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.