Picture-Word Consistency and the Elaborative Processing of Advertisements

Abstract

Many advertisers believe the pictorial and verbal components of an ad should convey the same meaning. Based on theoretical and empirical evidence from a variety of areas, three experiments were conducted that show superior recall for ads in which the picture and copy convey discrepant information about product attributes when the picture and brand name are linked interactively. An elaborative processing explanation for the effect is supported by the finding that this superiority diminishes if consumers have less opportunity to process the ad and form associative linkages in memory.