March 21, 2025
Advertising faculty and graduate students in the MS advertising and ICR doctoral programs, as well as several alumni, participated in the 2025 annual conference of the American Academy of Advertising, held March 6-9 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Faculty and graduate students participated in eight paper presentations and three panels, discussing research and ideas related to teaching AI and advertising, disability, ethics and data, and more.
As vice president of AAA, Chang-Dae Ham, professor of advertising and associate head of graduate studies, organized the research paper reviews and conference program and Kevin Wise, professor of advertising, served as chair of AAA’s graduate student committee.
The full list of Illinois papers and authors included:
“Finessing Realism: Harmonizing Behavioral Realism and Message Framing in Virtual Influencer Advertising – Mind Perception Theory Application”
Seo Jeong Heo, Se Il Park, Floria Yujin Lee
“Does Authenticity Matter? The Impact of Visual Realism and Humanlike Expressions on the Effectiveness of Virtual Influencers”
Jinping Wang (University of Florida), Assistant Professor Guolan Yang
“Navigating Consumer Acceptance of Cultured Meat: An Exploratory Narrative Review of Communication Strategies”
Ziyang Gong, Tianli Chen, Yan (Anna) Liu, Associate Professor Leona Yi-Fan Su, Jingen Xuan
“In Watermark We Trust? Exploring How Consumers Cope with AI Influencer Advertising: Multidimensional Persuasion Knowledge and Construal Level Approach”
Se Il Park, Floria Yujin Lee, Seo Jeong Heo
“TikTok Made Me Buy It: Breaking Expectations with Shoppable Ads”
Alice Ji, Muskan Khowaja, Kevin Gilloly, Haoxue Luo, Nelson Oshodi, Zoe Randolph, Ruiheng Sun, Chun-Yao Wang, Professor and Head Michelle Nelson
“Exploring How Consumer Evaluation of Social Justice Issues Influence Brand Activism Effectiveness”
Assistant Professor Louvins Pierre, Carolyn Lin (University of Connecticut)
“Understanding Consumer Engagement with Vertical Farming Brands on Twitter: An Approach Using Guided Latent Dirichlet Allocation for Topic Modeling”
Junqi Shao, Tianli Chen, Associate Professor Leona Yi-Fan Su
“When Virtual (vs. Human) Celebrity Voice Matters: Interplay between Celebrity Type and Endorsing Message – Construal Level Theory Application”
Floria Yujin Lee, Seo Jeong Heo, Se Il Park
Panels
“Teaching Data Ethics in Advertising: Pedagogical Approaches That Meet Industry Demand“
Natalie Brown Devlin (University of Texas at Austin), Associate Professor Ewa Maslowska, Daniela Molta (Syracuse University), Associate Professor Harsh Taneja
“Generative AI and the Future of Advertising Creativity: Bridging the Gap Between Academia and Industry”
Weizi Liu (Texas Christian University), Yanyun (Mia) Wang (University of Boulder), Assistant Professor Louvins Pierre, Tripp Westbrook (Firehouse Agency), Linda Groendyke (Digital Insights Labs), Jon Irwin (Liquid Agency)
“Disability DEI in Advertising: Preparing Future Advertising Professionals to Embrace Disability Authentically in Their Work”
Cathy Chan Butler (American Association of Advertising Agencies), Josh Loebner (VML), Professor and Head Michelle Nelson, Edward Timke (Michigan State University), Beth Haller (Towson University), Erin Whiteside (University of Tennessee), Summer Shelton (Limelight Insights by Shugoll), Maria DeMoya (University of Tennessee), Eric Haley (University of Tennessee)
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