Strategies and Persuasive Appeals in the Public Service Messages about Health Issues on Pakistani Television Channels

Abstract

The study analyses strategies and persuasive appeals in the public service messages aired on Pakistani TV channels during 2016-2018, that measures the effects of PSMs on audience behaviour. The PSMs fails to deliver messages due to dissimilar socio-economic backdrop and scope of the audience understanding. The purposive sampling of six selected PSM is on the bases of health themed PSM’s. Objective is to investigate the characteristics of ads, role of the message, major health issues, sources of the message and appeals. The AIDA model, persuasion theory and social responsibility theory used to filter the textual analysis of the selected PSMs. It was found that the PSMs presented health issues while using celebrity endorsement and persuasive message appeals as persuasive techniques. The PSMs such as breast cancer persuaded women for self-care, calcium deficiency PSM to calcium intakes, heat stroke PSM to precautionary measures during emergency situations, the malnutrition PSM to women healthy diet during pregnancy. The study recommends that advertisers, producers and TV channels should adopt audience perception based important strategies for social welfare, while the state must promote them.