Some advertisements attract our attention because we do not immediately see what they are about. They incite us to reflect upon the delivered message. Several studies have shown that this kind of implicit messages can have a considerable impact on readers/viewers: elaboration, retention and appreciation appear to increase (. But what if the complexity of the advertisement exceeds the reader/viewer's capacity of resolution? What are the consequences for the appreciation of the ad? This paper reports an experiment to test the effect of 3 levels of implicitness on the appreciation of advertisements. 88 participants rated their appreciation and experienced complexity of 12 advertisements. The results showed that the level of implicitness has a significant impact on the ad's appreciation. Furthermore, it appeared that appreciation followed an inverted U-curve: advertisements that were considered most difficult to understand were less appreciated than relatively less complex advertisements.

A rhetorical figure (for instance the antithesis in “Come in and find out” in a Dutch perfume ad) communicates an advertising message in an artfully divergent way. Two types of rhetorical figures are frequently distinguished, namely schemes (superficial decorations such as rhyme and alliteration) and tropes (meaningful deviations such as metaphors and puns). However, until now little attention has been paid to rhetorical figures that can be found in combinations of text and image (i.e., verbo-pictorial rhetorical figures). In this article, an experiment and interviews are presented on the effects of non-rhetorical figures, verbo-pictorial schemes and verbo-pictorial tropes on attitudes towards advertisements. In the experiment, twelve real-life advertisements (4 per category: non-rhetorical figure, scheme, and trope) were presented to 92 participants. The results show that attitudes towards ads with verbo-pictorial tropes (and advertisements without rhetorical figures) are less favourable than those towards advertisements with verbo-pictorial schemes. This could be explained by the fact that relatively more participants failed to come up with successful interpretations of the ads with these tropes and that attitudes were less favourable towards advertisements that were unsuccessfully interpreted than towards advertisements that were successfully interpreted.

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Studies on print advertising have demonstrated that the use of rhetorical devices enhances ad likeability (e.g., Van Enschot, Hoeken, & Van Mulken, 2008). In this study, content analysis data are mapped to real consumer response data obtained from a sample of 199 real-life TV commercials. The content analysis showed that schemes and tropes occur in almost all TV commercials, in the verbal, visual and verbopictorial mode. Tropes occur most often. Above this, commercials with tropes are liked better than commercials with schemes and commercials with scheme-trope combinations. Perceived comprehensibility does not influence the effect of commercials with tropes and scheme-trope combinations on commercial likeability.

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Background Serious games for the training of prevention behaviors have been widely recognized as potentially valuable tools for adolescents and young adults across a variety of risk behaviors. However, the role of agency as a distinguishing factor from traditional health interventions has seldom been isolated and grounded in the persuasive health communication theory. Fear appeals have different effects on intentions to perform prevention behaviors depending on the immediacy of the consequences. Looking into how to increase self-efficacy beliefs for health behavior with distant consequences is the first step toward improving game-based interventions for adverse health outcomes. Objective This study aimed to investigate the effect of agency on self-efficacy and the intention to drink less alcohol in an interactive digital narrative fear appeal. Furthermore, the communicated immediacy of threat outcomes was evaluated as a potential moderator of the effect of agency on self-efficacy. Methods A web-based experimental study was conducted with university students (N=178). The participants were presented with a fear appeal outlining the consequences of excessive alcohol use in a fully automated web-based interactive narrative. Participants either had perceived control over the outcome of the narrative scenario (high agency) or no control over the outcome (low agency). The threat was either framed as a short-term (high immediacy) or long-term (low immediacy) negative health outcome resulting from the execution of the risk behavior (drinking too much alcohol). Results A total of 123 valid cases were analyzed. Self-efficacy and intention to limit alcohol intake were not influenced by the agency manipulation. Self-efficacy was shown to be a significant predictor of behavioral intention. The immediacy of the threat did not moderate the relationship between agency and self-efficacy. Conclusions Although agency manipulation was successful, we could not find evidence of an effect of agency or threat immediacy on self-efficacy. The implications for different operationalizations of different agency concepts, as well as the malleability of self-efficacy beliefs for long-term threats, are discussed. The use of repeated versus single interventions and different threat types (eg, health and social threats) should be tested empirically to establish a way forward for diversifying intervention approaches. Trial Registration ClinicalTrials.gov NCT05321238; https://www.clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT05321238

Samenvatting Uit onderzoek blijkt dat impliciete advertenties beter beklijven, meer associaties oproepen en meer gewaardeerd worden dan expliciete advertenties, maar wat als een advertentie een extra beroep doet op de cognitieve vermogens van de ontvanger? 88 deelnemers beoordeelden 12 (expliciete, impliciete, extra impliciete) advertenties.