The medium as a contextual cue: effects of creative media choice.(advertising)

"The medium is the message." This expression was coined in the 1960s by Marshall McLuhan, who suggested that the medium creates imagery and awareness of the advertised brand. Since then, numerous studies have proven the importance of the media context. Researchers have found, for example, that media context affects ad recall (e.g., De Pelsmacker, Geuens, and Anckaert 2002), ad recognition (e.g., Moorman, Neijens, and Smit 2002), level and nature of ad processing (e.g., Shapiro, MacInnis, and Park 2002), ad attitude and ad cognitions (e.g., Coulter 1998), brand attitude (e.g., Lord, Burnkrant, and Unnava 2001), and purchase intention (e.g., Yi 1990a).

However, with the exception of Yi's (1990a, 1990b, 1993) studies of cognitive-priming effects, most researchers have focused on context-induced involvement or arousal, or context-induced mood or affect (for a review, see De Pelsmacker, Geuens, and Anckaert 2002; Moorman, Neijens, and Smit 2002). In these cases, the media context facilitates or inhibits consumers' perceptions of the ad's message rather than actually communicating the message. Furthermore, with the exception of the study by Moorman, Neijens, and Smit (2002) of the thematic congruence between ads and magazine titles, virtually all studies have focused on the immediate editorial context, such as articles or television shows or segments, rather than on the total media context.

But what about when the medium itself is the message? The purpose of the present study is to investigate effects of creative media choice. A creative media choice means that the brand logo and slogan are exposed and the brand associations are implicitly communicated through the medium by way of priming and assimilation. As noted by Yi (1990a), the media context is not merely a benign background for ads; it can also become an effective form of communication in itself. Nowadays, we find advertising in creative, new settings, such as on banana peels, trash cans, and paper coffee cups (Karo 2002). Several researchers have called for research concerning creative media choice, observing that the advertising medium may be just as effective and possibly more cost-efficient as a positioning tool than the product's design or entire promotional campaign (e.g., Maher and Hu 2002; Meyers-Levy and Sternthal 1993; Moorman, Neijens, and Smit 2002; Schmitt 1994).

Creative media choice, where the medium itself implicitly communicates the message, has a number of potential advantages compared with traditional ads. First, the ad context is more likely to be processed intentionally rather than incidentally, as is the case with traditional ads (Lord, Burnkrant, and Unnava 2001). We would therefore expect a greater perception of brand associations when the message is communicated by the medium instead of the ad. In addition, a creative media choice increases the distinctiveness of the source (as compared with, e.g., newspapers that have numerous different advertisers), which enhances the transfer of associations from the medium to the brand (Sparkman and Locander 1980). Moreover, an indirect approach (i.e., when the message is not explicitly communicated in the ad, but rather primed by the ad context) can generate fewer unfavorable cognitive responses than a direct approach (Yi 1990b). We would therefore expect greater ad credibility and a more favorable ad attitude when consumers have to draw their own conclusions. Finally, focusing on the total media context (as opposed to the immediate editorial context) may have more practical relevance for advertisers because of the greater control and predictability it offers (Moorman, Neijens, and Smit 2002). Based on these notions, this paper presents a study testing the effects of creative media choice on brand associations, ad credibility, and ad and brand attitudes.

MEDIA SOURCE AND PRIMING EFFECTS IN ADVERTISING

The media source affects consumers' perceptions of the ad in several ways. First, a media context that is similar to the ad in mood or affect enhances learning and evaluations of the ad and its message (see, e.g., Coulter 1998; De Pelsmacker, Geuens, and Anckaert 2002; Kamins 1991; Lord, Burnkrant, and Unnava 2001). Goldberg and Gorn (1987) call this the mood congruency--accessibility hypothesis: The ad context makes a certain mood or affect more accessible and relieves the processing of stimuli with similar moods or affects. Second, the media source can influence perceptions of the advertised brand (e.g., Assmus 1978; Fuchs 1964). Fuchs (1964) found that a magazine's high prestige "rubbed off" on the advertised brand, finding support for what he called the congruity principle: The medium and the advertised brand converge and become more similar in consumers' minds. Similar results have been found in the research on product endorsers and match-up effects (e.g., Kamins 1990; Solomon, Ashmore, and Longo 1992; Till and Busier 2000). The endorser functions as an information source (similar to a media source), and by way of associative learning, associations are transferred to the brand (Till and Busler 2000).

Third, the media source may function as a cognitive prime, influencing the interpretation of the ad (Yi 1990a, 1990b, 1993). For instance, a print ad promoting a large car may be interpreted such that the car is perceived as safe when the context is an editorial article about safety, or as fuel-thirsty when the context is an editorial article about oil (Yi 1990a). A cognitive prime activates a semantic network of related material that guides attention and determines the interpretation of the ad (Schmitt 1994; Yi 1990b). The prime increases the accessibility of certain (primed) attributes in information processing (Yi 1990a). This tends to move the evaluation of the advertised product toward the priming contextual cue, a phenomenon called assimilation (Maher and Hu 2002). For example, Herr (1989) found that priming of a certain price category of cars affected participants' price judgments of subsequent cars so that they were perceived to be in the same price range. In another study, Meyers-Levy and Sternthal (1993) found that participants rated a restaurant as elegant when primed with the information that the previous restaurant at the same location had been elegant, and as casual when primed that the previous restaurant had been casual.

The author hypothesizes that creative media choice will prime the perception of the advertised brand such that it is assimilated with the medium. Assimilation occurs when there is an overlap between the target and the contextual cue, as in the car example above (Meyers-Levy and Sternthal 1993). When exposed to a brand logo and slogan, without an explicit ad message, consumers are faced with an ambiguous stimulus leading them to use the knowledge structures that are activated by the medium to assimilate the brand with the medium based on overlapping associations (Schmitt 1994). These brand associations will be perceived more strongly than when the brand logo and slogan are exposed in a traditional medium (e.g., a newspaper), as a traditional medium is less distinctive and therefore a less potent prime for specific brand associations (Sparkman and Locander 1980). Based on the premise that the creative media choice provides a context that is congruent with the brand, in that it evokes the desired relevant and salient brand associations (Meyers-Levy and Sternthal 1993), the target brand associations are expected to be perceived more strongly in a creative media choice than in a traditional medium.

H1: Target brand associations are perceived more strongly when the …