Levels of implicitness in magazine advertisements

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 (Peracchio & Meyers-Levy, 1994, Phillips, 2000, Tom & Eves, 1999, Toncar & Munch, 2001, Mothersbaugh et al., 2002). 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.