• Journal of the Korea Convergence Society
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.179-188
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• 2022

This study discovers the general characteristics of B-class Emotional Advertisements and analyses their trend. A content analysis was conducted on 498 advertisements on-aired between 2015 and 2020, which were sampled from the advertisements registered in the TVCF(www.tvcf.co.kr), the largest advertisement web portal in the Republic of Korea. The analysis concludes that the B-class Emotional Advertisements, employed in a wide range of genre, is most incorporated in comedy/exaggeration genres and is on a rising trend due to 2020 COVID-19 Pandemic. Furthermore, it is confirmed that the utilization of B-class emotional advertisement has also increased in domain of non-commercial advertisements, such as Public Service Advertisements, Governmental/Organizational Advertisements, and Corporate Public Relations (PR) Advertisements. The study validates the transformation of the B-class emotional advertisements from a demonstration of an eccentric minority subculture to an epitome of a new and adventurous mainstream culture, successfully serving a central role in both the commercial and non-commercial sectors. Depicting the caricatures of the social, cultural and economic phenomenon and the recent surge of individual's depression, fatigue and pessimism, B-class emotional advertisements provide sympathetic and emotional alleviating ground for people that contributed to its rise.