis for future research on the communication effects and effectivenessof taboo in advertising.

Practical implications   – The study offers advertisers a better understanding of the factors andprocesses likely to influence consumers’ reactions to the strategy of invoking taboo themes inadvertising campaigns, with positive implications in terms of audience segmentation and mediaselection.

Originality/value – Despite the prevalence of “taboo advertising”, little research-based analysis hasso far been available to academics or practitioners.

Keywords Advertising effectiveness, Content analysis, Advertising

Paper type Research paper

1. IntroductionThe AIDS crisis of the mid-1980s was the prelude to a radical departure in marketingcommunications, marked by the arrival of advertising campaigns that dared tocontravene certain social taboos (Wilson and West, 1995). It was then that the firstadvertising messages advocating the use of condoms appeared, and that subsequentlyfamous Benetton advertisements dealt with such significant taboos as the sexuality of priests and nuns, homosexuality, racism, and capital punishment. Following that lead,

many other advertisers showed no compunction in exploiting other taboo themes as adeliberate creative strategy, a trend that has continued during the intervening twodecades (Pope   et al., 2004). Examples would be the campaigns developed by Dior,Sisley, Calvin Klein, French Connection UK, TV News, Channel 4, and even Breitling.

Very few academic research studies have harnessed this particular creative fadamong advertising practitioners by studying the use of taboo-evoking stimuli inadvertisements as a substantive field of enquiry. The seminal paper linking taboos andadvertising (Manceau and Tissier-Desbordes, 2006) has remained unheeded in the

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at

www.emeraldinsight.com/0309-0566.htm

“Taboo” themesin advertising

215

Received September 2009Revised December 2009

Accepted February 2010

European Journal of Marketing

Vol. 46 No. 1/2, 2012

pp. 215-236

q Emerald Group Publishing Limited

0309-0566

DOI 10.1108/03090561211189301

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academic community. The literature has, however, taken an interest in certain kinds of visual and verbal treatment of taboo subjects, in order to understand the extent to whichthey provoke an audience (De Pelsmacker and Van Den Bergh, 1996; Ve zina and Paul,1997) or shock it (Dahl  et al., 2003). In so far as these studies introduce the concept of 

taboo as one of the components of provocation or shock, they show only that the taboo isrelayed as a second-level effect, and do not take into account the multiple connotations of the very description “taboo”: as behaviour forbidden in a particular social setting, as aprohibited topic of normal conversation, as an unacceptable image, and so on.

Arising from this shortage of theoretical reflection on the concept of taboo, the firstobjective of this study is dominantly conceptual. Based on a review of the earliestdiscourses on the subject, the dimensions of taboo will be identified and a workingdefinition proposed. This conceptual frame of reference will lead the way to exploitationof work in other fields of study, such as ambivalence (Freud, 1912; Merton, 1976; Otneset al., 1997) or normative social influence (Deutsch and Gerard, 1955; Fishbein and Ajzen,1975), and will thereby enrich existing work on provocation and shock. The secondobjective is exploratory, concerned with investigation of the processes set in motion

following exposure to a taboo-invoking message or image, and aiming at a clearerunderstanding of the reactions of an audience confronted by such advertisements. Inpursuit of this aim, a qualitative research study conducted in two distinct cultures,French and Moroccan, will address three important research questions:

 RQ1. How do individuals perceive “taboo advertising”, and what are their reactionsto brands advertised in that way?

 RQ2 . Do the identified dimensions have a particular effect on those perceptions?

 RQ3. Do the perceptions vary according to personal attributes and the situationalcontext?

The first part of this paper presents a critical review of the relevant literature. Thesecond deals with the qualitative methodology, and relates the findings to thetheoretical framework deployed. The third part discusses the contributions of thestudy, analyses its limitations, and suggests fruitful avenues for further research.

2. TabooMore than a century ago, the ethnographer Van Gennep (1904) identified threecharacteristics of the phenomenon: prohibition, sacredness, and contagion. A littlelater, Freud (1912) introduced another taboo characteristic, emotional ambivalence.

 2.1 ProhibitionAnthropologists commonly describe a taboo as a prohibition that shapes one’s dailyacts (Van Gennep, 1904; Frazer, 1911; Webster, 1942). Steiner (2004) quotes a definitionof taboo by the celebrated anthropologist Margaret Mead in the Encyclopaedia of theSocial Sciences:

A negative sanction, a prohibition whose infringement results in an automatic penaltywithout human or superhuman mediation.

Such prohibitions were the basis for behavioural norms, internalised by society.Today, all societies have their taboos, mainly related to death (Aries, 1981; Walter,

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1991) and sex (Freud, 1912; Davis, 1982; Willner, 1983). For instance, Davis noted thatthose proscribing homosexuality, transvestism and bestiality, which characterizeEuropean and North American societies, can be seen as important defenders of ethnic,religious or institutional individuality.

 2.2 SacrednessThis second characteristic originally attributed to taboo (Van Gennep, 1904; Bergson,1932; O’Reilly, 1948) has been a point of contention among anthropologists, Bergsonarguing that it is a necessary prerequisite for the genesis of a taboo. Sacredness createsboundaries between objects considered impure or ordinary and those held sacred, suchas holy people or places. Transgression of taboos is thus linked to moral impurity andpersonal danger (Douglas, 1971). Other authors have argued against this characteristicof taboo. Frazer (1911) noted that people make no moral distinctions between thesacred and the profane, or the pure and the impure. The eminent sociologist Durkheim(1915) also questioned the sacred nature of taboo. Distinguishing between religious andmagic taboos, he showed that the former draw their relevance from sacredness while

the latter relate to profane objects, and their transgression does not invoke divinesanctions. Because sacred taboos are seldom if ever challenged in advertisements (asdistinct from other forms of communication), the sacredness dimension was omittedfrom the data collection phase of this study.

