As suggested in a NY
Times (2007) article headline: “Anywhere the eye can see, it’s now
likely to see an ad.” The creative potential of non-traditional media solutions
is being recognized by advertisers all over the world, as evidenced by the
development of specific categories promoting non-traditional media in
international advertising award shows such as, for example, Cannes Lions.
Micael Dahlén argues
that “a non-traditional medium can be a (visual) rhetorical figure, more
specifically a metaphor. The rhetorical perspective suggests that the manner in
which a statement is expressed may actually be more important than its
propositional content,” (p.14).
It might be important to pause and define the term
‘rhetorical figure’ which simply means ‘a figure of speech’ – where, a figure
of speech is the use of a word or words diverging from its usual meaning. Figures of speech often provide emphasis,
freshness of expression, or clarity. However, it’s worth noting that clarity
may also suffer from their use, as any figure of speech introduces an ambiguity
between literal and figurative interpretation. Rhetoric originated as the study
of the ways in which a source text can be transformed to suit the goals of the
person reusing the material. For this goal, classical rhetoric detected four
fundamental operations that can be used to transform a sentence or a larger
portion of a text: expansion, abridgement, switching, and transferring. The
advertising industry has taken the rhetorical figure and expanded it from
simple text to a visual display that does exactly the same thing and creates ‘a
freshness of expression’ that allows the ‘viewer’ to form different ‘messages’
in their mind.
Dahlén argues that, “in terms of rhetorical figures, a
non-traditional medium would be best defined as a visual metaphor, which is one
of the most powerful rhetorical figures. Visual figures are more effective than
verbal figures because they are entirely implicit; creating an openness and
ambiguity that invites consumers to ‘leap to conclusions’. Furthermore,
metaphors are under-coded (i.e., they provide no explanation), and therefore
require consumers to add pieces to solve the puzzle. When the non-traditional
medium works as a metaphor for the brand, the consumer experiences the message
through the medium, (p.14)
It’s worth remembering that “brand reputation can be defined
as the ‘goodwill’ consumers ascribe to a brand based on their previous
experiences of the brand and its visibility in the marketplace. In other words,
the reputation is a historical notion of the brand’s past behaviours that
guides consumer response when they encounter the brand.” It won’t be surprising
to find that “research shows that a brand’s reputation affects its advertising
effectiveness, so that advertising for a low reputation brand has less impact,
is counter-argued more, and interpreted less favourably (Mitra and Golder 2006)
than advertising for high-reputation brands,” (p.14).
Research has also shown that when faced with rhetorical
figures in advertising, consumers try to ‘think into it’ and figure out what
the advertiser wants to convey (Phillips 1997). As when using rhetorical
figures there is no explicit connection between the metaphor and the brand, and
hence consumers tend to produce a number of alternative, tentative,
conclusions, so-called ‘weak implicatures’, (Dahlén, 2009, p.15).
To highlight this aspect McQuarrie and Phillips (2005)
suggest that the resulting ‘weak implicatures’ could best be described as
good-faith attempts to understand the message. That is, consumers tend to
search for and find positive rather than negative aspects in rhetorical
figures. This focus on positive aspects of the advertising, in turn, reduces
the cognitive capacity that is left for challenging the advertising (McQuarrie
and Phillips 2005; Toncar and Munch 2003). Therefore, one would expect advert
and brand evaluations to be enhanced. Finally, research shows that the use
itself of rhetorical figures may have a direct, positive, effect on brand
attitude: the advertiser is perceived as clever and entertaining and is
therefore better liked by the consumer, (p.15).
The main message in Dahlén’s article is that “one should
think creatively in the media choice process. Whereas there is great focus on
how to ascertain a sufficient level of creativity in the advertss, media
choices tend to be made more or less from habit. As brands in the same product
category tend to advertise in media with some kind of overlap in audience or
theme, their advertising faces competition both from similar brands and from
the media content. This may leave less room for positive effects of creativity
inside the given advertising spaces and more room outside of them. As a
non-traditional medium focuses processing on the positives and reduces
counterarguments, it could also be well suited for communicating new messages
and benefits to gain greater acceptance.”
“Whereas both low-reputation and high-reputation brands
enjoy more positive advert and brand evaluations in a non-traditional medium,
the former seems to have more to gain. Thus, we particularly encourage low
reputation brands to employ non-traditional media in their advertising,” (p.22).
References
Dahlén, M. (2009). A Rhetorical Question: What Is the Impact
of Non-traditional Media for Low- and High-Reputation Brands? Journal of
Current Issues & Research in Advertising; Vol. 31 Issue 2, p. 13-23.
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