Chutzpadik advertising and its effectiveness: Four studies of agencies and audiences

The creation of advertisements that attract immediate attention and simultaneously provoke thoughts and stimulate ongoing discussions is challenging. Hence, advertisers increasingly use Chutzpadik advertising, which we define as “radical advertising messaging that purposefully transgresses social norms and proscribed topics”. We conduct four studies to identify the dimensions and evaluate the effectiveness of Chutzpadik advertising. The first two studies involve interviews with 12 managers of advertising agencies and 22 members of the Israeli general public (audience members). The interviews reveal Chutzpadik advertising’s dimensions are norm violation, novelty, and audacity. In two subsequent studies, the effectiveness of Chutzpadik advertising is examined through data collected from 108 managers and 209 audience members. Structural equation modeling and fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis suggest the three dimensions of Chutzpadik advertising differentially affect adverting effectiveness. Our research provides theoretical and empirical grounding for Chutzpadik advertising and advances our knowledge of its effectiveness within differentiation advertising research.