 2.3 ContagionWhatever is bad or forbidden in a taboo act or object becomes contagious. Van Gennep(1904, p. 16) likened this effect to a “disease contracted by contact with an impureanimal”. Reinach (1906, p. 19) asserted that the transgressor of a taboo wascontaminated by act of transgression and that, once a taboo had been violated, onlypurification of some sort could redeem him. Freud (1912) similarly asserted that anyonewho violated a taboo became taboo.

 2.4 Emotional ambivalenceFreud (1912, p. 123) added a fourth characteristic of taboo, in defining taboo as“a prohibited action towards which there exists in the unconscious a stronginclination”, asserting that exposure to a taboo object or person evoked mixedemotions, pleasant and unpleasant. The idea of violating the taboo might be exciting,but there would be a fear of the consequences that could result from doing so. In short,the reaction to a taboo interdict is emotional ambivalence.

3. Taboo in advertisingDrawing upon the literature of taboo just described, we propose a working definition.

Taboo advertising can be defined as follows:“Taboo advertising” is that which uses images, words or settings to evoke a taboo for aproportion of the target audience. It can shock or offend by transgressing internalised normsor by triggering emotionally ambivalent responses, such as simultaneous excitement andguilt.

Like the multidimensional “offensive” advertising stimuli discussed by Barnes andDoston (1990), taboo-challenging in advertising can take at least two forms. Thedesignation can refer to the promotion of a taboo product, such as funeral services or

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condoms (Wilson and West, 1981; Fahy et al., 1995; Waller, 1999), or to taboo-violatingexecution of creative platforms.

The literature search found no research study that has yet applied theanthropological, sociological and psychological characteristics of taboo specifically

to the effects of its deliberate use in the creation of advertising themes and images topromote a product that is essentially irrelevant to the taboo (Manceau andTissier-Desbordes, 2006). Therefore, our study focuses on three of the fourcharacteristics identified in the previous section, and their potential effects onconsumer perceptions and reactions. “Sacredness” has been excluded because, inpractice, few advertisements feature sacred objects or language.

3.1 Communication effects: normative dimensionGiven the consensus in the literature that taboo is an internalised prohibition, theinfringement of which results in an automatic sanction, the violation of taboos inadvertisements is categorized by Dahl  et al.   (2003) as a “norm transgression”, which

can result in negative evaluation of the message and condemnation of the advertiser.There have been numerous boycotts of companies exploiting taboos in creativeexecutions, or placing the advertising in publications or programmes deemedoffensive. For instance, the Catholic League in the US called for a public boycott of amajor beer brand, on account of a poster that dressed the disciples in Leonardo daVinci’s iconic painting of the Last Supper in leather, and seated them at a table strewnwith sex toys (Beirne, 2007). Similarly, the American Family Association boycottedProcter & Gamble because it advertised during mainstream networked televisionprogrammes they nevertheless deemed to be generally offensive or specificallyhomosexual-friendly (Stoll, 2009). These are both examples of the impact of the socialnormative influence of a perceived taboo on brand evaluation and its purchaseintention. By extension, individuals who perceive an advertisement as taboo-violatingmay develop a negative attitude towards the brand and a negative purchase intention.Moreover, that perception will render them more susceptible to the “subjective norms”forming an element of the theory of reasoned action (Ajzen and Fishbein, 1980), andhence more likely to respond negatively in thought and deed.

3.2 Communication effects: contagion dimensionThe consensus in the literature that the taboo character of an object can be contagiousis expressed today in terms of the theory of the movement of cultural meaning(McCracken, 1986), which asserts that meaning moves first from the culturallyconstituted world to consumer goods and then from these goods to the individualconsumer. That process is assisted by advertising, and in particular by transfer of the

symbolic properties of celebrities featured in advertising to the product endorsed andthence to consumers’ purchase and use of it (McCracken, 1989), a conceptualisationempirically supported by Langmeyer and Walker (1991).

Thus, typical consumers can be expected to hold negative attitudes towardstaboo-challenging advertising and the products it promotes, and so to resist purchase.Logically, the sole exception would be those who want to distance themselves from acultural group by deliberately behaving in ways that violate its norms andexpectations.

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3.3 Communication effects: ambivalence dimensionFollowing Freud’s identification of emotional ambivalence towards a tabooprohibition, more recently defined as simultaneous or sequential experience of multiple emotional states (Otnes   et al., 1997), many social psychologists have

documented its role in determining behaviour (Jost and Burgess, 2000; Fong andTiedens, 2002), yet little attention had been directed until recently to its relevance inadvertising, beyond the idea that an advertisement can trigger simultaneously positiveand negative emotions (Edell and Burke, 1987). Since the turn of the century,researchers in marketing communications have begun to close that gap (Williams andAaker, 2002; Stevens   et al., 2003; Janssens   et al., 2007), showing that advertisingmessages and images can be a source of such ambivalence, expressed in the alternationbetween such positive and negative real-life emotions as pleasure and distaste. If thisliterature offers the foundation for a theoretical explanation of the effect that thephenomenon has on an audience’s reaction to an advertiser’s initiatives, the nature of the stimuli capable of precipitating such affective responses question remainsuncertain.

