McQuarrie-Mick Ad Rhetoric Incidental Exposure and Ad Repetition

1 Verbal Rhetoric versus Message Repetition Under Heavy Processing Load and Incidental Exposure to Advertising EDWARD F MCQUARRIE* and DAVID GLEN MICK* Working Paper October 2006 Please Do Not Quote Without Permission Author Notes *Edward F McQuarrie is professor of marketing at the Leavey School of Business, Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, CA 95053, phone (805) 473-3791, fax (805) 473-5717, email emcquarrie@scu.edu David Glen Mick is the Robert Hill Carter Professor of Commerce at the McIntire School of Commerce, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 22904, email dmick@virginia.edu The authors acknowledge financial support from Santa Clara University, in the form of Leavey and University grants, and the University of Virginia, in the form of McIntire grants They also thank Brittney Rhoney, Dayna Koeninger, and Martha Page for assistance in data collection and coding, and Jim Burroughs and Barbara J Phillips for ideas and advice on the manuscript Abstract Overloaded and disinterested consumers have become skillful at screening out ads In response, advertisers employ and combine various strategies, with two major ones being (a) rhetorical figures (e.g., rhyme, puns) and (b) message repetition Though each has received substantial research attention and is crucial to advertising theory, they have not been examined simultaneously We conducted a multi-magazine experiment that imposed a heavy processing load and incidental exposure to ads Target ads had headlines varying in rhetorical structure (figurative or not, and scheme or trope) and were repeated one, two, four, or six times We found that alterations to rhetorical structure had a systematically greater impact on memory, cognitive responses, and ad evaluations than variations in message repetition Also, consistent with a resource-matching perspective, but contrary to several prior studies, rhetorical schemes that are characterized by internal redundancy (e.g., rhyme), as compared to rhetorical tropes that are more open-ended (e.g., puns), were more effective at intensifying consumers’ selective processing of target ads Contemporary life is hectic and consumers confront an unrelenting torrent of marketing stimuli at every turn As a result, consumers’ disinterest and defense mechanisms have challenged advertisers to develop strategies that can rise above the commotion and attract consumers to process ads Two widespread strategies are rhetorical structures such as wordplay (e.g., rhyme, puns) and message repetition But while theory and research on rhetoric (e.g., Deighton 1985; McQuarrie and Mick 1996; Scott 1994) and on message repetition (e.g., Nordhielm 2003; Pechman and Stewart 1988; Sawyer 1981) are each reasonably well-developed, these two alternative strategies have yet to be considered together in a single study Mixed results from prior research make predictions in such an integrated study less than straightforward, particularly under the heavy processing demands and incidental exposure that characterize the everyday contexts in which consumers encounter advertising To address these issues, we conducted a multi-magazine experiment that examined the impact of two types of rhetorical structure across different levels of message repetition, under conditions designed to simulate information overload and incidental advertising exposure We begin by outlining these conditions to lay the groundwork for our research Then we review prior work on rhetorical figures and message repetition, and delineate competing expectations for an experimental test that pits these factors against one another Next we describe the study design and detail the data analyses Findings are discussed in terms of extending rhetorical theory, the evolution of knowledge about message repetition effects, and the importance of incidental exposure designs in advertising research PROCESSING LOAD AND INCIDENTAL AD EXPOSURE Over the years consumer researchers have studied information overload from various angles, particularly once it began to be suspected that the increasing pace, demands, and media intensity of economic life might lead consumers to develop adaptive and mal-adaptive processing strategies (see, e.g., Jacoby, Speller, and Berning 1974; Keller and Staelin 1987; Mick, Broniarczyk, and Haidt 2003) A foundational premise of this literature is that consumers have limits on their capacity to process information at any given time Hence, as processing load grows heavier, consumers become increasingly selective in terms of how they allocate their available cognitive resources (Greenwald and Leavitt 1984) Similarly, researchers have long recognized that despite—or perhaps because of—the increasing volume of daily advertising, any individual advertisement is rarely the primary focus of consumer processing Rather, consumers principally focus on the non-advertising or editorial material that surrounds the ads Under such circumstances, most ads will receive no processing, some will receive partial or surface processing, and a few will be processed in depth The processing of a given ad, to whatever degree, and in some particular manner, will depend on characteristics of the ad, the situation, and/or the person (Celsi and Olson 1988; Greenwald and Leavitt 1984; Pechmann and Stewart 1990) In general, there