This paper was an assignment for my Propaganda and Persuasion class at Northwest Missouri State University. For this assignment we were to find a persuasive campaign and dig into it and determine all of the aspects of the campaign, its success, purpose, and effectiveness.

1. Propaganda and Persuasion
Persuasion
Campaign Evaluation
Gibson,AbbeK
2-23-2018

2. Persuasion Campaign Evaluation
Introduction & Description
The Proactiv “Celebrity Swag” YouTube marketing campaign was created in 2013 and
its purpose was to get customers more engaged with the products. The campaign gave customers
behind-the-scene access to Proactiv’s current celebrity spokespersons. Proactiv’s goal was to
increase subscribers to the Proactiv YouTube channel, and gain peoples interest by allowing that
behind-the-scene access to the celebrities, how-to tutorials, as well as signed merchandise
giveaways.
Proactiv’s YouTube channel was designed to promote specific Proactiv products in each
video. Proactiv is known for using celebrities to promote their products, a few of the most
popular celebrities being Jessica Simpson, Julianne Hough, Adam Lavine, Lindsey Lohan, and
Jennifer Love Hewitt. These celebrities appeared not only in the TV commercials but also in the
YouTube channel videos advertising individual products. Like any good advertiser knows, when
young easily influenced people see celebrities involved with and using a certain product or brand
they automatically want to use it because it is obviously the best and works ( hint: the celebrity is
using it and looks beautiful).
Now that Proactiv had seen what a success it was connecting celebrities to their brand,
they decided to carry that over to individual products. On the YouTube channel, they took single
products, and used celebrities to advertise and demonstrate the product. They talked about the
benefits of the product, showed the celebrity using the product; the videos resembled in a sense
“how to” videos.

3. Proactiv hoped to gain viewers, subscribers, and customers through this specific
campaign. They used the behind-the-scene and signed merchandise incentives to attract
customers to their channel and products. Another goal was to form a connection between their
subscribers and to those celebrities. On the Proactiv YouTube channel, they conducted an
interview with Adam Lavine, and he told his story about acne problems and how Proactiv change
his life and what products worked for him. Subscribers were able to relate with Adam’s story and
since that product worked for him, they purchased the product in hopes it would work for them
too. This bumped sales for Proactiv tremendously and subscribers continued watching the
YouTube channel to hear more stories, get more information, as well as purchasing more than
they had before.
Campaign Comparison
Using celebrities to promote brands and products is an old trick in the marketing
business. Brands have been connecting their brands to celebrities for years, and the marketing
tactic usually proves to be successful. Brands such as Nike, Dove, Pantene, Jergen’s Lotion, and
Crest all use celebrities to market their products; us as customers want to be like those that we
find beautiful “celebrities”. There are three persuasive campaigns that are similar to Proactiv’s
Celebrity Swag campaign, those being Clean and Clear’s “See the real me” campaign, Cover
Girls “#iamwhatimakeup” campaign, and Under Armour’s “I will what I am” campaign. Each of
these campaigns have similar persuasive strategies as Proactiv did during their Celebrity Swag
campaign, and I chose these three campaigns because they each relate to Proactiv’s campaign in
a different way and address three different parts of the campaign.
Clean and Clear’s “See the real me” campaign was launched in 2015; the face of the
campaign was teenage transgender Jazz Jennings. The campaign was designed to make young

4. girls feel comfortable in their own skin. Clean and Clear wanted to express to young people that
it didn’t matter what they looked like on the outside, especially when it came to their skin, and
that they should let nothing hold them back from being themselves. Clean and Clear used Jazz
Jennings as the face of their campaign in the beginning because she was a young transgender
female and in our society it was hard for her to be how she was. The company hoped by using
Jazz as the face of their campaign that it would encourage other young girls to stop hiding who
they are and be comfortable and proud of themselves. Clean and Clear hoped that more young
girls like Jazz, who had stories about being afraid to be themselves would come forward and
share on social media using the hashtag #seetherealme. The campaign essentially was all about
courage. Courage to be yourself, courage to show your uniqueness to the world, and what gives
someone more courage than clear beautiful skin?
Clean and Clear’s #seetherealme campaign is similar to Proactiv’s Celebrity Swag
campaign in how they use celebrities and popular public figures, like Jazz, to attract viewers, get
people talking about them, and promote sales of their products. Both campaigns use strong
influential people that young people look up to and want to be like to attract attention to their
brands. With Proactiv’s campaign, people want to look like celebrities, they all have beautiful
skin, so if you want to be like them you have to use what they use and that brings customers to
their products. Likewise, Clean and Clear used Jazz Jennings, who is a strong, independent girl,
who was coming out as transgender at a hard time not only in her teenage years but also in our
society has a whole. Young people want to be strong, stand up for what they believe, and be
comfortable and confident in themselves. Jazz promoted this, she was standing up against
everyone and being “the real her” despite what people said and young people admired that. Both
campaigns preyed upon the idea that young people want to be like those whom they like and

