Persuasive strategies in television food advertising in Spain

This article analyzes the persuasive strategies used in food advertising on television in Spain, according to their processing level, to get to know the messages' characteristics, the characters, and the audiovisual resources . We conducted a content analysis of the advertisements broadcasted on the two television networks with the highest audience (Antena3 and Telecinco) during four days of October, 2020, and analyzed a total of 128 hours, of which we extracted a corpus of 111 food ads. The results show an overrepresentation of ultra-processed foods which, compared to unprocessed foods, employ more persuasive strategies, such as appealing to the peripheral processing route, using more hypersexualized female protagonists, famous people, and a greater number of animations, graphics and sound effects. Thus, it can be affirmed that the promotion of a healthy diet has weaknesses insofar, as unprocessed foods are underrepresented in the media and they also use less persuasive strategies to attract the audience's attention. These results allow recommending public authorities to invest more efforts in creating efficient and forceful measures in favor of healthy eating.