With respect to Freudian interpretations, these first studies of provocation andsexual imagery in advertising offer preliminary empirical justification for theambivalence dimension of taboo in advertising, showing that imagery which issexually explicit, provocative or taboo-violating does generate positive affectiveresponses, as well as negative. On the one hand, Manceau and Tissier-Desbordes (2006)have shown that discomfiture, embarrassment and even mental disturbance areprovoked by such stimuli. Many other researchers have found that feelings of shame,guilt, embarrassment and discomfort attest to the crisis of conscience suffered byindividuals who transgress norms (Keltner and Buswell, 1997; Eisenberg, 2000;Heywood, 2002). On the other hand, researchers have found positive affectiveresponses to these same stimuli (LaTour, 1990), notably pleasure and excitement

derived from sexual imagery. We thus conclude that taboos in advertising will triggeremotional ambivalence.To sum up this section, our literature review provides insights into the interesting

and significant communication effects of the use of taboo messages or images in ads.We believe that this is an important concept, in theory and in practice, which deservesto be investigated.

4. MethodGiven the relative paucity of relevant research into the evocation of taboos inadvertisements, the study reported here was primarily qualitative in nature, withthe main aim of uncovering people’s views and experiences with respect to aninherently sensitive subject. Because our goal was to develop a better understanding

of individual reactions to taboo advertisements, we used the relevantinterdisciplinary literature as a starting point. In parallel with a critical review of its content, we expected depth interviewing to supplement and extend existingresearch, in the spirit of grounded theory (Glaser and Strauss, 1967). Data weregenerated by in-depth qualitative interviews with interviews conducted in Moroccoand in France. The choice of these two distinct cultural contexts was made in orderto be able to generalize the results independently of the research setting and thetype of taboo considered.

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4.1 Sampling procedureA total of 22 in-depth qualitative interviews were conducted with ten individuals inMorocco and 12 in France. The rationale for the total sample size of 22 ismethodologically defensible. There are two generic approaches to the determination of 

sample sizes for qualitative data collection by in-depth interviewing: to fix a number of successfully completed interviews before the study begins, or to allow the progress of the enquiry to decide the number. Discussing the first of these, Griffin and Hauser(1993) suggest that between 90 and 100 per cent of the required data will normally havebeen collected in the course of between 20 and 30 successful interviews. Their criterionhas the merit of setting a clear and simple standard. However, Glaser and Strauss(1967) applied the principle, in their “grounded theory” approach to qualitative enquiry,that sample size should be determined by the “criterion of theoretical sufficiency” (asdistinct from “statistical sufficiency”), which dictates that interviewing stops as soonas the conduct of one more interview will not add anything new or significant to thetheoretical elements already identified. Both of these precedents were taken into

account in setting the sample size for this study. A lower threshold of 20 interviewswas set in principle, and it was judged in practice that theoretical saturation had beenreached after the twenty-second. The eventual age range was from 20 to 57, and thegender balance was 60 per cent male to 40 per cent female. A full profile of theparticipants is shown in Table I. The French participants are slightly older than theMoroccan interviewees which reflect the countries’ respective demographic profiles:the median age in Morocco is 24 years compared to the French median age of 39 years

Location Participant number Gender Age Employment

Morocco 1 M 25 Bank employee2 F 22 Student

3 M 31 Salesperson4 M 42 Head waiter5 M 41 Kitchen worker6 F 22 Student7 M 27 IT executive8 F 40 Office worker9 F 24 Student

10 M 35 Teacher

France 1 F 39 University lecturer2 F 37 Doctor3 F 30 IT executive4 M 33 Lawyer5 M 20 Student

6 F 21 Student7 M 57 Nurse8 F 28 Executive9 M 41 Accountant

10 M 40 Office worker11 M 28 Teacher12 M 24 Manual worker

Note: M ¼ male; F ¼ femaleTable I.Profile of the participants

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(World Factbook, 2008). Further, compared to the French participants, Moroccaninterviewees have a slightly more lower-to-middle class tinge, which reflect a socialdifference in the national demographic profiles, lower and middle-class respondentscollectively accounting for 87 per cent of the total (Agueniou, 2009) compared to a rate

of 81 per cent in France (Chauvel, 2004).A three-step recruitment process have been used to select interviewees. First, key

informants – our own friends, relatives and colleagues – were asked to introduce us topeople who might be willing to take part. Second, we made contact with nominatedpotential participants, and explained clearly to them for whom the research was beingconducted, and what it hoped to achieve. Third, agreement to be interviewed wassecured, and interviews were arranged at the participants’ convenience.

4.2 Interview protocol A semi-structured-interview format was used to elicit perceptions. The interviews werealso open-ended. The semi-structured interviews were based on an interview guide,

accompanied by examples of taboo advertisements, fixing the focus on the main topicsto be explored and setting the direction the questioning was to follow. In the traditionof qualitative research, the guide was not followed rigidly, and was revised as patternsemerged (Patton, 1990). The Moroccan interviews were conducted either in the localArabic or in French, Morocco being a member of “ la Francophonie”, the collectivedesignation of the countries of the world in which French is a widely spoken secondlanguage. We have to stress the point that all Moroccan interviewees were born inMorocco and they have never visited France. To limit the ethnicity-of-interviewereffect, as the interviewer has Moroccan ethnic heritage, we sought to make participantsfeel more relaxed and confident by allowing them to select their own times and venues.All interviews took place in a recreation or home environment. In introducing the

interviews, we stressed that the enquiry was part of a research program, and that no judgement would be passed on what was said during an interview. Participants wereassured of confidentiality.