5. whom they look up to, too sell their products. In addition, both campaigns took their campaigns
to YouTube. Proactiv encouraged people to subscribe to their page to see behind-the-scenes clips
and product demonstrations. Clean and Clear took to YouTube as a place where people could
share their stories. However, the campaigns differ in the way that Proactiv took the extra step and
offered people who subscribed to their YouTube page free merchandise, and celebrity signed
goods. Clean and Clear did not offer this extra bonus during the campaign, they simply asked
more young people to come forward, and share their stories about struggling to be their real
selves and use the hashtag #seetherealme. Clean and Clears #seetherealme was extremely
successful. Before the #seetherealme campaign began, as a company Clean and Clear only had a
few videos on YouTube, once the campaign took off they quickly reached over 120 videos.
Many young people were coming forward and sharing stories, and the brand Clean and Clear
went from being seen as a skin treatment product, to a brand that promoted people to be their
truest self, and a brand that loved and supported all types of people despite their background,
race, or gender.
The next campaign that resembles Proactiv’s Celebrity Swag campaign is Cover Girls
#iamwhatimakeup campaign. The #iamwhatimakeup campaign launched at the beginning of
2018 as the initial start to Cover Girl’s rebranding process and the campaign is one of Cover
Girl’s most empowering campaigns. Cover Girl ditched the familiar “easy, breezy, beautiful”
slogan and they are rebranding with #iamwhatimakeup to promote women being their true
selves. With this campaign, the company is promoting and encouraging beauty individually. The
message of the campaign is “makeup is not the defining part of a woman. But it can help a
woman feel more like herself”. The campaign uses leading women such as Katy Perry, Ayesha

6. Curry, and Maye Musk, all of different races, ages, and lifestyles to promote the idea of being
proud of who YOU are in their campaign.
Cover Girl’s campaign resembles Proactiv’s campaign in the following ways, the first
being the platform. The #iamwhatimakeup campaign is aired on YouTube, just like the Proactiv
campaign and the Clean and Clear campaign. The campaigns are also similar in how the videos
show a well-known celebrity doing whatever she loves to do while wearing makeup and
looking/feeling good. The goal of the campaign is to show a leading lady being unapologetically
being herself. In one video, it shows a well-known CrossFit women working out while wearing
bright purple lipstick. The campaign hopes that when their viewers see celebrities that they look
up do doing what they love while wearing expressive makeup if they so choose to and not being
ashamed of it and being proud of who they are. Both the Proactiv and Cover Girl campaign want
women to be proud of who they are and be confident in themselves. The campaign also uses its
videos to introduce new products and they show the celebrities supporting the new products.
With the Celebrity Swag campaign, you can subscribe to the Proactiv YouTube page to get back
stage access and signed goods, and with the #iamwhatimakeup campaign you can get looks into
the products that the celebrity that they are using at the time uses and how you can get her look.
The differences in the Proactiv campaign and the Cover Girl campaign is that Cover Girl
is using this campaign as a way to rebrand, re-establish, and redefine who they are. Proactiv used
their campaign to promote who they already are, and support what they believe and how they
want their customers to view them. The #iamwhatimakeup campaign also uses their videos as
commercials and does not provide extras for their viewers and customers like the Celebrity Swag
campaign does.

