Cognitive Processing and Retrieval

Cognitive Processing and Retrieval of Humorous Advertising Cues: Synergy between Print Advertising and Packaging

ABSTRACT The present paper explores the role of humorous content as advertisement and package cue, based on the “encoding specificity principle”. It discusses how the “incongruity resolution process”, the “dual coding theory” and the “picture superiority effect” influence the processing intensity and direction, and provide practical guidelines for the design and the choice of a successful ad retrieval cue. It seems that a humorous retrieval cue (a humorous picture in particular) can increase not only ad and brand specific but also overall reactions. Moreover, humorous retrieval cues seem to direct viewer’s processing to the unexpected picture, to the headline of ad and to the most relevant brand claims, increasing the recall of these creative elements. On the contrary, humorous retrieval cues do not seem to affect the recall of other pictorial ad elements that are irrelevant with humor manipulation, such as the overall setting of the ad and other secondary claims. Keywords: Synergy, Ad Retrieval Cues, Humorous Advertising Track: Advertising, Promotion, and Marketing Communications

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INTRODUCTION & PURPOSE In today’s cluttered and competitive advertising environment, marketers compete to develop integrated communication strategies that could break through the clutter, and catch consumers’ attention (Nan and Faber, 2004). Under these circumstances, practitioners and scholars alike recognize the potential benefits of placing verbal or visual information from the ad on the product packages (Carretson and Burton, 2005; Keller, 1987, 1991a, 1991b). These ad retrieval cues can enhance consumers’ memories and affect brand evaluations during brand decisions (Keller, 1987). For instance, Energizer (Lipman, 1990) placed “Energizer Bunny” on its product packages to assist consumers to integrate the favorable effects of the ad exposure with brand knowledge. In the same vein, Carretson and Burton (2005) indicated that when spokecharacters, such as Chester the Cheetah and Snuggle Bear are relevant with the advertised brand they can be proved successful retrieval cues. Some of the most famous spokescharacters, including the Pillsbury Doughboy are incorporated in humorous advertisements. Keller (1991a), called researchers to investigate how a humorous advertisement influences the success of the synergy between print advertising and packaging (p. 54). To date humor has been approached only as an emotional element of TV, print and radio advertising (Weinberger and Gulas, 1992; Fugate, 1998) and never as an executional element that could facilitate the integration among different media. The present paper focuses on the incongruity resolution process; the most frequently employed process in advertising for humorous creation (Speck, 1991; Alden, Hoyer and Lee, 1993; Alden and Martin, 1995; Spotts, Weinberger and Parsons, 1997). In the incongruity resolution process, there are events, pictures or texts presented, which comprise some type of schema incongruity. Thus, the person does not conceive at once the connection between different events, pictures, or texts, since the entire stimulus event does not comport with his expectations. Then some advertising elements provide the linkage (in the present study a headline) of different events, pictures, or texts resolving the incongruity and leading to humor appreciation (Alden, Mukherjee and Hoyer, 2000; Speck, 1991). The specific research questions of the present study are: 1. Can humorous ad execution affect the processing intensity and direction? The findings can provide practical guidelines for the design of ads that could stimulate the processing of important verbal or visual information (such a spokecharacter or a logo). According to Keller (1987, p.331), it is of great importance to determine the factors that increase the processing intensity and at the same time determine processing direction. 2. Which part of a humorous advertisement and which of a neutral1 one can be used as an ad retrieval cue in order to further facilitate the retrieval of the ad: the target picture (in the case of humor manipulation an incongruent picture), the headline (in the case of humor manipulation a headline that solves the incongruity), other pictures, or brand claims? LITERATURE REVIEW According to Wells et al. (2003, p. 546) synergy “means that the impact of the whole campaign is greater than the sum of individual parts”. Synergy is at the heart of Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) research (Schultz, 2005). As far as synergy between print advertising and packaging is concerned, Keller showed that ad retrieval cues both facilitate memory performance and improve brand evaluations, when ads are favourable (1987). Also, he stressed the role of consumers’ processing goals (ad-directed or brand-directed processing) on the ad encoding (1991b) and that of competitive interference on ad retention (1991a). In line with Keller, Macklin (1994) proved that an advertising retrieval cue leads to greater 1

For the purpose of the present study, a neutral advertisement is considered every ad that does not contain any unexpected picture, any emotional stimuli and does not exhibit resonance (wordplay). It is an ad that simply presents the advantages of advertised brand.

