Are Ads on Public Transport Effective?

Course Title: Bachelor in Communications

Module: ASZ223e

“I cannot make you do anything. I can only influence you to do it.” – Anonymous

This exact quote may not be a familiar one with the general public, but there are probably different variations. I therefore believe that the argument that the poster campaign will influence people to change their eating habits is valid.

According to the online Merriam Webster dictionary, influence is defined as “the power to cause changes without directly forcing them to happen; the power to change or affect someone or something”.

Even though eating habits are a personal genre of tendency for everyone, poster campaigns put at public places such as public transport are bound to be seen nationwide. Even in this century where most people are glued to their screens of their smart gadgets, at some point or another, their eyes would have come across the advertisements glued on the public spaces. With personal observation on a peak hour at 8am on a weekday morning, out of every 10 people going in or out of the train doors, at least 5 will have their eyes on their gadget screens while they moved. Thus, it is most probable that half the train commuters would have seen the printed advertisements on trains as shown below.

[pic 1]

Figure 1 depicts a comparison between a dog (pet) and pig (food), with some facts about pigs that renders viewers to look at their sources of proteins more “humanely” with more emotions, likening to how people look at their pets.

The poster aims to liken the habits and emotions of a meat source (pigs) to those of pets. It questions the viewers on why pigs (meat sources) cannot be viewed as like a dog even though they are both animals. It attempts to invoke the doubt of why people are not able to treat both the pigs and dogs equally and hopefully triggers the guilt in viewers in order to influence them to not consume meat and to turn vegetarian. As Wade (2009) reported in The New York Times, biologists have found out through some experiments that humans have a natural inclination to help. This behaviour seemed to be instinctive as it was displayed in early stages of growing up and even prior to parents teaching them the polite behavioural rules. Thus, it is logical to say that when viewers see the posters from the campaign, they will feel at least a slight inclination to help the animals, and thus aid in influencing them to change their eating habits.