| Summary: | Bro-tect Your Skin is an applied communications research project presenting a new area of study in sunscreen marketing research. We test the effectiveness of advertising messaging trends—language variation (Singlish or Standard English) and attribute type (hedonic or utilitarian)—in enhancing sunscreen perception among young male adults in Singapore. For our main study, we recruited 346 male participants aged between 18 and 25 years from 11 tertiary education institutions in Singapore over three weeks. Our study used a 2 (Singlish vs Standard English) x 2 (hedonic vs utilitarian) between-subjects, pre-test/post-test experimental design to test our hypotheses. Each participant answered a questionnaire and viewed one of four variations of a sunscreen advertisement. A pilot test (n = 40) was conducted to identify the most hedonic and utilitarian attributes of sunscreen to be used in the development of four versions of the advertisement. As our findings did not support our hypotheses, we are unable to discuss the validity of our arguments and its theoretical implications. Our non-findings could be attributed to limitations in measures, stimulus design, and participant control. This paper presents factors that future studies on similar topics should consider to obtain more meaningful findings and advance the understanding of the field.
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