A Study on the Characteristics of Logos in Inner Wear Brand (이너 웨어(Inner Wear) 로고의 특성에 관한 연구)
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- The Research Journal of the Costume Culture
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- v.14 no.5
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- pp.790-801
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- 2006
This study analyzed features of elements that compose a logo of inner wear brands to get the following results: First, it was found that "elegance" was the most frequently used word to express the concept of inner wear brands to be followed by words like dignity, high-end and aristocratic, words emphasizing femininity, such as feminine, romantic and sexy, words emphasizing practicality, such as convenient, practical, modern, functional and reasonable, and words emphasizing hygiene, such as clean, healthy and hygienic. This suggests that consumers nowadays pursue image more than functional aspects in the shopping of inner wear and consumers' pursuit of such values is reflected in the concept of inner wear brands. Second, unlike logos for outerwear brands that generally used initials of brand name, word-type logos for inner wear brands used the full name of brands, thus suggesting that they put more emphasis on delivery of information rather than on the symbolic aspect. In case of combining characters with concrete objects, they were found generally to use objects that give an soft, elegant and feminine image, such as flowers, woman's head and ribbons. Third, colors in the series of pink and red seemed to be used to convey the concept of inner wear brands that pursue such images as romanticism, femininity, elegance and sensibility, while colors in the series of blue, black and grey for such concepts as functionality, practicality, simplicity, health, hygiene and refinement. With reference to typeface used in the design of logos, unlike outerwear brands of which 83% use sans serif typeface for logos, relatively high percentage of inner wear was found to use typefaces of serif series to stress feminine flexibility and delicacy and give the image of elegance and classical tenderness. With reference to language used in logo naming for inner wear brands, 33 brands were found to use English and only three brands used Korean among the 36 brands surveyed. Even with inner wear brand logos that have Korean name, it was found that they used English in the use of logo marks. Like the result of previous studies, the result of this study indicates that methods to design brand logos for clothing should be incessantly sought in a way to build brand power as an important component to represent concept or function of brands and reinforce brand image.
Differentiated positioning becomes increasingly difficult when brand salience weakens. Also, the daily increase in new media use and information load has led to a social climate that regards advertising stimuli as spamming. For these reasons, the focus of advertisement-related communication is shifting from persuading consumers through the direct delivery of information to an emphasis on appealing to their emotions using matching stimuli to enhance persuasion effects. Recently, both academia and industry have increasingly shown an interest in storytelling methods that can generate positive emotional responses and attitude changes by arousing consumers' narrative processing. The purpose of storytelling is to elicit consumers' emotional experience to meet the objectives of advertisement producers. Therefore, the most important requirement for storytelling in advertising is that it evokes consumers' sympathy for the main character in the advertisement. This does not involve advertisements directly persuading consumers, but rather, consumers themselves finding an answer through the advertisement's story. Thus, consumers have an indirect experience regarding the product features and usage through empathy with the advertisement's main character. In this study, we took the results of a precedent study as the starting point, according to which consumers' emotional response can be altered depending on the storytelling methods adopted for storytelling ads. Previous studies have reported that drama-type and vignette-type storytelling methods have a considerably different impact on the emotional responses of advertising audiences, due to their different structural characteristics. Thus, this study aims to verify that emotional response aroused by different types of advertisement storytelling (drama ads vs. vignette ads) can be controlled by the socio-psychological gender difference of advertising audiences and that the interaction effects between the socio-psychological gender differences of the audience and the gender stereotype of emotions to which advertisements appeal can exert an influence on emotional responses to types of storytelling in advertising. To achieve this, an experiment was conducted employing a between-group design consisting of 2 (storytelling type: drama ads vs. vignette ads) × 2 (socio-psychological gender of the audience: masculinity vs. femininity) × 2 (advertising appeal emotion type: male stereotype emotion vs. female stereotype emotion). The experiment revealed that the femininity group displayed a strong and consistent empathy for drama ads regardless of whether the ads appealed to masculine or feminine emotions, whereas the masculinity group displayed a stronger empathy for drama ads appealing to the emotional types matching its own gender as well as for vignette ads. The theoretical contribution of this study is significant in that it sheds light on the controllability of the audiences' emotional responses to advertisement storytelling depending on their socio-psychological gender and gender stereotype of emotions appealed to through advertising. Specifically, its considerable practical contribution consists in easing unnecessary creative constraints by comprehensively analyzing essential advertising strategic factors such as the target consumers' gender and the objective of the advertisement, in contrast to the oversimplified view of previous studies that considered emotional responses to storytelling ads were determined by the different types of production techniques used. This study revealed that emotional response to advertisement storytelling varies depending on the target gender of and emotion type appealed to by the advertisement. This suggests that an understanding of the targeted gender is necessary prior to producing an advertisement and that in deciding on an advertisement storytelling type, strategic attention should be directed to the advertisement's appeal concept or emotion type. Thus, it is safe to use drama-type storytelling that expresses masculine emotions (ex. fun, happy, encouraged) when the advertisement target, like Bacchus, includes both men and women. For brands and advertisements targeting only women (ex. female clothes), it is more effective to use a drama-type storytelling method that expresses feminine emotions (lovely, romantic, sad). The drama method can be still more effective than the vignette when women are the main target and a masculine concept-based creative is to be produced. However, when male consumers are targeted and the brand concept or advertisement concept is focused on feminine emotions (ex. romantic), vignette ads can more effectively induce empathy than drama ads.