7. With the #iamwhatimakeup campaign only being a couple months old now it is still
undetermined that they campaign will be a success in the end. However, since the campaign
launched it has been heavily supported. People like the idea of seeing beauty differently and
being empowered to wear makeup however they want too. Before this campaign, Cover Girl ran
the Easy, Breezy, Beautiful campaign for 21 years, and the company is hoping the
#iamwhatimakeup campaign will be equally as successful.
The third campaign that is similar to the Celebrity Swag campaign is the “I WILL
WHAT I WANT” campaign. This campaign by Under Armour launched in 2014, and at the time
of its launch, it was the largest global women’s marketing campaign. The campaign’s name
expanded from the brands slogan of “I will”, they expanded that slogan to “I WILL WHAT I
WANT” to celebrate the inner and outer strength of women, and highlights the brand’s
commitment to designing products for female athletes. The CEO of Under Armour and other
board members decided when introducing the campaign that the campaign would help the world
champion downhill skier Lindsey Vonn, who is currently participating in the 2018 Winter
Olympics, the American Ballet Theatre soloist Misty Copeland, and the US Women’s National
Soccer Team star Kelly O’Hara. The campaign features these three stand out women as well as
professional tennis player Sloane Stephens, and it captures real moments of will that each of
these women have faced, it captures grace and determination that defined each of them and their
personal triumphs. Copeland plays a significant role in the campaign because she is the
nontraditional athlete in campaign but captures the creative aspect of the campaign and showing
the brands diversity and acceptance of all women and their own unique activity.
Under Armour’s, I WILL WHAT I WANT campaign resembles Proactiv’s Celebrity
Swag campaign because they both strive to empower women. Both campaigns use influential

8. women in their campaigns and they both promote women doing whatever they want, being proud
of themselves. The Celebrity Swag campaigns encourages women to be themselves, and be
comfortable in their skin, and the brand helps women have beautiful skin so that they are
confident. Under Armour designs clothing for women to feel confident in and its clothing that
they were when they are training to be successful. Both campaigns also allowed customers to
follow the celebrities that were used in the campaigns, Proactiv by subscribing and following
them and Under Armour by apps and tracking stories. The I WILL WHAT I WANT campaign
differs from the Celebrity Swag campaign in how the campaigns are presented. The I WILL
WHAT I WANT campaign does not have a strong presence on the YouTube platform, unlike the
Celebrity Swag campaign whose main platform is YouTube. The I WILL WHAT I WANT
campaign is accessed through Facebook, Twitter, and through the I WILL WHAT I WANT app,
which is available for IPhone and IPod touches. The app allows for a community where ALL
women can track, share, and analyze their fitness and athletic lifestyle.
Under Armour’s I WILL WHAT I WANT campaign is extremely successful being the
largest women’s marketing campaign to date. It gave women the opportunity to share their
fitness lifestyles with other women and learn from other women, including professional athletes.
It was a comfortable and safe place for women, with the app being an all women community.
Under Armour was also able to support those professional athletes of all kinds with the money
made from the campaign and show just how supportive they were of women and making
products for them.
Review of Literature
The Journal of Communication discusses the relationship between perceived and actual
effectiveness of persuasive messages. The article beings by introducing the idea that message

9. effectiveness is measured by changes in attitude, belief, or behavior of the targeted audience.
When it comes to behavior, persuasive campaigns encourage audiences to refrain from rather
than engage in a behavior. When it comes to developing the actual effectiveness in a campaign
the article states, “pretesting for AE (actual effectiveness) is an expensive and time-consuming
undertaking that is on par with conducting the campaign itself.” (James Price Dillard, 2007) The
article explains messages as being measured by three things: message relevance, message
quality, and attitude change. These three measuring steps are part of the perceived effectiveness
of messages. The journal continues to critique perceived effectiveness, discuss actual
effectiveness, critique actual effectiveness, and explains how the two work together and against
each other. “Advertising researchers have long been engaged with the problem of how to assess
advertising effectiveness and its precursors. Some research addresses this question by
demonstrating the empirical utility of a model in which attitude toward the advertisement and is
the immediate causal antecedent of attitude toward the brand.”(James Price Dillard, 2007)
The idea of attitudes toward an advertisement and toward a brand lead into the next
journal article Field dependence and attitude change: Source credibility can alter persuasion by
affecting message -relevant thinking. This article looks into a study and examines how personal
issues can affect how persuaded by the article a person is based off how credible the source is.
Before you can look more into the study, you need to understand what message-relevant thinking
is. Message –relevant thinking is whether a reader sees a campaign, picture, or other media
platform as relevant. If they do see it as relevant then the viewer can be persuaded by a message.
If the viewer does not see it as message-relevant then they most likely won’t continue reading or
viewing the information and they will not be persuaded. “In the present study, field-dependent
and field-independent subjects heard convincing or refutable counter attitudinal speeches given

