Crafting Messages With The Peripheral Route Of The Elaboration Likelihood Model

The Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM)of Mass Communication was crafted in the 1980’s by Richard Petty and John Cacioppo. The model states how persuasion within messaging effects the attitude of the reader or viewer. The elaboration portion of the models refers to how much thought a person puts into making a decision — if you elaborate on something, then you are likely putting more effort into thinking about it. Persuasion is defined as any action that convinces someone to do something by reason. Corporations and advertising agencies utilize persuasion to convince consumers to purchase their product or service over others.

Peripheral vs. Central Route in ELM

The Elaboration Likelihood Model is broken into two routes — peripheral and central. Consumers are more likely to be persuaded through the central route when elaboration is higher. The central route focuses more on the merit, and pros and cons of an issue. It utilizes critical thinking as it’s basis for persuasion. The peripheral route falls on the opposite end — consumers are more likely to be persuaded with this method when elaboration is lower. An example of the peripheral route is a brand utilizing someone famous to promote a product, and consumers falling for the marketing tactic because of the famous person (and not the actual facts of the product). Although not ideal, this route is utilized because of the “decision fatigue” that consumers fall victim to nowadays. Not all decisions are life threatening, so it’s okay of individuals to be persuaded based on surface level merits.

Crafting Persuasive Media Messages

As a media practitioner, I would utilize social media influencers and the peripheral route to create persuasive media messages. Influences are 2022’s celebrities — consumers idolize their opinions on anything from fashion advice to how to make a cold brew. By having a large follower base across multiple platforms, they have an extensive reach within niche communities. For example, if I was a social media coordinator for a makeup brand, I would recruit beauty influencers to promote the products via images and videos online. It is likely that their followers are also interested in the makeup and beauty industry, so it would be an easy way to promote messaging to the makeup company’s target audience. The same goes for fitness, gaming, and other niche sectors of the internet. It is a lot easier to market a product or service as “use this product because ‘X’ celebrity uses it,” instead of providing hard facts and data surrounding the product like the central route requires. In most cases, consumers care less about why and how a product is made and care more about the status symbol behind it. Utilizing the peripheral route of ELM is likely the turn marketing is going to continue to make, especially as influencer status continues to rise.