has been little research on how consumers process ads when overall processing load is heavy, the surrounding non-advertising context contains meaningful content that is appealing to consumers, and exposure to advertising is not directed or forced Hence, we set out to construct a laboratory processing environment that met the following criteria First, the ads are embedded in a large quantity of primary editorial matter likely to be of autonomous interest to participants Second, the ads are not mentioned or highlighted in the instructions to participants Third, the instructions and any pre-exposure measures are designed to reinforce participants’ native inclination to devote processing resources to the primary material in which the ads are embedded Fourth, the overall processing load, which is the total of the incidental and primary materials being exposed, exceeds the participants’ capacity to process it all, so that participants themselves must select what portions of the materials to process to a greater degree, a lesser degree, or not at all Fifth, excepting independent variables manipulated as part of the design, no other aspect of the research procedure either negatively constrains or positively enjoins participants’ motivation, opportunity, or ability to process the ads In recent years consumer researchers have made important advances in studying incidental exposure to advertising (see, e.g., Janiszewski 1988; Shapiro 1999) Typically these designs, which are founded on the different processing styles of the two brain hemispheres, involve explicitly and strongly directing participants to attend in one direction (e.g., to a right or left page in a newspaper) while a target ad placed on the opposite page is manipulated These designs are informative through forcing subconscious, and only subconscious, exposure to target ads However, they are not germane when the goal is to test whether consumers will voluntarily process one kind of target ad to a greater degree than another For our purposes, the hallmark of ad processing under heavy processing load and incidental exposure is the freedom, on an ad by ad basis, to allocate as many or as few processing resources to a given ad as the consumer deems appropriate at that moment RHETORICAL FIGURES Rhetorical figures are a common advertising characteristic (Leigh 1994); examples include rhyme, antimetabole, ellipsis, puns, and metaphor McQuarrie and Mick (1996) have argued that because rhetorical figures are deviant expressions, they are psychologically incongruous (Berlyne 1971) In addition, because they are artful, rhetorical figures are also generally pleasing to process (Barthes 1985) This pleasing incongruity is expected to invoke greater cognitive processing that, in turn, enhances memory and produces a positive attitude toward ads containing rhetorical figures Such results have been observed in multiple empirical studies (see, e.g., McQuarrie and Mick 1992, 1999; McQuarrie and Phillips 2005; Mothersbaugh, Huhmann, and Frank 2002; Tom and Eves 1999) In developing their taxonomy of rhetorical figures, McQuarrie and Mick (1996) argued that rhetorical figures may be particularly effective when consumers are exposed to ads only incidentally Provided there is an initial recognition of the artful deviation, they predict that a consumer will be motivated to process the ad further in order to grasp, resolve, and potentially appreciate the incongruity However, subsequent empirical projects have provided incomplete support for this proposition Tom and Eves (1999) and Mothersbaugh et al (2002, study 1) analyzed archival data obtained from advertising copy-testing services The authors coded the ads as containing rhetorical figures or not In both studies the consumers had initially looked at magazines without knowing they would later be asked about the ads, and to that extent, these studies reflect an incidental ad exposure environment The authors found that, compared to ads without rhetorical figures, those incorporating rhetorical figures had higher Starch scores (i.e., more participants claimed to have ‘read most’ of these ads, Mothersbaugh et al 2002, study 1) and they were recalled better (Tom and Eves 1999) However, these studies relied exclusively on memory measures, and did not offer process-oriented or affective insights as available, for example, through cognitive responses or attitude measures In another study, McQuarrie and Mick (2003) inserted rhetorical figures into either the headline or the pictorial component of target ads, and embedded these among other ads in a prototype magazine Half of the participants were asked to evaluate the ads and the other half to evaluate the articles (to invoke incidental ad exposure) The results showed that ads with visual rhetorical figures secured better memory and attitudes, as compared to the same ads with the visual figures removed (controls), and these findings were manifest in both the directed and incidental ad processing conditions, despite just a single exposure The ads with verbal rhetorical figures also had elevated memory and attitudes under directed processing, but fared quite poorly in the incidental processing condition In fact, there was little evidence that any of the verbal material in the ads, figurative or not, was processed when participants were focused on evaluating the articles (e.g., recall levels ranged from