The five key topics in the interview guide represented an expansion of the firstresearch question, which asks how individual perceive taboo advertising in generaland how they respond to brands advertised in that way. They were:

. attitudes to the taboo ads and emotions evoked by them;

. attitudes to the brand;

. purchase intention;

. evaluation of the product promoted the taboo ad; and

. image of a consumer who might buy it.

The interviews lasted about an hour, on average, and were recorded and thentranscribed. The transcripts were content-analysed in a two-stage approach procedureadvocated by Miles and Huberman (1994). Within-case analysis was first undertaken,to focus on each respondent individually. Cross-case analysis followed, integratingfindings both among participants in Morocco and France and across the two countries.The relevance of a given theme was derived from the frequency of mentions. Theoutcome of this analysis is shown in Table II (Morocco) and Table III (France).

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Category Sub-category Participants Verbatim comments

Normativedimension of the taboo

Violation of behavioural andconversationalnorms

[M1], [M3], [M4], [M5],[M6], [M10]

Violation of conversational norms:“We don’t talk about sex at home.Sometimes among friends, but that’sit!”“It’s a topic you don’t broach, even lessso in advertising”Violation of behavioural norms:“It’s unacceptable to see two people ona bed . . . naked. It’s against ourreligion”“This is the kind of ad that appears allthe time. Nobody has the right todisplay people’s sexual behaviour thisway. It’s immodest – shameful, even”

Role of subjective

norms

[M1], [M3], [M5], [M6] “Buying this product is going to be

banned, because it’s a bad product . . .it uses sex to sell, and that’s bad”

“Really, this kind of ad has a negativeeffect on the product, especially if we’re talking about consumers,customers who use this kind of cosmetic products”

Role of socialenvironment

[M1], [M2], [M3], [M4],[M5], [M6], [M7], [M8],[M10]

“I couldn’t look at this with myparents. Alone, yes . . . ”“ I couldn’t look at this advertising infront of my parents”

Zapping behaviour [M3], [M6], [M7], [M8],[M9]

“When you’re with your family andyou see this kind of ad, youautomatically change the channel to

avoid it, or behave as if nothing hadhappened and pretend not to notice thead”“If you see things like this in a TV ad,then you leave the room  . . . or maybeyou change channel”

Contagiondimension of the taboo

Contagiousness [M1], [M3], [M4], [M5],[M6]

“It’s just that when there are reallyshocking things . . . you rememberthem whenever you buy the product”“The problem’s the advertising. Iwouldn’t want anyone to say I buy thisperfume because of the advertising”

Ambivalencedimension of the taboo

Ambivalence [M1], [M3], [M5], [M10] “In your heart of hearts, you’d like tolook at this kind of advertising. But, incompany, you can’t”“You have to be on your own. You’dlike to look at this but, with the familythere, you have to seem to bereluctant”

( continued  )

Table II.Communication effects of taboo ads in theMoroccan context

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4.3 Advertising stimuli In both qualitative studies, the stimuli to which participants reacted were magazineadvertisements for mainstream international brands, in which the visual images

unquestionably challenged one particular taboo: explicit sexual imagery.The two pairs of advertisements chosen were deliberately different in the nature of 

the visual imagery. In Morocco, participants were confronted by photographic images

of a man and a woman in the indisputably sexual encounters. The taboo nature of suchrepresentations in Islamic societies requires no further comment, but it is noteworthythat sexual imagery features as an appeal in more and more advertising in Morocco,whether from abroad, home-grown or originating from elsewhere in North Africa. That

creative tactic can be expected to be widely regarded as unacceptable, becausesexuality is a significant taboo in Muslim countries (Bouhdiba, 2001). Not only isextra-marital sexual behaviour proscribed, but seductive representation of the female

body is a definite taboo (Couchard, 1994).In present-day Morocco, a significant proportion of the population is potentially

exposed to advertisements with sexual connotations that may be considered taboo.

Though television advertising in Morocco is regulated by the High Authority of Audiovisual Communication, nearly 10 per cent of Moroccan households watch Frenchtelevision on a daily basis, and are consequently exposed to commercials evokingsexual taboos (Gaoui, 2009). Meanwhile, the number of available satellite channels is

increasing, the penetration of one reaching 53 per cent in 2008 (Al-Bayane, 2008). Print

Category Sub-category Participants Verbatim comments

“Self-construal” [M1], [M3], [M7], [M10] “Between ourselves, this sort of advertising doesn’t bother me when

I’m abroad. But when I’m in Morocco, Ithink of my family, of the people whotaught me, and I can’t look atsomething shocking like this. I know,I’m complicated”

Role of productcongruence

[M1], [M3], [M4], [M5],[M6], [M7], [M8], [M9]

“The ad doesn’t go with the product atall”“There’s a link between this ad andthis product”

Individualfactors

Religiosity [M1], [M2], [M3], [M5],[M7]

“I’m a Muslim first and foremost”“Over here, mindsets and religioncome into it. We’re Muslims. We’vebeen brought up that way”

“Erotophobia” [M5], [M6], [M9] “I don’t like daring images, myself”“I can’t look at images like that, withpeople in those positions!”

Conformity [M1], [M3], [M4], [M5] “That sort of advertising isn’t part of our tradition”“You have to follow the groundswell,and always show respect for religion”

Notes: M1 to M10 ¼ sequential codes for individual participants in Morocco; M should not be taken tosignify “male”   Table II.

