The Importance Of Communication Theory

University of Minnesota communications professor, Ernest Bormann stated that communication theory is “an umbrella term for all careful, systematic and self-conscious discussion and analysis of communication phenomena.” Judee Burgoon states that theory is “a set of systematic hunches about the way things operate.” Communication theory, while maybe seeming boring and dull, is basically informed thoughts on how humans interact. Theories are “hunches” that we use to better understand not only how people communicate, but the way we all think. By learning how people communicate and think we can communicate in a more effective, beneficial way. We are able to learn more about these communication topics through both quantitative studies such as measuring …show more content…
Pickett (doctoral student at the University of Houston). The goal of the study was to find the relationship that a favorable/unfavorable view of an ad, played a part in the ad’s success. Furthermore, they looked at whether humor contributed to consumers forming a positive or negative impression of the ad. To test this, they sent out a few thousand “anti-smoking” advertisements out that advertised “anti-smoking kits”. They sent out the ads to randomly selected zip codes across the country. To some zip codes they sent out an ad that was tested and perceived as “humorous” and “satirical”. The other was tested and perceived as “informational” and “not humorous”. When they sent out the ads, they found that humor increases the consumer’s likelihood to view the ad/company in a more positive way. There was also a relation between viewing the the ad/company in a favorable way and the consumer’s likelihood to purchase the anti-smoking kit. In the end it was found that the ads that were humorous received more call backs as well as had a higher success rate than the ad that was not …show more content…
It was found that humorous advertisements are more effective with certain types of goods/services than others. As well as increased perception, it also increases attentiveness and overall interest in the advertisements. However, when used with the wrong products, or presented in the wrong medium, humor in the advertisement would decrease the comprehension of the ad and in some cases had a negative effect on the success of the advertisement. Almost everything we see today online is some form of advertisement. This topic is worth studying because companies spend billions of dollars on advertising every year. If there was a way to make these advertisement campaigns more effective, that would be very valuable and businesses would take advantage of that information. The communication in this topic is among company and customer, more specifically, over digital media and