zero to two percent) McQuarrie and Mick’s (2003) null finding for verbal rhetorical figures runs counter to the results from Tom and Eves (1999) and Mothersbaugh et al (2002, Study 1) summarized earlier However, McQuarrie and Mick consistently placed all of the ad headlines below the ads’ pictorial content, as opposed to above This is problematic because a figurative headline cannot by itself command the direction of consumer attention; it can only intensify or deepen processing through its artfully deviant structure, provided that the consumer has at least minimally noted the artful deviation Participants in McQuarrie and Mick (2003) were likely to have glanced initially, and often exclusively, at the top parts of the ad pages, where the pictures were placed, as they pursued their primary goal to evaluate the articles (see Pieters and Wiedel 2004, whose eye scanning data reveals the pull and stickiness of pictures in ads) Hence, the McQuarrie and Mick (2003) study may not provide an adequate test of the impact of verbal rhetorical figures under incidental exposure Schemes and Tropes McQuarrie and Mick’s (1996) taxonomy also specifies that rhetorical figures can appear in two distinct modes called schemes and tropes Scheme figures deviate by being excessively regular at the sensory level For example, in rhyme it is the redundancy of sounds that is deviant, as in this headline for a canned product with a pull tab: “Pop the Top.” A trope figure deviates at a deeper level, by means of an irregular semantic usage For example, in a pun it is the irregular excess of meaning that is deviant, as seen in this headline for the same sort of canned product: “Pull a Fast One.” McQuarrie and Mick (1996) argued that, on average, the deviation that composes a trope will exceed the deviation that composes a scheme Hence, to the extent that the impact of a rhetorical figure on consumer response is largely a function of artful deviation, trope figures can be expected to have a greater impact than scheme figures on ad elaboration, memory, and attitudes In two laboratory experiments McQuarrie and Mick (1999, 2003) found precisely that sort of broad-based trope superiority However, as noted earlier, their significant findings were limited to ads with visual rhetorical figures, or to situations where consumers were directed to process ads More straightforward evidence is provided by Mothersbaugh et al (2002, study 1), who also coded for scheme versus trope headlines They found that ads incorporating trope headlines had higher Starch scores (“read most”) than ads with scheme headlines In sum, there is theory-based logic, but only mixed and incomplete evidence, indicating that ads with verbal tropes in headlines will generally outperform ads with verbal schemes Conversely, McQuarrie and Mick (1996) note that because schemes are excessively ordered, scheme figures like rhyme may have an advantage, compared to open-ended irregular tropes, in terms of facilitating processing in one particular circumstance: when the processing 10 load is onerous In keeping with the resource-matching perspective of Anand and Sternthal (1990), schematic superiority with respect to ad memory and evaluation may obtain when the cognitive resources to process ads are challenged by a heavy processing load and an exposure to ads that is stringently incidental That is, under those conditions the resources available for processing ads will be better matched by ads with the over-coded scheme headlines relative to those with under-coded trope headlines Here, trope headlines would be experienced as requiring more processing resources to comprehend thoroughly than the consumer is willing to devote at that moment, so that he or she would elect to move on to other material without fully resolving the incongruity of the rhetorical trope By contrast, scheme headlines would be experienced as requiring fewer processing resources to comprehend, so that the consumer is more likely to resolve the incongruity, elaborate further if inclined, and judge the headline more favorably Were these findings to emerge, they would be the first evidence that schemes are capable of outperforming tropes under specified circumstances, corresponding to those associated with aloof consumers facing a deluge of advertisements amidst absorbing editorial material MESSAGE REPETITION UNDER INCIDENTAL EXPOSURE While ad repetition studies have had a long history (e.g., Zielske 1959) and have consistently shown that repetition is an effective learning technique, this research stream is not without its inconsistencies and contingencies Specifically, it has been increasingly recognized that processing conditions, such as those that distinguish laboratory experiments and field studies (Pechmann and Stewart 1988), can systematically alter the impact of message repetition on consumer response Overall, in laboratory conditions where consumer processing effort is directed onto ads, varying message repetition produces a strong impact for even small variations in repetition level, and also fairly precise patterns across levels of repetition, including 31 Consider, for example, the fact that individuals vary in their metaphoric thinking ability (see Burroughs and Mick 2004) Individuals who score high on this measure should be more capable of processing tropes such as metaphor during demanding processing conditions and