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Category Sub-category Participants Verbatim comments

Normativedimension of taboo

Violation of behavioural andconversationalnorms

[F1], [F2], [F3], [F4], [F5],[F6], [F7], [F8], [F10],[F12]

Violation of conversational norms:“There are things that are moreintimate, all the same, that you don’ttalk about a lot. This ad is aboutsomething personal, that should bedealt with in a more modest way”“This is a completely taboo subject.You don’t talk about it because it isn’tsupposed to exist”Violation of behavioural norms:“This plays with taboos, breaks therules. It reflects norms, yes, but of thevoyeuristic kind”“The ads portray deviant behaviour”

Role of subjective

norms

No French participants

Role of socialenvironment

[F1], [F2,], [F3], [F4],[F5], [F7], [F8], [F9],[F12]

“I couldn’t look at this ad with myparents”“This advertising is embarrassing, infront of the children”

Zapping behaviour [F3], [F4], [F6], [F12] “If I saw this on my own, I’d say‘Listen, it isn’t at all wicked to haveused that picture’. It reminds you of the feminine anatomy, and thelighting’s excellent. In a family setting,it depends on who’s next to me. If it’schildren, I wouldn’t let them see thispicture. If it was my parents, I’d flickthe page. If it was someone more open-

minded, well then, we could discuss it”

Contagiondimension of taboo

Contagiousness [F1], [F2], [F3], [F8,],[F10], [F12]

“I hold it against this brand for beingpresented this way . . . I can’t seemyself in a brand that paradespornography before everybody’s eyes”“When you purchase a product, youhave certain requirements. Thisproduct should have been able toplease me, but now I’ll associate it withan image of women that I don’t like atall”

Ambivalencedimension of taboo

Ambivalence [F5], [F7], [F10], [F12] “I’m not sure . . . you want to look atthe ad, but you know that isn’t quiteproper”

“Self-construal” No French participantsRole of productcongruence

[F3], [F4], [F7], [F12] “I can see no connection between theproduct and the image”“This ad has nothing to do with theproduct; that’s unacceptable”

( continued  )

Table III.Communication effects of taboo ads in the Frenchcontext

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and outdoor advertising escape the scrutiny of the regulatory authority (Belous, 2007),and can therefore have more creative freedom to disseminate words and images withsexual connotations. A case in point is a controversial poster campaign for the GeneralMotors brand Opel, in which a sexually charged visual was accompanied by the

slogan, “Prices are decreasing; desire is increasing” (Belous, 2007).The decision to conduct a new qualitative study in France was based on two

considerations. First, in France as in all western countries, the AIDS crisis of themid-eighties encouraged the development of advertising strategies for “socialmarketing” campaigns that were based on provocative and taboo appeals (Wilson andWest, 1995). Their deployment in creative platforms has since become well-establishedpractice in mainstream advertising in France. Second, it would be interesting andpotentially useful to check for transferability of the results between two distinctlydifferent cultural contexts. In the French qualitative study, participants reacted to theimages of bondage and female masturbation. The fundamental contrast with thesexual imagery in the Moroccan advertisements was based on the known tolerance to

sexual advertising themes in France, and Europe more generally (Herbig, 1998), a factsuggesting that the sexual taboos in the Moroccan advertisements would be unlikely tobe perceived as such by most French participants.

To give support to this assumption, an online questionnaire was administered inMorocco and France to a new convenience sample comprising 30 respondents in eachcountry. The age range was from 18 to 51, with a mean of 27. Key informants – ourown friends, relatives and colleagues – were asked to introduce us to people who mightbe willing to take part to an online survey and who have not already participated to thequalitative study. All the respondents were aware of the objective for the survey.Those recruited received an e-mail invitation to visit a website. Once connected,subjects were exposed randomly and successively to two advertisements. Moroccanrespondents were shown the two ads depicting female masturbation and bondage, and

French respondents saw depictions of a man and a woman in indisputably sexualencounters. After exposure to each advertisement, respondents were instructed toanswer questions about its perceived tabooness by responding, on a five-point Likertscale anchored by “very strongly agree” and “very strongly disagree”, to statementspreviously developed by Sabri-Zaaraoui (2007). Examples are “In my opinion, thebehaviour suggested in this advertisement is socially acceptable” and “It is difficult forme to speak about the topic suggested in this advertisement”. The results show thatrespondents in Morocco rated the advertisements highly taboo (mean ¼ 4.1; standard

Category Sub-category Participants Verbatim comments

Personalfactors

Religiosity No French participants“Erotophobia” [F1], [F8,], [F11], [F12] “Seeing sexual images everywhere, I

don’t approve”“I’d sooner see images of death than allthis sex”

Conformity No French participants

Notes: F1 to F12 ¼ sequential codes for individual participants in France; F should not be taken tosignify “female”   Table III.

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deviation ¼ 0.6) whereas those in France did not consider them to be taboo at all(mean ¼ 2.2; standard deviation ¼ 0.9).

5. ResultsThe conclusions to be drawn from the qualitative studies in the Moroccan and Frenchcultural contexts are general rather than specific, because the pattern of results was notdifferent in terms of processes triggered by exposure to taboo ads: normative pressure,contagious effect, and emotional ambivalent reactions. Nevertheless, contrasts areremarked upon only when they are judged to be important and relevant. Drawing onboth the relevant literature and the verbatim comments collected in the qualitativestudy, we first discuss the concomitant influences of contagion, normative pressureand ambivalence in an advertising campaign on consumer perceptions of taboo. Next,the influence of individual differences on reactions to taboo ads is reviewed. Finally, aconceptual framework for the understanding of the communication effects of taboo-exploiting advertising is proposed.