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memory performance, more positive brand evaluations and more positive behavioral intent toward the advertised brand. Keller (1987, 1991a, 1991b), Macklin (1994) and Carretson and Burton (2005) did not examine how a cognitive process, such as incongruity resolution, could affect the synergy between print advertising and packaging. Research Hypotheses In this section, the findings of humor-related studies and those of the incongruity literature will be used in light of Tulving’s “encoding specificity principle” (1974, 1979), in order to formulate some relevant hypotheses, regarding ad retrieval cues. The encoding specificity principle states that “specific encoding operations performed on what is perceived, determine what is stored, and what is stored determines what retrieval cues are effective in providing access to what is stored” (Tulving and Thomson, 1973, p. 369). Keller (1991a) and Friestad and Thorson (1993) provided evidence of the encoding specificity principle, indicating that compatibility between the type of information stored in memory at encoding and the type of information present as cue at retrieval, result in successful recall and more rapid retrieval of advertising. Studies have shown that humor is a powerful tool to attract consumers’ attention to the ad (Sternthal and Craig, 1973; Madden and Weinberger, 1984; Weinberger and Gulas, 1992; Fugate, 1998; De Pelsmacker and Qeuens, 1998), enhancing ad recognition (De Pelsmacker and Geuens, 1996). Similarly, the incongruity resolution process seems to strengthen consumers’ ability to recognize an advertisement and its copy (Dahl, Frankenberger and Manchanda 2003). Thus, it could be assumed that memory performance will be greater when an ad retrieval cue from a humorous ad is used than that from a neutral one. However, one should take into consideration that in line with the “dual coding theory” verbal and visual elements of advertising are encoded by separate systems (Stewart and Punj, 1998; Rossiter and Percy, 1978). Within each system, related concepts are connected through associative links. On the other hand, numerous referential connections are developed between related verbal and visual concepts, linking the verbal and visual associative networks (Paivio, 1986). The incongruity resolution process creates associative links among the pictures that participate in humorous execution and referential links among unexpected picture, headline (that solves incongruity) and those brand claims that are stressed from the humor. Hence, the following hypotheses emerge: H1: Memory performance will be greater when an ad retrieval cue (only when it participates in humorous execution) from a humorous advertisement is used than when an ad retrieval cue from a neutral ad is used. H2: Humorous content does not enhance retrieval of some useful information that is not related to humor (other pictorial ad elements and secondary claims). A question that arises is which executional element of humorous ad mainly triggers the advertising audience’s attention (processing direction). According to the “picture superiority effect on consumer memory” (Childers and Houston, 1984), the advertising audience tends to recall more easily pictorial ads, compared to verbal-only ads, especially under incidental exposure to advertising (McQuarrie and Mick, 2003). However, an unexpected picture, which is part of a humorous ad, motivates to a greater extent the advertising processing than a picture, which is incorporated in a neutral ad. Meyer, Reisenzein and Schützwohl (1997) proved that the incongruity resolution process concentrates consumers’ attention to the unexpected stimulus, for instance an unexpected picture that is incongruent to the stimulus schema. Unexpected (incongruent) information is recalled more easily by the advertising audience compared to expected (congruent) information (Heckler and Childers, 1992). At the same time, unexpected but relevant information lasts longer in the memory of the recipient compared to the expected and relevant information (Srull, Lichtenstein and Rothbart, 1985;

