Beyond Visual Metaphor: A New Typology of Visual Rhetoric in Advertising

Abstract

The goal of rhetorical theory is always to organize the possibilities for persuasion within a domain and to relate each possible stratagem to specific desired outcomes. In this article we develop a visual rhetoric that differentiates the pictorial strategies available to advertisers and links them to consumer response. We propose a new typology that distinguishes nine types of visual rhetorical figures according to their degree of complexity and ambiguity. We then derive empirically testable predictions concerning how these different types of visual figures may influence such consumer responses as elaboration and belief change. The article concludes with a discussion of the importance of marrying textual analysis, as found in literary, semiotic and rhetorical disciplines, with the experimental methodology characteristic of social and cognitive psychology.

Complexity of print advertising : theoretical insights

“…As B. J. Phillips, E. F. McQuarrie (2004) stated, meaning operations provide instructions to consumers that direct their inferences from the arranged elements. Similarly, whereas visual structures can be arrayed according to their degree of complexity, meaning operations can be arrayed according to their degree of ambiguity, polysemy or richness of reference.…”

“…Consequently, feature complexity and design complexity indicates perceptual complexity; while visual rhetorical figures reveal cognitive complexity regarding the advertisement (meaning operations refer to the target or focus of the cognitive processing required to comprehend the picture; visual structure refers to how the two metaphorical objects are physically arranged (Phillips, McQuarrie, 2004)). …”

“…T. M. Lowrey (1998) analyses the syntactic complexity of advertising in her research. Moreover, the other type analyzed in the field of advertising complexity is rhetorical complexity (e.g., McQuarrie, Mick, 1996;Phillips, McQuarrie, 2004;van Mulken, 2006); rhetoric figures can be analyzed in textual and visual frameworks. Considering technical complexity, it can be argued that as well as rhetorical, it can take verbal (textual) or visual form.…”

“…Analyzing visual rhetoric in advertisements, it is worth noting that there are two dimensions of visual rhetorical figures (Phillips, McQuarrie, 2004): 1) Visual structure, which refers to the way the two elements that comprise the visual rhetorical figure are physically pictured in the advertisement;…”

“…According to R. Pieters et al (2010), advertising needs to have "stopping power" and marketers need to know which factors influence the stopping power of their advertisements and how to assess this to improve their effectiveness. A distinctive feature of advertising, relative to other contemporary forms of human communication, is its reliance on pictures to persuade (Phillips, McQuarrie, 2004). Therefore, the visual impression of advertising becomes crucially important.…”