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ADVERTISING TYPOLOGIES: A META ANALYSIS
Robert Aitken, Rob Lawson and Brendan Gray
University of Otago
Track: Advertising / Marketing Communication Issues
Abstract
This paper provides a meta analysis of the major typologies used by researchers to
categorise and classify advertisements. These different classification schemes vary in
complexity and range from simple dichotomies to elaborate typologies. While they
share a number of similarities, such as a dependence on effects theories and
information-processing models of communication, their differences suggest that a
new approach to the classification of advertisements is necessary. Recent research
into advertising has moved from a textual, content-based approach to one that places
the experience of engaging with advertisements and negotiating their meaning at the
very centre of the communication process. It would seem appropriate therefore, to
develop a typology of advertisements that reflects this consumer-centric approach to
the study of advertising.
Introduction
Existing typologies of advertising are based on traditional effects theories. These
theories tend to adopt a behaviouristic, hierarchical and information-processing
approach whereby viewers and readers are assumed to respond to advertisements in a
deterministic manner that is usually described in relation to a systematic connection
between cognition, emotion and behaviour. Many of these theories have their roots in
behavioural psychology and, in particular, classical conditioning.
While some cognitive response models, such as Petty and Cacioppo’s Elaboration
Likelihood Model (1983), moved advertising research away from a dependence on
classical conditioning theories, there is still an acceptance that once identified,
described and categorised all advertisements and their intended effects could be
tested, confirmed and used to predict future behaviour, according to this
epistemological tradition.
In contrast to this conventional approach, recent developments in communication
research, and reader-response theory in particular, suggest that the act of reading an
advertisement is a complex, active and dynamic process that cannot be adequately
explained or understood using traditional effects theories. These approaches to the
study of communicative events such as advertising have their roots in literary theory
and social anthropology. They suggest that the viewer or reader plays a much more
active role in negotiating meaning based on individual uses and gratifications and
social and cultural contexts.
Given these conflicting approaches to the study of advertising and advertising
effectiveness, it is appropriate to reassess how advertisements are classified and to
consider the implications for future research. Accordingly, this paper presents an
overview of existing advertising typologies and suggests a way of moving towards a
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more integrative approach to the classification of advertisements. This paper argues
that this approach will have benefits for both theory and practice.
Definition of Typology
For the purposes of this paper, a typology is understood to be a classification system
that categorises phenomena according to the similarities of their attributes. Unlike a
taxonomy that classifies phenomena according to their genesis, typologies look for
consistent and comprehensive types and classes that exhaustively map the phenomena
under study. Every typology is the result, therefore, of a grouping process: an object
or field of study is divided into groups or types with the help of one or more attributes
(Bailey 1994; McKinney 1969; Kluge 2000). The elements within a type have to be as
similar as possible to establish internal homogeneity and the differences between
types have to be as strong as possible to establish external heterogeneity (Kluge
2000). The development of group and category types that are mutually exclusive and
exhaustive is the primary concern of this typological structuring.
Literature Review
Advertisers and academics have long sought to discover what makes an advertisement
effective. This search has led to the examination of nearly every element of an
advertisement from its executional use of creative techniques to its presentation of
different message strategies. The impact of specific classes of executional or message
factors on measures of advertising effectiveness has been the focus of considerable
and continuing research (Twedt 1952; Diamond 1968; Valiente 1973; Holbrook and
Lehmann 1980; Rossiter 1981; Macklin 1988; Miller and Berry 1998).
One of the first attempts to provide a comprehensive typology of advertisements was
provided by Simon (1971). Simon identified a number of categories that focussed
mainly on message type and while it was used with some success to classify
advertisements (Reid, Lane and Smith 1985), Fletcher and Zeigler (1978) found that
different message types could be found in the same advertisement and questioned the
claim to exclusivity. Also, while some of the categories were specifically related to
message strategy, a number captured elements of both message and executional style
thus making specific apportions of effect difficult.
This conflation of executional style with message type has made the classification of
advertisements difficult. An attempt to avoid a misapplication of terms has resulted
in a number of authors using the term creative strategy (Ray 1982, Shimp and
DeLozier 1986). In their usage the term creative strategy includes what is said in an
advertisement as well as how it is said. Creative strategy, according to these authors,
comprises message content and execution (Laskey, Day and Crask 1989). However,
typologies that include both message type and executional style would need to be
extremely comprehensive and detailed to incorporate all the potentially disparate
items of composition and appeal.