10. by sources of high or low credibility. Results indicated that subjects who are typically low in
differentiation of stimuli (field-dependent subjects) showed differential persuasion to strong and
weak arguments only when they were presented by a highly credible source” (Martin Heesacker,
1983). The studies concluded with finding that increasing source credibility could enhance
message-relevant thought for subjects who don’t usually scrutinize message content. Whether
someone sees something as relevant or not to themselves stems off that persons views, morals,
and what they believe in. For example, someone who does not believe in abortion will not find a
marketing campaign for abortion to be relevant and won’t waste time watching or participating
in the campaign. However, someone who does believe in a women’s choice would see the
campaign as relevant and would be excited to participate in the campaign. Jae-Eun Kim and
Kim Johnson conducted a study on just that, a person’s moral emotions and their impact on
cause-related marketing campaigns.
Kim and Johnson’s study concentrated on CRM, cause-related marketing. Cause -related
marketing is a term used to describe marketing activities that offer consumers the opportunities
to make purchase decisions for reasons other than personal benefit. Business benefits of using
cause-related marketing are increasing customers’ purchase motivation, building a strong
relationship with customers, and enhancing corporate image. “Moral emotions are important
because they can be used to explain how individuals make decisions concerning what behaviors
are good and what are bad” (Johnson, 2013). This statement supports the ideas that individual’s
morals differ from person to person therefore how and why a person buys and views a product
varies as well. Johnson and Kim’s study looked at these morals, views, and culture and what
marketing strategy works best. The study was based off Korean people and US citizens and the
study showed “Moral emotions significantly influenced purchase intention for a social-cause

11. product. The influence of an ego-focused moral emotion on purchase intention was greater for
US than Korean participants. The influence of another-focused moral emotion on purchase
intention was greater for high-interdependent participants than for low-interdependent
participants” (Johnson, 2013). So, do morals differ from culture to culture? Does culture effect
what we buy and what campaigns influence or appeal to use? Do marketing campaigns focus on
the culture that they know will react positively to their campaign? These questions lead into the
fourth and final literature journal The Globalization and Localization of Persuasive Marketing
Communication: A Cross-Linguistic socio-cultural analysis by Ming Cheung.
Ming Cheung conducted a study that looked at the similarities and differences in the
encoding of persuasive messages among different cultures. “ It considers how far the similarities
can be attributed to generic considerations, that is, to the contextual configuration of the field,
mode, and tenor of the texts, as well as how far the differences can be attributed to the social and
cultural contexts of those texts with regard to their audience, purpose, and content” (Cheung,
2010). This article expresses that it is important for companies and businesses to understand the
cross-cultural differences when it comes to persuasive communication and campaigning. What
appeals to one culture will not appeal to another, so when it comes to your campaigns and sells
as a company, companies need to change their campaign strategies depending on the culture that
will be viewing your campaign. It is also important for businesses to understand that your
campaign, especially persuasive campaigns will not appeal to everyone and not everyone will
like your campaign and that’s relates back to peoples’ differences in morals and views. The
findings in this study are that businesses need to be aware of their campaigning, for this study
specifically e-mails sales and communication. “With the spread of global business competition,
and as the marketplace experiences not only increased globalization but also increased

12. localization, the sales genre is likely to adapt in terms of discourse strategy, discourse structure,
and linguistic choices: consumers are both different and alike” (Cheung, 2010).
Campaign Reaction
Proactiv’s Celebrity Swag campaign was highly successful in the eyes of professional
public religionist and social media. The campaign was chosen as a finalist in 2013 for the PR
News’ Social Media Icon Award, (Proactiv had three campaigns chosen as the finalist for this
award in 2013). Since the Celebrity Swag campaign took place on the YouTube platform, it was
also a finalist for the YouTube: Individual Video or Channel and YouTube Marketing campaign
of the year. Proactiv’s YouTube channel that was the platform for not only the Celebrity Swag
campaign both another campaign that same year was complimented by the vice president of
public relations and social media, Connie Murphy. Murphy stated that Proactiv’s YouTube
channel leveraged three important voices of their brand: the celebrity, the authoritative
professional, and the customer testimonial. The Celebrity Swag campaign brought the most
attention to Proactiv’s channel and created a place where customers could come learn, shop, and
engage. Before the Celebrity Swag campaign launched in 2013, their YouTube channel had
minimum posts, viewers, and activity. Today Proactiv’s channel has 35,370 subscribers, and
hundreds of videos. The channels increase in subscribers shows the campaigns success first
hand, people loved what they were getting from the campaign, the encouragement, the united
feeling of being a part of something, and they were willing to pay to be a part of the community
that Proactiv’s Celebrity Swag campaign started.
Proactiv reached their desired impact with this campaign in two big ways. First, they
wanted to unite women to be comfortable in their own bodies, they wanted to create a
community were women could come and share their stories, watch other women’s stories, and

