Visual Persuasion: The Role of Images in Advertising

321 Pages·1996·21.48 MB·English

by  Paul Messaris

Paul Messaris
VISUAL
PERSUASION
The Role
of
Images
in
Advertising
SAGE Publications
International Educational and Professional Publisher
Thousand Oaks London New Delhi
To my mother and the memory of my father
Copyright © 1997 by Sage Publications, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by
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Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Messaris, Paul.
Visual persuasion : the role of images in advertising / Paul
Messaris.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8039-7245-2 (alk. paper). - ISBN 978-0-8039-7246-9 (pbk.
: alk. paper)
1. Advertising—Psychological aspects. 2. Visual communication.
3. Commercial art. I. Title.
HF5822.M415 1996
659.1Ό42—dc20 96-25184
11 12 13 14 15 15 14 13 12 11
Acquiring Editor: Margaret Seawell
Editorial Assistant: Renoe Piernot
Production Editor: Michele Lingre
Production Assistant: Sherrise M. Purdum
Typesetter/Designer: Danielle Dillahunt
Cover Designer: Lesa Valdez
Print Buyer: Anna Chin
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments iv
Introduction:
A Theory of Images in Advertising V
PART 1: IMAGE AS SIMULATED REALITY
1. Pictures and Reality 3
2. Visual Form and Style 53
3. Can Pictures Bridge Cultures? 90
PAßT 2: IMAGE AS EVIDENCE
4. Visual Truth, Visual Lies 1 29
PART 3: IMAGE AS IMPLIED SELLING PROPOSITION
5. Editing and Montage 1 63
6. Showing The Unspoken 219
Epilogue: Ethics of Visual Persuasion 265
References 275
Index 289
About the Author 297
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
—<o>- The research that led to this book was supported extensively by
the resources of the Annenberg School for Communication at the Uni-
versity of Pennsylvania. I am deeply grateful to the school's Dean,
Kathleen Hall Jamieson; to my research assistants , Alison Andrews and
Jennifer Khoury; to Kimberly Maxwell, Ellen Reynolds, and Deb Porter
for their help with the book's illustrations; and to my colleague Larry
Gross for his role in ensuring the continuing vitality of visual scholarship
at Annenberg.
My wife, Carla Sarett, gave me valuable advice on much of what I
have written in these pages. I have also profited from the comments,
assistance, and support of many colleagues and friends, including:
Derek Bouse, Henrik Dahl, Kirsten Drotner, Geri Gay, Klaus Jensen,
Yolanda Lazo, Louise Mares, Kim Schroeder, Sari Thomas, Joe Turow, as
well as three anonymous reviewers provided by Sage Publications. To
all of these, my heartfelt thanks.
This book was originally commissioned for Sage Publications by
Sophy Craze, and it was completed under her successor, Margaret
Seawell. Many thanks to both of them for their encouragement and
advice. It is also a pleasure to express my gratitude to Editorial Assistant
Renee Piernot and the other people I worked with at Sage Publications
—Production Editor Michele Lingre and Production Assistant Sherrise
Perdum, Copy Editor Liann Lech, and Design Director Ravi Balasuriya—
for their courtesy and efficiency Finally, special thanks to Permissions
Editor Jennifer Morgan for her help on matters of copyright.
iv
INTRODUCTION
A Theory of Images
in Advertising
-<o>- I was leafing through the pages of a newspaper while my
11-year-old niece and her girlfriend watched television. A change in noise
level signaled the onset of a commercial. Suddenly, both girls began to
make loud, theatrically exaggerated swooning sounds. I looked up. On
the screen was the face of TV star Luke Perry, appearing in an ad for Mars
Bars®. The girls' display of melodramatic emotion continued, until fi-
nally my niece went up to the TV set and pretended to kiss Luke Perry's
image. Later that afternoon, we drove into town to do some shopping.
As soon as we entered the supermarket, first one girl and then the other
went running off to buy Mars Bars .