incidental ad exposure If so, some types of tropes for some types of consumers might prove equally effective or superior to schemes, even under the demanding conditions created in the present study In addition, some schemes are more complex (e.g., antimetabole, antithesis) as compared to rhymes, and some tropes are simpler (e.g ellipsis, metonym) as compared to puns (see McQuarrie and Mick 1996; Mothersbaugh et al 2002) Based on resource-matching theory, it is conceivable, under conditions paralleling the present study, that simple tropes might affect consumer processing more similarly to simple schemes, and that complex schemes might show processing patterns more akin to complex tropes Such research could further refine rhetorical theory on the impact of different types of rhetorical figures, and on the effects of stimulus complexity per se (e.g., Janiszewski and Meyvis 2001) Beyond its implications for rhetorical theory, another insight from this study pertains to the comparatively minor effects found for message repetition Prior studies of repetition in the laboratory have routinely shown that repetition can be an important contributor to message learning and to increases (wear-in) and decreases (wear-out) in attitudinal responses (see, e.g., overviews in Anand and Sternthal 1990 and Pechmann and Stewart 1988) But in most laboratory repetition studies, ad exposure has not been incidental, and/or processing load has not been substantial In this study, where participants experienced information overload and had no mandate or pre-inclination to focus on the advertisements, the repetition of target ads had a consistently weaker impact on memory and attitudes than the rhetorical structure of the ad headlines These laboratory findings reinforce the field-study findings from Lodish et al (1995), 32 and send a cautionary signal to consumer researchers Although repetition has a long history in psychological and advertising studies as a facilitator of human learning, that impact may nonetheless be weaker than otherwise expected when (a) repetition is compared to message characteristics that have their own history of demonstrated influence, such as rhetorical figures, and/or (b) repetition is delivered under incidental message exposure and intensive processing load More studies are needed that jointly examine message characteristics and message repetition in diverse processing environments, to probe more thoroughly the conditions under which repetition has a comparatively larger or smaller impact Having said this, however, a limitation of the present study is that the repetition manipulation topped out at six ad exposures Prior theory and research suggests that continued repetition must eventually engender the onset of tedium However, we did not observe an unambiguous tipping point where rhetorical figures began to lose their ability to elevate cognitive responses or ad attitudes It now appears that inflection point may not be readily reached in a single experimental session involving print ad stimuli To deliver even higher levels of repetition than used here probably requires multiple and spaced experimental sessions (see, e.g., Calder and Sternthal 1980) There would be additional benefits to such a multiple-session paradigm, including the opportunity to distinguish the effects of massed versus spaced repetition of rhetorical figures (see, e.g., Janiszewski et al 2003) Such a paradigm could also be adapted to take measures of consumer response after a delay, as opposed to immediately after ad exposure Delayed measures could reveal whether the over-coded schemes, which are relatively easy to process, or the under-coded tropes, which require more self-generation of meaning, will have longer staying power in terms of memory and attitudes 33 The present study also involved design trade-offs related to the placement of target ads within the magazines For instance, the single-iteration target ad, and all other target ads, appeared in the last magazine This decision ensured that ads at all repetition levels held roughly equal recency for participants But equating on recency made the single-iteration target ad the only newly appearing ad in the last magazine, and could have imbued it with some degree of novelty (relative to the repeated target ads in the final magazine), and this in turn could have caused the single-iteration ad to receive extra attention If so, the effect of the repetition factor might have been attenuated thereby But this alternative explanation for the weaker repetition results is not supported by other data in the study If the single-iteration target ad in the last magazine had really drawn extra processing due to the novelty of its first appearance, then it would be logical to expect participants to be especially accurate in estimating how many times they saw that particular target ad But the perceived repetition level of the single-exposure target ads was as inaccurate as the perceived repetition levels of the multiple-exposure target ads A final design challenge worth mentioning stems from the decision to study incidental and repeated ad exposures together With each repetition, there is the risk that participants will begin suspecting that the ads, and not the editorial matter, are the study’s true focus, thereby sabotaging the intended incidental ad exposure It would be unreasonable to expect that all participants