Indirect Claims In Advertising

Metaphors make ads more interesting than a barrel of monkeys at a water park

In advertising, using straight visuals with bent copy, or bent visuals with straight copy, is a common principle. But what does that really mean, and is there research to back it up.

My indirect claim of a water park.
(Image from flickr by nikoretro)

Direct vs. indirect claims

A direct claim leaves no room for the customer to use their imagination. It is “straight” forward and to the point. A direct claim for Cheerios would be, “Made with oats.” Indirect claims leave the meaning open to the consumer and can give rise to multiple meanings. An indirect claim for Cheerios would be, “Great for the heart.” This could mean any number of things: it could mean that it feels good to eat, it makes one happy to eat it, that people love Cheerios, or it is good for lowering cholesterol.

Using metaphoric language and images as indirect/bent claims

Figurative language or figures of speech, which are referred to as rhetorical figures in academic research, are artful divergence from what is expected and a form of “bent” copy in an ad. Rhetorical figures need to be resolved in the mind of the person reading them, and they point the way to that resolution. Some rhetorical figures will have a simple, easy resolution and a person will move on: “Eyes are windows into the soul.” While others don’t have a direct resolution and a person will entertain multiple inferences: “A sweetness seems to last amid the dregs of past sorrows.” Images can also have indirect or bent meanings that lead to multiple interpretations. Having a bent visual and/or a bent headline is common. 

An indirect headline with a direct visual (Image by: Scott Ford)

For advertising professionals the important thing to remember is people will go with the most direct inference, but if there is not one they will entertain multiple inferences. This is important because the more inferences a consumer makes the more effective the message. Let’s dig deeper on why that happens.

Strong and weak inferences

When the simplest inference can be drawn from rhetorical figures, and a consumer picks only that one, it is a “strong” inference. When multiple inferences can be made it is a “weak” inference. In the realm of advertising, those inferences are then claims about what the product can do. It is beneficial to induce multiple inferences because a consumer will need to build counterarguments to every claim those inferences suggest.

People have a limited amount of processing power, more claims lead to counterarguments being spread thin over all of those, and this leads to weaker counterarguments or counterarguments for only a limited number of claims. This allows at least some of the claims from the inferences to get through a person’s mental filtering process.

It may seem that a person would need to be highly involved with the ad and the message to make multiple inference, but weak inferences do not need high involvement to process. The research also suggests that visual rhetorical figures produce multiple inferences much more quickly than verbal ones.

Positive multiple inferences

People are also trying to understand the advertiser’s intended message when they view an ad, which means they are assuming positive claims about the product or brand from those weak inferences. When exposed to multiple distinct claims like “organic,” “all natural,” and “whole grains” it makes people more likely to believe a more general claim of “healthy.”

The main points that advertising professionals should take away from this is that using a bent visual will increase the inferences made by viewer and that the more inferences an image can make, the better. It will increase how people feel about the ad and that impacts what people think about the brand.