Effects of Metaphors on Children's Comprehension and Perception of Print Advertisements

Literal versus extended symbolic messages and advertising effectiveness: The moderating role of need for cognition

“…Indeed, of the 41 types of figure of speech identified by Leigh (1994), only three-resonance, word play, and metaphor-appear to have been examined for their persuasive effects. This meager empirical evidence does suggest, however, that advertisements that contain figurative forms of communication may enhance both the recollection and evaluation of the featured brand (Hitchon, 1991;McQuarrie & Mick, 1992;Morgan & Reichert, 1999;Pawlowski, Badzinski, & Mitchell, 1998;Reece, Vanden Bergh, & Li, 1994;Toncar & Munch, 2001). …”

Following the Links: Food Advertising and Promotion on Children's Magazine Websites

“…Over 20 years ago, advertising researchers cautioned that relying on television advertising as the sole, or primary, medium for studying the influences of advertising on children resulted in an incomplete understanding of how children process and interpret advertising (Soldow, 1983;Stoneman & Brody, 1983). However, there has still been very little research on how children interpret and process print or Internet advertising; although there have been some specific areas addressed (e.g., Pawlowski, Badzinski & Mitchell, 1998).…”

Did You Get It? Factors Influencing Subjective Comprehension of Visual Metaphors in Advertising

“…Metaphoric comprehension likely occurs via cross-domain mapping (Bowdle and Gentner 2005), but the process by which this mapping takes place has been highly debated (see, e.g., Glucksberg, McGlone, and Manfredi 1997;Ortony 1979). Comprehension of VM ads can be affected by factors such as the potential for multiple inferences (McQuarrie and Phillips 2005), abstract versus concrete metaphors and the brain hemisphere in which the ad is processed (Morgan and Reichert 1999), developmental age (Pawlowski, Badzinski, and Mitchell 1998), juxtaposition versus synthesis of visual elements (Gkiouzepas and Hogg 2011), and the degree of openness of the ad (Lagerwerf and Meijers 2008). Phillips (2000) has argued that while both presence and level of verbal anchors increase ad comprehension, complete explanation of a metaphorical image in the message text decreases ad liking, perhaps because it undermines the pleasure derived from cracking the puzzle posed by the ad.…”