Verbatim extracts from participants’ comments are included both in the text of thissection and in Tables II and III. There is little overlap: the intention is to present asmany examples as possible of the responses on which the theoretical conclusions havebeen based, within the constraints imposed by an acceptable word-count.

5.1 Influence of taboo characteristics: normative dimensionAccording to the literature, a taboo is an internalised prohibition. As Table II shows,responses in both Morocco and France underlined that conceptualisation. In theMoroccan context, the violated taboo was considered in religious terms (“It’sunacceptable to see two people on a bed   . . .   naked. It’s against our religion”: M6)whereas participants in France explained that the taboo ads transgressed some moraland personal norm (“It’s immoral and unethical  . . . Personally, I can’t accept it”: F9).

There was convergence, however, in that the majority stressed the point that taboo adstransgress two kinds of norm: conversational and behavioural norms. A taboo waseither something they felt unable to speak about freely (“There are subjects that aresocially taboo, and we don’t talk about them”: F6) or something they would notpersonally do (“The ads depict deviant behaviour”: F6, M3, M4).

Moreover, exposure to taboos in advertising had two main consequences: achallenge to personal morals, in the abstract, and the concrete act of channel switching,or “zapping” behaviour. On the one hand, taboo ads were thought to violate personalnorms and standards, with the result that half of the participants had felt such moralemotions as guilt, shame and embarrassment, and exercised “internal sanctions”, aspredicted by Heywood (2002). These moral reactions were more intense in Moroccothan in France, presumably because French audiences are more used to provocative

and taboo appeals, and less likely to be shocked by them (“Everything that’s forbiddencrops up in our daily life, after all. You get the impression of being always on the vergeof the unacceptable”: F6). Nevertheless, the intensity of the emotions engendered by theadvertisements was moderated by the perceived congruence between the promotedproduct and the sexual message appeal. When there is a perceived incongruity, thenegative emotions are stronger (“The product has nothing to do with the ad; that’sunacceptable”: F12). A practical consequence of such negative felt emotions, and thesocial context, was that nine participants (talking about similar TV commercials rather

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than the advertisements they had been shown), were predisposed to zap the offendingad (“When you’re with your family and you see this kind of ad, you automaticallychange the channel to avoid it, or behave as if nothing had happened and pretend not tonotice the ad”: M9).

Lastly, the internalised prohibition that is the response to violation of a perceivedtaboo triggers a normative social pressure that is felt, first, while looking at theadvertisement in question and, second, when deciding whether or not to buy theproduct it promotes.

Discussing the advertisements, 18 of the 22 participants stressed the role of thedomestic ambience (absence or presence of family, friends or children) in moderatingthe strength and valence of their emotional reactions and their attitude towards theads. Some participants, extending their thoughts beyond the stimuli presented to them,and noting that parents are seen as the guarantors of respect for norms, said they wereembarrassed about watching taboo-challenging television advertising in their presence(“I feel ashamed and ill-at-ease when I view this kind of image with my parents”: M2).Alone or with friends, the discomfort diminished, and their negative reactions were lessintense, or even non-existent. These results are consistent with the findings of Baldwinand Holmes (1987), in that family or friends are treated as a private audience, internallyrepresented. The participants react in ways that would be acceptable to their salientprivate audience.

The effect of normative social pressure triggered by taboo ads on purchase intentionis consistent with the theory of reasoned action (Ajzen and Fishbein, 1980). In ourstudy, four Moroccan males more or less explicitly stressed the role of subjective normsas a negative influence on their purchase intention: (“We won’t be allowed to buy theproduct”); (“If the advertisers go on doing this kind of advertising, people will rejectit”). This effect was less noticeable in France, presumably because of the religious basisfor sexual taboos in the Moroccan culture. These findings should be treated with

caution, however, because the advertising shown to Moroccan participants hadoriginally been targeted at women.

5.2 Influence of taboo characteristics: contagion dimensionThe literature underlines the contagious nature of taboos. Influenced by the theory of “the structure and movement of the cultural meaning of consumer goods” (McCracken,1986), our analysis of the interviews reveals a transfer of the negative attributes of thetaboo to the product (“Really, this kind of ad has a negative effect on the product,especially if we’re talking about consumers, customers who use this kind of cosmeticproducts”: M1); (“I will definitely associate the brand with pornography, not because of the product but because of the images”: F3) and to the person who chooses it (“Let’s

say, if I decide to buy this product, I’m afraid of being labelled as the sort of person thatwe see in this visual. I don’t want to be seen as a pervert”: F8). Thus, participantsfeared being associated with the negative attributes of the taboo, and that limited theirpurchase intentions.

5.3 Influence of taboo characteristics: ambivalence dimensionOur study distinguished participants who had negative emotional reactions to ataboo-challenging advertisement, as either “ambivalent” or “univalent” in their

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responses to it. Figure 1 shows the causal paths from ambivalence or univalence topositive or negative attitudes to the advertising.