Frazer (1983), for example, acknowledged the intrinsic difficulty of separating
execution from message strategy. Frazer’s typology described seven key message
strategies: Generic, Pre-emptive, Positioning, Affective, Resonance, Unique Selling
Proposition and Brand Image (1983). Frazer’s typology provides a useful range of
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categories that are described in familiar terms, however, the problems of exclusivity
of categories and consistency of classification have been raised. Laskey et al (1989)
found that some message types were evident in the same advertisement and that
coding of particular advertisements was difficult and inconsistent because of the lack
of definitive distance between categories such as Unique Selling Proposition and Preemptive and between Brand Image and Resonance.
This emphasis on message type has been complemented by Shimp (1976) who
developed one of the most comprehensive and reliable typologies of advertisements
based on executional style (Laskey Fox and Crask 1994). Shimp identified four basic
styles depending upon an advertisement’s primary creative focus. Each style has a
number of alternative executions leading to an eleven category typology. Shimp
demonstrated that the categories were mutually exclusive and that the coding scheme
for categorisation was reliable. This was confirmed by Laskey, Fox and Crask (1994)
in their investigation of the effectiveness of television advertisements.
One of the first typologies to present a simple dichotomy was that of Aaker and
Norris (1982). This dichotomy proposed a categorisation of advertisements according
to generalised message types. Building on the work of Wells (1980), who introduced
the concept of informational and transformational advertising, Aaker and Norris
developed a classification of advertising types into those that relied on feelings,
images and emotions and those that relied on information, rationality and cognitive
appeals. This categorisation of advertisements into an affective versus cognitive
dichotomy was further refined by Puto and Wells (1984). While stating that the
dichotomy was exhaustive, they also accepted that it was not exclusive. Rather, the
terms were opposite ends of the same continuum. Of more importance, however, is
their statement that advertisements must be classified according to the perceptions of
the consumer and not the predelictions of the researcher (Puto and Wells 1984).
Vaughn (1983) proposed a matrix that incorporated the major types of creative
strategies and placed them in relation to the emotional/cognitive divide and alongside
high versus low involvement. Although this configuration allows for four strategic
options, the fact that the axes are continuous suggests that an infinite number of
combinations are theoretically possible. This makes the operationalisation of the
matrix difficult.
Further, Aaker and Norris’s and Vaughn’s typologies fail to meet the classification
criteria outlined above. It is not clear that creative strategies are exclusively image
orientated versus information oriented, or that they are either emotional or cognitive.
Indeed, Vaughn himself cautions that advertising must contain both rational and
emotional elements to be effective, thus making exclusive categorisation difficult.
Also, the generality of the categories for both typologies means that the absence of
definitive criteria make them of limited practical use.
The most comprehensive study of executional factors was conducted by Stewart and
Furse (1984, 1985, 1986). Working with a consortium of advertisers, advertising
agencies and a commercial advertising testing service, these researchers examined
more than 160 executional elements within a set of 1059 advertisements and
investigated their impact on three measures of advertising effectiveness, namely,
recall, comprehension and persuasion. However, despite the scale of the research and
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the scientific rigour of the classificatory process, many of the 160 executional
elements identified did not occur in a sufficient number of advertisements for their
effectiveness to be analysed. While the specific nature of these individual elements
made coding easy, their absence made categorisation difficult.
The robustness of this study has been established by Stewart and Koslow’s replication
study (1989). This study employed the categorisation method introduced by Stewart
and Furse (1984) and obtained responses from a similar sample of the target audience
in an exact laboratory replication. However, while both the original and later
replication studies identified a number of key executional factors they both agreed
that isolating individual executional elements was not an appropriate way of
understanding how advertisements worked.
Laskey, Day and Crask (1989) begin their influential paper on a new typology of
commercial television advertising by stating that existing typologies of advertising
were not useful or consistent and that a new typology was required. Repeating the
earlier claim that any typology should be mutually exclusive and exhaustive to ensure
that all creative strategies should be able to be categorised, Laskey et al found that too
many typologies were imprecise to effectively classify such a complex and multidimensional stimulus as a television advertisement (1989).
The typology, they
stated, should also capture meaningful differences between creative executions while
remaining parsimonious.
Using Frazer’s 1983 conceptual framework of key message strategies, Laskey et al
(1989) introduced a two stage approach to their advertising typology and re-defined a
number of Frazer’s key terms. Advertisements were first placed in one of two
dichotomous categories, after Wells (1980) and Puto and Wells (1984), which
consisted of informational versus transformational advertisements and then into one
of several subcategories. Combining the advantages of a simple dichotomy (Aaker
and Norris 1982; Vaughn 1983) with the increased specificity of complex
classification schemes, Laskey et al have provided the most comprehensive,
exhaustive and useful typology of advertisements.
