The Effectiveness of Openness in Advertising for Familiar and Unfamiliar Brands in Different Nationalities

Abstract

This generalization study determines if open advertisements for brands differing in familiarity can be successfully used as a cross cultural advertising tool. Open ads do not guide consumers towards a ready-made interpretation and require more effort to decipher than closed ads. The study was performed in five European nationalities and the United States. A randomized 4-group design was used with ten advertisements, each in four different versions, with attitude towards the ad as the dependent variable. The results, which are robust across different nationalities, show that the attitude towards closed ads with familiar brands is more positive than towards open advertisements with unfamiliar brands. However, the negative effect of openness and the positive effect of brand familiarity can be explained by ease of comprehension. Controlled for ease of comprehension the open ads outperform the closed ads. When advertisers aim their campaigns at different nationalities, they might consider using open advertisements in combination with unfamiliar brands, but only if these ads are easy to understand.