What is the initial feeling that comes to your mind when you think about insect consumption? For many it's a sense of disgust, which is unfortunate given the numerous environmental, nutritional, economic, and food security benefits of insects.

This reaction sparked the curiosity of Dr. Johanna Palcu and our recent graduate Sophia Paccagnella leading to the topic of Sophia's Master thesis: "Humor as communication tool in the promotion of insect containing food: examining its impact on disgust".

Their groundbreaking research discovered the remarkable influence of humor in reshaping perceptions and won them the marketmind Best Master Thesis Award 2023.

Here is what Sophia has to say about her research:
"Humor can be a powerful tool to reduce the emotion of disgust associated with insect consumption. In a lab study with 217 participants, we found that exposure to humorous advertisements significantly increased actual trial of crickets kindly sponsored by the company ZIRP , the leading Austrian supplier of innovative food products with and from insects. Humor not only distracted consumers but also led to different thinking about insect consumption. This research has implications for marketing professionals and entrepreneurs in the field of entomophagy, offering new strategies to promote sustainable protein sources. Let's embrace humor as a catalyst for positive change in the way we perceive and approach insect-based foods."

Alongside Sophia, two more finalists had the chance to compete for the big prize. Second place went to Reshma Velikkakath, supervised by Alicja Grzadziel. Her thesis "An independent monitoring system for online green claims: Effects on brand authenticity" sheds light on issues around greenwashing, emphasizing the effect of honest communication for companies wishing to enhance brand authenticity and success. Moreover, her study supports verifying environmental claims and implementing regulations on social media in line with the European Commission's forthcoming initiative.

Third place was awarded to Michael Köck, supervised by Thomas Reutterer, who presented his thesis on "ChatGPT and the Future of Search Engine Content Optimization: Comparative Efficacy of Prompt Engineering Techniques". His findings show that SEO content writers, who are using large language models (LLMs) to (semi-)automatically create SEO content, are well advised to structure their prompts into multiple sub-tasks, instead of using one holistic prompt for the whole text. In addition, giving the LLM an example further boosts content quality.

We congratulate Sophia, Reshma and Michael for their outstanding work and wish them all the best in their future endeavors! A big thank you goes to marketmind for their continuous support throughout the years! We hope our new cohort was inspired by this innovative research and will follow in the finalists' footsteps towards excellence.