This little incident, which happened several years ago, has stayed in
my mind as an emblematic illustration of the way in which successful
visual advertising is supposed to affect its viewers. Despite their theat-
ricality, the girls' responses should not be dismissed as simply childish
behavior. I do not know how common it is for viewers of whatever age
to pretend to kiss a screen image. I suspect it is exceedingly rare, although
I would not be surprised to be told that I am ignorant of a widespread
ν
vi -<o^ VISUAL PERSUASION
phenomenon in the world of preadolescents. However, not only among
preadolescents but also among fully mature adults, the underlying
reaction that motivated the kiss—seeing an image as an embodiment of
the physical attractions of the real world—is certainly no rarity. On the
contrary, it is a central ingredient of the response that visual ads typically
aim for in all of us, old and young alike. A major reason for using images
in ads is to elicit this response.
But the image in this particular ad was produced by a camera, and
that fact adds a further dimension to its appeal. Unlike handmade
images, such as drawings or paintings (which are uncommon in TV
commercials but do appear occasionally in print ads), photographs and
images on video are typically seen as direct copies of reality. This quality
strengthens the viewer's illusion of interacting with real-world people
and places, and it also does something else. In many ads, the use of
photographs or video serves as evidence that what is being shown in the
ad really did happen—for example, that Luke Perry really did pose with
a Mars Bar. Of course, that kind of evidence itself may be quite illusory,
especially in an age in which photographs can be manipulated so easily
by computer. But here I am getting ahead of my story, because my aim
at this point is only to outline the intended functions of advertising
images, not to question the basis of those functions.
I suppose that, if I were an advertiser, I would probably be happy to
hear about my niece and her friend's strong reactions to Luke Perry's
screen image. But I am sure that I would be absolutely delighted by their
subsequent behavior in the supermarket. Their behavior encapsulates,
in a nutshell, a process that many scholars see as the basic selling
mechanism of commercial advertising, and an important component of
other types of visual persuasion as well (e.g., political propaganda). On
the TV screen, the girls saw a juxtaposition of two images: on one hand,
an attractive TV star; on the other, a product. In their everyday lives, the
enthusiasm that they originally had expressed for the TV star was
directed later toward the product.
Clearly, the visual connection established on the screen elicited some
form of mental connection in the girls' minds (because I do not, for a
moment, believe that their purchase of the Mars Bars was a coincidence).
But I think we need to be very cautious about interpreting the nature of
that mental connection. Although the girls' behavior may seem, at first
blush, to be a straightforward example of an artificially induced, dis-
Introduction -<o>- ii
v
placed desire—something for which advertising is often blamed, espe-
cially when it involves sex, and even more so when it involves young
people—I think that what actually happened here was more compli-
cated. For one thing, as I have tried to suggest, the girls' reactions to the
TV image of Luke Perry appeared to contain a considerable amount of
self-conscious parody. Moreover, each girl's response to the commercial
clearly was due in part to the presence of her friend; consequently, the
commercial's role in bringing about those responses cannot be accounted
for by any simple model of direct causality. However, once again, my goal
at the moment is not to address this issue in detail but just to raise it.
I have outlined three major roles that visual images can play in an ad.
They can elicit emotions by simulating the appearance of a real person
or object; they can serve as photographic proof that something really did
happen; and they can establish an implicit link between the thing that is
being sold and some other image(s). I will argue below that these three
functions of advertising images stem from underlying, fundamental
characteristics of visual communication—characteristics that define the
essential nature of images and distinguish them from language and from
the other modes of human communication. In turn, these three functions
of advertising images give rise to a wide variety of specific advertising
practices, ranging from celebrity endorsements to hidden-camera inter-
views to shots of politicians standing in front of flags.
To gain a systematic understanding of the connections between the
basic properties of images, on one hand, and the multiplicity of visual
advertising techniques, on the other, we need a comprehensive theory of
the persuasive uses of visual images. Although the study of persuasive
communication has a history of more than two millennia, the focus of
this scholarly tradition has tended overwhelmingly to be on verbal
strategies. With a few notable exceptions (for example, Lester, 1995; Moriarty,
1987; see also Jowett & O'Donnell, 1992, passim), the systematic investiga-
tion of visual persuasion is still in its infancy. The aim of this book is to
encourage the further growth of this field of scholarship.