However, while the Laskey et al typology does offer a seemingly exhaustive and
exclusive classification of commercial advertising types, it is interesting to note that
two of the ten categories account for over fifty per cent of all the advertisements that
were coded. Further, these two advertising types were both from the informational
end of the dichotomy. Indeed, the informational category of advertisements
accounted for ninety per cent of all the advertisements coded and while this is
obviously a reflection of dominant message appeals in particular product categories, it
does not really provide a useful index of all the message appeals that exist across a
wider selection of product categories.
The authors conclude their paper, after having presented a new typology of
advertising classification, by stating that there was no one best approach to the
classification of message strategies and that further work was still required (Laskey,
Day and Crask 1989).
Summary
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From the above analysis it is clear that developing a typology of advertising is an
extremely difficult and challenging task. Researchers have provided a number of
different ways to classify this diverse and dynamic phenomenon but agree that
existing typologies are limited. First, they suffer from an imprecise use of crucial
terms. Creative strategy, for example, is used by a number of authors to mean all the
elements and components in an advertisement (Ray 1982; Shimp and Delozier 1986).
That is, executional elements such as use of humour, use of celebrity or use of product
display and components of message strategy such as use of argument, psychological
appeals or repeated assertion are combined together. The result of such a conflation is
a typology that makes sophisticated analysis of complex advertisements difficult.
What is gained in generalities is lost in specifics.
Second, those typologies that are specific about their focus tend to be either too
detailed (Reid 1985; Stewart and Furse 1986; Stewart and Koslow 1989) or, because
they only consider one aspect of an advertisement’s appeal, too limited (Shimp 1976).
A third limitation of existing typologies is inherent in the difficulties associated with
providing exhaustive and exclusive categories of classification types. If a number of
different advertisements can be classified according to similar categories then the
classification becomes meaningless. A typology must provide criteria for classifying
advertisements that are uniform, consistent and parsimonious (Laskey Day and Crask
1989).
A fourth consideration is the fact that all the existing typologies are pre-determined by
individual researchers and then measured and tested to confirm their validity. As
suggested by more recent communication theory, and, in particular, reader-response
theory (Iser 1980; Scott 1994) it would be more appropriate to give consumers a
central part in the process of identifying categories of advertisements according to the
ways that consumers respond to them.
Reader-Response Theory
Reader-response theory emphasises the active and integrative process of constructing
meaning at the point of engagement with a text (Scott 1994). That is, meaning is not
seen as being pre-determined and predictable and embedded in the text but is rather
constructed by the reader as he or she interacts with a text. In contrast to conventional
approaches to message comprehension there is no ‘correct’ reading of a text in readerresponse theory.
Cognitive and rationalist responses to advertising messages are centred on the notion
that readers process and interpret messages according to a dominant paradigm of
reading. This dominant paradigm privileges conventional strategies of message
construction and assumes that if the strategies are employed accurately they will be
read appropriately. The belief that a desired or preferred reading is possible as long
as the message or executional strategies are used accurately has led, in developing
advertising typologies, to an over-emphasis on message construction and an underestimation of the dynamic role of the reader. The development of a typology of
advertising that is derived from a consensual view of advertising types elicited from
consumers themselves will provide a classification system that both applies the
principles of reader-response theory and recognises the social construction of
knowledge.
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Such a consumer-centric approach would not only provide a clear indication of what
aspects of an advertisement’s appeal were important in relation to message versus
executional strategy but also would provide evidence in the form of a range of
responses that could form the basis for a more exclusive and exhaustive typology of
advertising.
Conclusions
In summary, the benefits of a more consumer-centric, reader-response typology for
advertising effectiveness theory and practice are clear. The benefits for theory would
be to more accurately understand the complex relationships that exist between
consumers and advertisements. In revealing how consumers respond to different
advertising strategies it will be possible to better understand their effectiveness. The
benefits for advertising practice would be to allow advertisers to more easily identify
the strategic options that were available to them.
It is necessary, therefore, to critique the existing typologies of advertisements that
seek to define the processing experience as one predicated on a belief that
advertisements function to persuade consumers of the particular merits of a brand or
product through different executional or message strategies. It is also necessary,
given the emphasis in reader-response theory on differential interpretations, to elicit
responses to advertisements that are determined by consumers themselves, rather than
responses that have been limited by researchers. Therefore, a more interpretative and
culturally relative research approach is recommended where consumers’ responses to
advertisements are analysed at the point of their engagement with them.
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