McQuarrie and Mick (1999) treat visual style as rhetoric — figures that parallel language, not decoration. The paper is the peer-reviewed foundation in this index for why specific visual devices (metaphor, pun, rhyme, antithesis) change elaboration and ad attitude.

Text-interpretive analysis, two experiments, and reader-response interviews. Visual figures — rhyme, antithesis, metaphor, and pun — produced more elaboration and more favorable attitude toward the ad, without making ads harder to comprehend. Effects for visual tropes (metaphor and pun) diminished or disappeared when viewers lacked the cultural competency to read the contemporary American ads used in the studies.

Method

Four ads with distinct figures (mascara rhyme, yoghurt antithesis, motion-sickness metaphor, almond pun). Experiments compared figure-present vs figure-absent versions on elaboration and attitude. Interviews checked whether viewer meanings matched the a priori rhetorical reading.

Main findings

  • Figures raise elaboration and Aad. Visual rhetoric is not mere ornament; it changes processing depth and liking.
  • Not harder to understand. The figures did not increase comprehension difficulty in the experiments.
  • Tropes need cultural competence. Metaphor and pun fail for audiences who cannot decode the cultural references — schemes such as rhyme/antithesis are more robust.

Why this is in the Darwin index

Darwin’s element taxonomy needs a scholarly account of what the visual does, not only where the eye lands. This paper supplies that for rhetorical devices. It pairs with Pieters & Wedel (2004) on surface capture and with the creativity meta-analysis on originality vs appropriateness.

Source of record: doi:10.1086/209549.