Non‐traditional male gender portrayal as a persuasion tool in advertising

The outcomes of an experiment investigating the effectiveness of gendered advertisements that use traditional or non‐traditional male portrayals are reported. The effectiveness of the ads was tested in relation to perceivers' attitudes to male gender roles on a Polish student sample. The experiment followed a 2 (ad type)×2 (gender attitude) mixed factorial design. The main finding was that the non‐traditional ad strategies were more effective than the traditional ones, supporting the predictions of research on message elaboration and the pique technique. Moreover, attitudes to male gender roles played a moderating role where the predictions of the gender attitude/ad strategy match hypothesis were supported. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.