The literature proposes that ambivalent individuals will experience mixed feelings,either simultaneously or in sequence. For instance, they may feel positive pleasure,

arousal and attraction at the same time as, or followed by, negative embarrassment,shame, offence or frustration. In our study, exposure to the taboo imagery triggeredconflicting emotional responses in some participants, who were typically transferringtheir opinions to television advertising of this kind that they had already noticed(“Deeper inside, we want to watch this kind of ads, but when we’re in a group, wecan’t”: M1). Their ambivalence was either positive or negative. The three “positiveambivalents” identified experienced more positive emotional reactions than negative,and their eventual attitudes to the advertising were positive. In the case of the five“negative ambivalents”, negative reactions dominated, and the attitude was negative.All ambivalent participants were men, who tended to express the positive emotionsevoked by the ads more freely than their female counterparts. In the course of thestudy, it also became apparent that the ambivalent individuals were among the

younger participants.

Figure 1.“Univalent/ambivalent”typology

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In the Moroccan context, sex appeals seemed to activate two conflicting concepts of self among ambivalent interviewees, which researchers have defined as independent andinterdependent “self-construal” (Markus and Kitayama, 1991; Singelis, 1994; Zhang,2009). The independent type is made meaningful primarily by reference to the feelings

experienced in response to a stimulus, such as excitement and pleasure. Theinterdependent self-construal process regulates such reactions by reference to salientsocial and group norms (“This ad is very exciting, very exciting  . . . No, no I can’t saysuch a thing. This ad is bad. I can’t tolerate this kind of ads in my country. Muslimcountries are not going to accept it”: M3).

Univalent individuals might or might not perceive the content of an advertisementas taboo. Twelve participants did, and expressed only negative emotional reactions tothe taboo-evoking images they saw. Though Figure 1 includes the theoreticalpossibility that univalence might manifest itself as a wholly positive emotionalreaction to the same stimulus, we found no such phenomenon in our study. Whenunivalent individuals do not perceive a taboo element in the advertising, it follows thatany emotional reaction is unrelated to the issue of taboo-violation, and is therefore

irrelevant in the context of our study.

5.4 Influence of personal characteristics: religious affiliation and religiosityIn the Moroccan study, participants who considered the advertising to violate a taboooften invoked their religious affiliation and religiosity as an explanation (“I am Muslimfirst and foremost”: M1); (“This is forbidden by religion”: M10). This influence on theperception of taboo in advertising proved to be insignificant in the French context.

5.5 Influence of personal characteristics: erotophobiaThe self-explanatory term “erotophobia” (Helweg-Larsen and Howell, 2000) describes amindset that predisposes individuals to be especially reluctant to confront the

exploitation of sexual matters and taboos in advertising. In our study, someparticipants felt discomfort and dismay in the face of the taboo-violating material(“I’d sooner see images of death than all this sex”: F11). The attitude to the ad was thuswholly negative, leading to rejection of its content and condemnation of the advertiserresponsible (“I’m shocked because they use sex to promote a product. It makes me hatethe ad and the brand.”: F17).

5.6 Influence of personal characteristics: conformityAn individual’s tendency to conform with social and cultural norms and rules is anintuitively logical explanation for negative perceptions of the evocation of taboos inadvertising. The influencing role of conformity was more noticeable in Morocco, wherethe weight of rules and traditions is important (“I can’t accept this kind of advertising

because it doesn’t fit into our culture and tradition. We must always respect thetradition”: M4).

5.7 Influence of personal characteristics: ageLastly, an individual’s age is known to have a direct effect on response to advertisingof any kind, with younger members of an audience being more receptive to “edgy”advertising appeals. In our study, the younger participants judged as “cool” andcreative what their older counterparts found shocking and aggressive. In particular,

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parents in the sample deplored the widespread use of sexual imagery in advertising onthe grounds that it could shock their children (“I do not want that this kind of ad to beseen by my child. I find it completely inappropriate”: F12).

6. DiscussionBy integrating the findings of an interdisciplinary literature review with the results of qualitative studies in two different cultural contexts, our study has yielded formativeinsights into the antecedents of the perceived “tabooness” of a certain kind of advertising and its consequent communication effects. We have built those conceptualelements into the framework of theoretically relevant constructs shown in Figure 2,linking the antecedents of taboo-challenging advertisements to their consequences,which are the product of personal, interpersonal and situational variables. The findingsof the two qualitative studies form the basis for four main conclusions relating to thosevariables and the interplay among them.

First of those is that the key factors likely to influence the perceived tabooness of an

advertisement are personal. Analysis of our interview data showed that a respondent’sage had a significant impact on his or her evaluation of the extent of taboo violation,supporting the findings of De Pelsmacker and Van Den Bergh (1996), Manceau andTissier-Desbordes (2006) and Vezina and Paul (1997). It also revealed – especially, inthe case of the interviews in Morocco – the importance of religiosity to participants asthey evaluated the advertisements they were shown and advertising in general. Thelevel of tabooness perceived was higher for the more strongly religious among them.According to Mokhlis (2006), this finding is easily explained by the fact that a religionitself imposes taboos and obligations that individuals who follow it have to observeand conform to. This result is consistent with the findings established by Fam  et al.

Figure 2.Proposed conceptualframework

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(2004), who demonstrated that religiously devout consumers were more likely to findadvertising of sex related products more offensive than less devout consumers. In thesame way, Al-Olayan and Karande (2000) showed that advertising must be compliantwith the religious tenets in Arab countries in order to be accepted. Consequently,

advertisements in those countries will tend to portray women in advertisements onlywhen their presence is related to the advertised product.

However, we found only two previous studies relevant to erotophobia (Alden andCrowley, 1995; Helweg-Larsen and Howell, 2000) and none to conformity, both of whichour study suggests are important antecedents of perceived tabooness.

