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Increasingly, social marketers are using sexual information in public service announcements and collateral material for a wide range ofcauses. This study builds on previous research to explain how sexual appeals can affect cognitive processing and persuasion for "help-self' social marketing topics. It also goes beyond traditional single-message research designs by testing matched pairs of appeals (sexual/nonsexual) for 13 social marketing topics. The major finding was that sexual appeals were more persuasive overall than matched nonsexual appeals for social marketing topics. Sexual appeals also stimulated more favorable ad executionrelated thoughts but had a negative effect on cognitive elaboration (e.g., support and counterarguments). Respondents also reported that sexual appeals were more attention getting, likeable, dynamic, and somewhat more apt to increase their interest in the topic than were nonsexual appeals. These findings suggest that persuasion is largely the result ofperipheral processing and distraction from somewhat unpleasant messages when receivers are expected to counterargue the message or be resistant to change.

The authors report the results of a laboratory experiment examining the effects of the meaningfulness of brand names on recall of advertising. The findings indicate that a brand name explicitly conveying a product benefit (e.g., PicturePerfect televisions) leads to higher recall of an advertised benefit claim consistent in meaning with the brand name compared with a nonsuggestive brand name (e.g., Emporium televisions). Conversely, a suggestive brand name leads to lower recall of a subsequently advertised benefit claim unrelated in product meaning (e.g., superior sound) compared with a nonsuggestive brand name. The authors discuss implications of these findings for marketers with respect to advertising strategies and the optimal use of meaningful brand names in building and managing brand equity.