13. relate to leading ladies in society that they look up too. Proactiv created a place where women
could go and learn, engage, and shop all in one place, making it convenient for women.
Secondly, Proactiv reached their desired impact by expanding their company and their brand.
Although they had a YouTube presence before 2013 and the Celebrity Swag campaign, it was
insignificant and a little activity and traffic. After the campaign, their YouTube platform had
thousands of views and subscribers daily. There company had another place where their presence
was known and active, and it was generating revenue and popularity for their brand; so in
conclusion the Celebrity Swag campaign was a great success.
Campaign Evaluation:
I think that the Celebrity Swag campaign was successful in many ways. I think Proactiv
achieved what they were hoping to achieve by this campaign and then some. When this
campaign came out in 2013 YouTube was a smart choice for being the platform for the campaign
because YouTube was extremely popular at this time and people spent a lot of time on it.
YouTube is somewhere that things spread quickly, millions of people are on YouTube every
minute watching videos, and watching videos that those videos refer them to and so on. Proactiv
took advantage of that and used it to grow their campaign, just like using celebrities helps
campaigns and marketing, having a fast spreading platform is also important. I also think the
campaign was successful in the fact that they went with a “give a little get a little” approach. If
you as a customer subscribe to their channel and watch their videos, become a part of the
community that they were trying to create, then they were going to give back to you. Everyone
loves extras, so Proactiv giving subscribers behind-the-scenes access and signed products by the
celebrity spokes people is another successful thing that Proactiv did to advance their campaign.

14. If there was one thing that I didn’t like about the campaign it is that, I felt it was directed
toward YouTube and YouTube alone. I don’t feel like people encountered the campaign enough
outside of the YouTube platform, and if it had been pushed more on other platforms I think that
the campaign could have been that much more successful. It could have reached even more
people, more types of people, and generations of people, and the campaign could have been a hit
other places!
Summary:
Proactiv has been successful in many of their campaigns and marketing beginning in
2007 and continuing on to today. Proactive is successful in getting people engaged in their
campaigns, having a wide range of campaigns, and supporting different things with their
campaigns. Proactiv’s 2013 Celebrity Swag campaign was one of Proactiv’s most successful
campaigns of 2013 and received many awards. The Celebrity Swag campaign did all of the
things that a good persuasive marketing campaign, the engaged, they used celebrity
spokespeople, and they used a variety of platforms. The Celebrity Swag campaign is a good
example of a persuasive marketing campaign and is one that other businesses could look to for
an example of what should be done in a persuasive campaign.

15. References
Cheung,M. (2010). The globalizationandlocalizationof persuasivemarketingcommunication:A cross-
linguisticsocio-cultural analysis. Journalof Pragmatics ,23.
DavidMogenson(2015). VideoMarketingLessonsfromCleanandClear.
https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/marketing-resources/content-marketing/clean-and-clear-video-
marketing-lessons/
Guther& Renker(2018). Three ProactivSocial MediaCampaignsnamedFinalist forPRNews'Social
MediaIcon Awards. http://www.guthy-renker.com/press-releases/three-proactiv-social-media-
campaigns-named-finalists-for-pr-news-social-media-icon-awards/
JamesPrice Dillard,K.M. (2007). The Relationshipbetweenthe PerceivedandActual Effectivenessof
Persuasive Messages:A Meta-AnalysiswithImplicationsforFormative CampaignResearch. Journalof
Communication ,24.
Johnson,J.--.K.(2013). The Impact of Moral Emotionson Cause-RelatedMarketingCampaigns:A Cross-
Cultural Examination. Journalof BusinessEthics , 13.
Martin Heesacker,R.E. (1983). FieldDependence andAttitudeChange:Source Credibilitycanalter
pesuasionbyaffectingmessage-releventthinking. Journalof Personality ,4.
Under Armour Launches I WILL WHAT I WAN, Its Largest Ever Global Women's Marketing
Campaign. http://www.uabiz.com/releasedetail.cfm?releaseid=867618
https://www.jnj.com/tag/clean-clear-see-the-real-me