Sorry, Did I Distract You
For you to really understand my thinking when it comes to the elaboration likelihood model, I will first define the term. The elaboration likelihood model refers to how people process things differently and how their processing may change their attitude and behaviors.
There are two routes a person can take when processing information, and they can sometimes use a combination of both. One route is central route processing. This refers to a high level of elaboration or a high amount of effort the consumer needs to use to evaluate the message. In this path consumers know what is important to them, and they scrutinize the message more rather than a more casual understanding because the information is more important to them. The other route a consumer may take is the peripheral route processing. This refers to a lower level of elaboration, where the consumer is not scrutinizing the message as much as before. In this route the consumer can be more influenced by distractions.
As a media practitioner I would try to use a lot of peripheral route processing to try and reach consumers. While this might be controversial because the central route provides longer lasting attitude changes and has a greater influence on behavior. I believe now a days the peripheral route can be very influential as well. As social media continues to rise, the peripheral route will be effective too. Influencers are a big part of social media and this is a big part of peripheral route persuasion. Distractions are what weaken the effects of central message persuasion, but in today’s world people hate to be advertised to, so adding some distractions may not be a bad thing. For example, Rebel Wilson recently took to Instagram to post about Olly Wellness. This is a great example of peripheral route persuasion because while she may not be an expert on wellness people trust her opinion.
So, while the fine details of the product might not be as memorable as in central route processing, the images are more eye catching. I would want to try this as a media practitioner because when people know what they want, they usually already know the details, so central route persuasion wouldn’t be as effective. I believe in the age of social media peripheral route persuasion is a great thing to try as it has the potential to appeal to more people. While this might be crazy I think it is worth a try as the mass media is filled with noise and advertising, so media specialists have to get creative with their persuasion routes to reach their audience.