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Lee and Mason, 1999). This has been attributed to the fact that the audience, in an attempt to reconcile the incongruity, creates new paths in the possessed brand knowledge (Sjödin and Törn, 2006) updating or revising the active brand schema (Meyer et al., 1997). The following hypothesis is proposed: H3: Memory performance will be greater with the target picture (in the case of humor manipulation an incongruent picture) of the ad as an ad retrieval cue than with other additional cues, especially for consumers who viewed a humorous ad. McQuarrie and Mick (1992, p. 180) proposed the concept of resonance, a creative technique to “combine wordplay with a relevant picture to create ambiguity and incongruity”. Resonance, which constitutes a term similar to that of incongruity resolution process, reinforces the unaided recall of ad headlines. This leads to the following hypothesis: H4: Memory performance will be greater with the headline of the ad as an ad retrieval cue than with no additional cue, especially for consumers who viewed a humorous ad. METHODOLOGY For the purpose of this study, experimental design was used, with two between-subjects factors; humor and ad retrieval cues. Specifically, the experiment involved a 2 (humorous print ad versus non humorous print ad) x 5 (non ad cue, target picture cue, other picture cue, headline cue and brand claims cue) design. The subjects were 149 students (47 males and 102 females) approximately 22 years old that were recruited from five departments of two Universities. Participants in 20 experimental sessions were randomly assigned to one of the 10 treatment conditions. The studied ads promoted four product categories, biscuits, chips, cereals and fruit juices, since subjects have some experience of using them and they are familiar with such kind of products. These products are low involvement products that satisfy positive motives and are promoted in very competing markets (Whitelock and Rey, 1998). Humor is employed mainly in the print ads of low involvement products in which motivation is positive, where the likelihood of success is the greatest (Spotts et al., 1997, Eisend, 2008). Unfamiliar brand names, from international brands, were used to avoid any potential confounds with known brand names for which subjects may have had different prior experiences or evaluations. Brands within product categories were basically unique in their positioning, so that primary and secondary claims across brands in a product category were different. Sixteen print ads, four in each product category (two target ads and two interfering ads) were created for the study. Specifically, each interfering ad had an identical A4 page layout, with a photo covering the whole ad, a headline appearing on the top, two brand claims on the bottom left corner (a strictly relevant with brand positioning and a supplemental claim with low brand positioning relevance) and the brand name with the product category of the advertised brand on the bottom right corner. Though the four target ads had a similar format with interfering ads, they had a white background. In addition, two extra pictures were featured in those ads; a target picture and a secondary picture (it was smaller than the target picture and was not part of humorous execution). Following the procedure in Heckler and Childers (1992), and Lee and Mason (1999) the incongruity resolution process and as a result humor was manipulated through the target picture of the print ads. Mock package fronts had the same size as the print ads. The brand name and the product category identification featured the upper part of the package. The lower part of the package illustrated the ad retrieval cue.

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Participants were invited to read and evaluate a new magazine for young people (cover story). The exposure condition was incidental, since consumers generally view ads in an incidental manner (MacKenzie and Lutz, 1989). With incidental exposure moderate humor operates better (Krishnan and Chakravarti, 2003). In the first phase of the experiment, participants read 12 articles (of 150 words) and were exposed to a subset of 12 print ads, 8 interfering ads and 4 target ads (2 humorous and 2 neutral). Ads within a product category were separated by at least one ad for a brand of different product category. Every subject had 90 seconds to read the article that was in the left page and to observe a print ad that was placed in the right page. This procedure was repeated 12 times. The ads were counterbalanced across subjects, while mock package fronts were presented in the same order with the corresponding ads. In the second stage of the experiment, subjects rated the degree to which they felt the magazine was likable, interesting and convincing. Subsequently, they completed a questionnaire that refered to the recall and evaluation of the print ads based on the presence of related packages. The persuasiveness of articles, the favorability of the interfering ads and the favorability and humorousness of the target ads was assessed in three pretests prior to the experiment. RESULTS To test the effect of humor on the success of an ad-retrieval cue (which is relevant with humor, such as an unexpected picture, a headline and primary brand claims), an analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted (Table 1). Consistent with hypothesis H1 the subjects in the humor condition had more specific ad (F = 15.622, p