These conclusions, though necessarily tentative, could guide the creative strategy of advertisers addressing audiences believed to contain a significant proportion of individuals receptive to the challenging of taboos. Our findings suggest that it wouldbe productive to target people who are not particularly religious, not prone toconformism and not at all erotophobic. Future academic and commercial research willneed, however, to validate these interrelationships between advertisers and audiencesin quantitative studies of more representative samples.

Second, a key variable in our model is an individual’s emotional ambivalence, orpositive or negative univalence. The level of taboo perceived by the participants in theadvertisements to which they were exposed evoked affective responses that could becharacterised as indicative of one or other of these mental traits. Ambivalent reactionstowards advertising stimuli have been an increasingly prevalent topic in the literature:for example, Williams and Aaker (2002) and Janssens  et al.  (2007). The former studyshowed that advertising appeals can highlight conflicting emotions, both positive andnegative, and those appeals lead to a more negative attitude for individuals with a lowerpropensity to accept duality compared to those with a higher propensity. As the negativeunivalent participants identified in the present study, individuals with a lowerpropensity to accept duality experience discomfort when exposed to ambivalent stimuli.

These reactions were subject to moderation by two intervening variables: gender,and the internal conflict between the social and private self. Here again, this findinginvites strategic creative planning that segments the audience and targets subsets whoare likely to react favourably to advertisements that evoke taboos. In effect, our studyhas shown that the audience response to such advertising is not homogeneous. Rather,we distinguish a continuum between two extreme cases: positive and negative“univalents”, who are respectively the groups most receptive and least receptive totaboo appeals. Further research is required to build up a more detailed profile of thesetwo audience segments.

Third, the exploitation of taboo in advertising exhibits a “contagion” effect, in theform of a sensual transfer of the negative characteristics of a visual treatment to theadvertised product and to its eventual user. This result is consistent with the work on

emotional contagion by Howard and Gengler (2001) showing that positive or negativeemotion experienced towards a stimulus can be transferred to product attitudes, andeventually to its purchase. More precisely, the authors established that exposingreceivers to happy senders they liked, receivers may experience happiness viacontagion, resulting in receivers having a positive attitudinal bias towards a product.Consequently, this potential contagion effect may engender in advertising planners awariness of creative tactics that might set up negative reference groups in the minds of potential buyers and consumers of the product.

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Finally, the literature contends that the role of normative social influences is mostsignificant at two sequential stages in the process of persuasion: during viewing of theadvertising and while the intention to purchase is developing. This underlines theimportance of the social setting within which an advertisement is seen and evaluated,

consistent with previous research highlighting the influences of social context onadvertising reception (Puntoni and Tavasoli, 2005). Our results can thus guide advertisingstrategists in their inter-media choices. We found that television commercials, forinstance, were above all viewed in a family environment. This suggested a strategic riskthat they could confer special salience on the viewer’s social self, and thereby encouragenegative evaluations. Moreover, an individual’s social norms, those social values that heor she has internalised, could exacerbate that potential to exercise negative pressure onintention to buy. This finding contradicts the conclusions of previous studies of provocative advertising (De Pelsmacker and Van Den Bergh, 1996; Vezina and Paul,1997), which found that the form of provocation that depended on the violation of tabooshad a definite negative effect on attitudes to the advertisement deploying it, but that theeffect was not transferred to the brand, or to the intention to use it.

7. ConclusionIn the marketing literature, discussion of taboos in communication strategy is patchy,and there are very few empirical studies of the effects of their deployment as anelement of communication strategy. The objective of the research reported here wasthus to achieve a better understanding of the affective, cognitive responses of advertising audiences to creative tactics that challenge taboos. Our first step wasconceptual: having undertaken a multidisciplinary investigation of the topic, we wereable to define formally both the core construct and its component dimensions. In theprocess, our attention was focused on areas for investigation absent from the relevantmarketing literature. The resulting theoretical framework led us to the formulation of 

research propositions relating to the processes involved in the implementation of anadvertising campaign built around a creative strategy of challenging taboos.

If our findings are to make a viable contribution to researchers’ and practitioners’understanding of such a communication strategy, three limitations of the study must beacknowledged. First, the quantitative analysis of questionnaire responses would havebeen more robust if the data had been gathered from a larger and demonstrablyrepresentative sample of respondents. Future studies can remedy this comparativedefect. Moreover, the substitution of a quantitative survey using online questionnaires,for instance, could be a means of controlling the ethnicity-of-interviewer effect whichmay have introduced unquantifiable bias to the present inquiry. In addition, aquantitative study could help to validate or invalidate the role and influence of normativepressure on purchase intentions and behaviour. Second, the experimental stimuli are of 

one kind only: challenging sexual taboos. It is worth noting that many other taboos areevoked in advertising campaigns, among which are “drug chic”, male dominance oversupine women, and even death. Whether or not our findings can be generalised to alltypes of taboo is therefore a question yet to be resolved. Third, our study was confined totwo cultural settings: France and Morocco. It would be illuminating to replicate it, andtest the results, in other world cultures. For example, scandals have erupted recently inIndia surrounding advertising campaigns judged to have violated taboos (Sheth andEngineer, 2008). It would be interesting to repeat the study with quota samples

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containing sufficient numbers of cultural, ethnic and religious sub-groups in eachcountry, and questionnaires designed to elicit responses that would permit comparisonof perceptions of taboo topics and advertisements across those sub-groups. A gap in theliterature and the research could thereby be filled.

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Corresponding author

Ouidade Sabri can be contacted at: ouidade.sabri@yahoo.fr

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