reached the final answer booklet without wondering about the role of the ads in the study, including their occasional repetition We sought to circumvent such a demand effect by developing a credible cover story (judging prototypes of college student magazines), presenting participants with magazine articles of interest to students, and taking multiple measures of participants’ impressions of the magazines at various points before the final answer booklet was opened In any case, the inaccuracy of participants’ perceived ad repetitions, relative to actual 34 repetitions, suggests that in fact, most participants were not noting ad repetition closely Also, if the effort to create incidental ad exposure had broken down in the study, due to message repetition, then the results should have favored tropes over schemes, as seen in other studies that have directed participants onto the ads (see, e.g., McQuarrie and Mick 2003; Mothersbaugh et al 2002, study 2) But this did not occur, as schemes consistently outperformed tropes In fact, to the degree that ad repetition may have undercut the goal of incidental ad exposure, our findings concerning a scheme superiority effect are likely to be under-stated and conservative We began this paper by noting that consumers are inundated by a barrage of mass-media content, and that as a 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being opened by a pull tab Schem e Schem e Schem e Trope Trope Not your average joe Not your average meal Sloppy joe sandwich and can of meat sauce Trope The gift idea that leaves everybody beaming The gift idea that leaves everybody happy Miniature flashlight on gift wrapping Plate with link sausage Trope Discover the missing link Discover our sausage and salad, potatoes NOTE –The italicized words distinguish the figurative treatment headlines from the non-figurative control headlines, and this change in wording is the only difference between treatment and control ad pairs 40 TABLE AIDED RECALL PERCENTAGES Schemes _ Tropes _ Treatment Control Treatment Control _ _ 17.2% All 42.4% 18.6% 9.3% Repetition level insertion 39.4% 12.8% 16.2% 7.6% insertions 45.9% 16.5% 17.1% 7.6% insertions 34.9% 15.6% 21.9% 9.5% insertions 49.5% 23.9% 19.0% 12.4% NOTE.—For the trope and scheme treatments, the absolute values of the proportions shown are immaterial, since they are based on ads for different product categories The analysis focuses on the relative size of the treatment vs control differences within and across conditions 41 TABLE RECOGNITION PERCENTAGES Schemes _ Tropes Treatment Control Treatment Control _ _ 32.6% All 53.2% 48.6% 30.2% Repetition level insertion 51.4% 26.6% 28.6% 20.0% insertions 60.6% 31.2% 57.1% 29.5% insertions 46.8% 32.1% 48.6% 38.1% insertions 54.1% 40.4% 60.0% 33.3% Note.— For the trope and scheme treatments, the absolute values of the proportions shown are immaterial, since they are based on ads for different product categories The analysis focuses on the relative size of the treatment vs control differences within and across conditions 42 TABLE MEANS FOR VALENCED COGNITIVE RESPONSES Schemes _ Tropes _ Treatment Control Treatment Control _ Positive thoughts 44 _ 29 Repetition level insertion insertions insertions insertions 34 45 48 48 24 24 28 39 32 39 39 47 29 35 34 42 Negative thoughts 60 54 41 64 Repetition level insertion insertions insertions insertions 47 57 68 66 39 48 69 61 31 38 49 48 41 64 74 78 Neutral thoughts 43 38 35 40 39 35 Repetition level insertion 23 32 30 36 insertions 49 30 31 32 insertions 42 42 34 44 insertions 56 50 45 50 Note.— These are estimated marginal means from a Linear Mixed Models analysis For the trope and scheme treatments, the absolute values of the mean counts shown are immaterial, since they are based on ads for different product categories The analysis focuses on the relative size of the treatment vs control differences within and across conditions 43 TABLE MEANS FOR ATTITUDE-TOWARD-THE-AD Schemes _ Tropes Treatment Control Treatment Control _ _ 3.87 All 4.00 4.08 4.00 Repetition level insertion 3.94 4.01 4.11 4.01 insertions 4.02 3.87 3.97 4.11 insertions 3.96 3.78 3.98 3.95 insertions 4.09 3.83 4.25 3.94 NOTE.—These are estimated marginal means from a Linear Mixed Models analysis that included recall as a covariate entering into interactions with other fixed factors (see text) For the trope and scheme treatments, the absolute values of the means shown are immaterial, since they are based on ads for different product categories The analysis focuses on the relative size of the treatment vs control differences within and across conditions 44 FIGURE TOTAL COUNT OF COGNITIVE RESPONSES FOR SCHEME VERSUS TROPE FIGURES 45 FIGURE EFFECT OF SCHEME AND TROPE FIGURES ON POSITIVE, NEGATIVE AND NEUTRAL THOUGHTS ... extending rhetorical theory, the evolution of knowledge about message repetition effects, and the importance of incidental exposure designs in advertising research 5 PROCESSING LOAD AND INCIDENTAL AD. .. respect to processing load and incidental ad exposure, participants’ awareness of ad exposure levels (repetitions) in the main experiment was assessed Following the Aad and 20 cognitive response... e.g., overviews in Anand and Sternthal 1990 and Pechmann and Stewart 1988) But in most laboratory repetition studies, ad exposure has not been incidental, and/ or processing load has not been substantial