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
This book seeks to answer the following question: What is the dis-
tinctive contribution that visual images make to persuasive communica-
viii -<°>- VISUAL PERSUASION
tion, whether in commercial advertising, in political messages, or in
social issue campaigns? An appropriate starting point for addressing this
question is to ask a broader one: What are the fundamental charac-
teristics that distinguish visual images from other modes of communi-
cation? If we can specify in what essential ways images differ from words
or music or other vehicles of meaning, we can then go on to examine the
implications of those differences for the persuasive uses of visual media.
Any mode of communication can be described in terms of either
semantic or syntactic properties. A semantically oriented description
focuses on how the elements of a particular mode (images, words,
musical tones, or whatever) are related to their meanings. A syntactically
oriented description is concerned with the interrelationships among the
elements themselves as they combine to form larger meaningful units.
Each mode of communication has its own characteristic combination of
semantic and syntactic features.
The semantic properties of the various modes are a central concern
of semiotics, the field of scholarship devoted to the study of "signs,"
defined by Danesi (1994) as "any mark, bodily movement, symbol,
token, etc., used to indicate and to convey thoughts, information, com-
mands, etc." (p. xi). Semioticians have developed a variety of schemes
for classifying the relationships between signs and their meanings (or,
more precisely, between "signifiers" and "signifieds"). By far the most
widely used of these schemes is a triadic classification proposed by the
American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914), whose writ-
ings have been receiving renewed attention by communication scholars
in recent years (Dahl & Buhl, 1993; Jensen, 1995; Moriarty, 1994). Peirce's
system, one of many he created during his lifetime, entails three catego-
ries: the icon, the index, and the symbol. Iconic signs are characterized by
some form of similarity or analogy between the sign and its object. For
instance, a scale model of a building is an iconic representation of certain
features of the real building: its shape, perhaps its color, but not its size.
Indexical signs are a complex category, but for present purposes, a partial
definition is sufficient. According to this definition, a sign is indexical if
it is actually caused by its object and serves as a physical trace pointing
to the object's existence. Peirce (1991) illustrates this type of sign with the
example of a bullet hole, which signifies that a shot was fired (pp.
239-240). Finally, Peirce's third type of sign, the symbol involves neither
similarity nor physical causation but, instead, an arbitrary convention
Introduction -<©>- ix
on the part of the symbol's users. Words are the typical example here.
With the rare exception of onomatopoeia, they are connected to the
things they refer to only by virtue of a social convention.
Semantic Properties of Images
How do visual images fit into this system of classification? Repre-
sentational pictures that resemble some aspect of reality are particularly
clear examples of iconic signs. Indeed, the term icon is derived from a
Greek word for picture, and Peirce (1991) originally had referred to iconic
signs as "likenesses" (p. 30), a word that also suggested pictures in
19th-century English. It must be emphasized, though, that in Peirce's
scheme of things, an iconic sign need not provide a particularly close
replica of its object's overall appearance. For instance, the line depicting
a river on a map is an iconic representation of the course of the real river,
although the line may not look very much like the river (e.g., in terms of
color) even when the latter is viewed from an airplane. Likewise, a child's
stick figure drawing of a person could qualify as an iconic sign by virtue
of matching the basic structure of the person's body, despite the absence
of realistic details.
Actually, even full-color photographs cannot duplicate certain fea-
tures of the appearance of reality, such as the sense of three-dimensional
space that we get when we look at the real world with both eyes.
Although 3-D movies, holograms, and virtual reality are moving us ever
closer to the totally lifelike experience that has traditionally been consid-
ered the ultimate goal of visual imaging technologies (Bazin, 1967), the
inevitable discrepancies between ordinary pictures and reality have led
many writers to emphasize the artificial aspect of pictorial representation
and, occasionally, to reject the notion of iconicity altogether (see Eco,
1975; Goodman, 1976; Krieger, 1984). However, as I have argued in detail
elsewhere (Messaris, 1994), the available evidence does not support such
an extreme view. In fact, recent research on cognition and perception
suggests that even a very rudimentary match between image and reality
(e.g., a simple sketch or stick figure) is enough for the brain to be able to
employ its real-world processes of visual interpretation.
In addition to iconicity, there is another semantic characteristic that
has distinctive implications for the way in which we react to certain
images. Any picture made by photographic means, whether on film or