Now we're going to start to get into the weeds about some of the specific changes you can make in your communications in order to get consumers to rethink their attitudes. First, in this section, I'm going to briefly review several components of persuasive messages that you can use to change the way customers feel, think and act about your product. Let's take a look at some tactical message decisions. Suppose, for example, that Audi wants to create an advertising campaign for a new ragtop that it targets to young drivers. Audi has a number of tactical decisions to make. The source of a message helps to determine whether consumers will accept it.

So who will drive the car in the ad? Should it be a NASCAR driver? A career woman a reality show star How should Audi construct the message? Should it emphasize the negative consequences of being left out when others drive cool cars, and you still tool around in your old clunker? Or perhaps it should directly compare the car with others already on the market? Or maybe present a fantasy in which a tough minded female executive meets a dashing stranger while she cruises down the highway in her Audi.

What media should we use to transmit the message, a magazine ad, a TV, commercial, and online ad. So as we look at all these decisions, we recognize that there are in fact many elements of persuasive communications and each one can be quite significant. We have the source of the message. We have the message itself and how it's constructed. We have the medium that will be used to convey the message. We have to think about characteristics of the receivers that make them more or less receptive to different kinds of appeals.

And finally, we have a feedback loop that gives us some information about how effective our strategies have been, so that we can modify them to be even more effective in the future. The takeaway here is that the medium really is the message. The way you say something is as important as what you say.