Other-speak: classical allegory and contemporary advertising.

Publication: Journal of Advertising

Publication Date: 22-JUN-90

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COPYRIGHT 1990 M.E. Sharpe, Inc.

Other-Speak: Classical Allegory and Contemporary Advertising

Literary concepts from genre studies of classical allegory are adapted to analysis of advertising formats. Two classical forms--reification and typology--are discussed, and their importance for advertising summarized. Four basic allegorical elements are described to distinguish the forms, and two advertisements are analyzed to reveal the function of each in relation to product class, message appeal, copy structure, and media selection. Advertising consequences are proposed in terms of brand strategy appropriate to message type (informational or transformational), executional appeal (nostalgia and bizarre), and desired response (attention or empathy). Future research issues are suggested.

Allegory is a protean device, omnipresent in Western literature from the

earliest times to the modern era . . . what follows is a preliminary description

intended to yield a model of allegory. I have gone through some initial

mapping stages of criticism and have asked, in a spirit of theoretical discussion,

what sort of things they typically do, what their style of behavior is, what

sort of images are used to portray their actions and character. In brief, I have

asked what is the mode of an allegorical fiction (Fletcher 1964, pp. 1-2). Growing interest among practitioners and academics in more complete theories of how advertising influences consumers focuses on the question, "What kinds of ads produce what kinds of effects on groups of people?" (Holbrook and Batra 1987, p. 404). Full understanding of within-ad elements is necessary to determine the relationship between the kinds of advertisements and the response patterns of consumers (Mick 1987; Mitchell and Olson 1981). Ad type or kind is determined not only by verbal message content--what is said--but also by structural format--how it is said (see Laskey, Day, and Crask 1989). The overall format of message construction has long been identified as an important determinant of how advertising works (Eldridge 1974; Wells, Burnett, and Moriarty 1989). It has been discussed in relation to executional options (Shimp 1976) based on the nature of the claim, the product, the presenter, the use situation (see Laskey, Day, and Crask 1989 for review), and the literary style (Wells, Burnett, and Moriarty 1989).

This paper turns to an additional source of information about literary style: the theory of allegory. It is examined in order to understand the way "grooves of genre"--the shape a text takes as a result of conformance to a traditional set of conventions (Abrams 1988)--influence ad formats. These grooves are a large but finite number of structural commonalities said to govern reader processing of text on the basis of "aroused expectations and gratifications" (Booth 1974). Many literary critics feel that readers' responses are directed by expectations that the genre itself programs (Scholes 1982; Williamson 1978), much as structural linguists feel that responses are governed by the shape of the language (Kurzweil 1980). Genre rules specify the subject matter, structure, style, and emotional effects proper to each literary form (Abrams 1988).

The literary conventions or "codes" associated with the genre of allegory also influence advertising formats that descend from two major classical types (Frye 1973)--typology and reification (Barney 1979). The persuasive effects of reification and typology allegories differ as a result of their different ancestries, and their advertising offspring differ as well. Typology leads to one set of responses (empathetic, identification), and reification to another (attention, surprise). These are literary antecedents of nostalgic and bizarre advertisements, respectively. The purpose of examining advertising's ancestry is to provide full knowledge of the literary family in order to help creatives plan copy messages by making more informed choices about the best format to select for the strategic goal. Researchers can also benefit from increased sensitivity to literary dimensions in both analysis of extant advertisements and construction of more sophisticated stimuli for experiments.

The paper first briefly summarizes related advertising research, and then discusses the resurgence of allegory in modern commercial messages. The classical forms of typology and reification are introduced and discussed as antecedents of nostalgia and bizarre appeals. An illustrative analysis of a typological and a reification ad is then presented. Advertising consequences flowing from formal differences are proposed in terms of brand strategies (Rossiter and Percy 1987) appropriate to "informational" or "transformational" message categories (Puto and Wells 1984). Nostalgia and bizarre appeals are then discussed as executions for informational and transformational messages. Last, suggestions are offered for future research on deception by innuendo, reader response to allegorical cues, and values embedded in the form itself.

Prior Related Research

Incorporation of genre variables augments the stream of advertising research on language and meaning. Language-based disciplines such as psycholinguistics (Harris et al. 1986; Percy 1987), rhetoric (Munch and Swasy 1988), and semiotics (Mick 1986) permit more systematic assessment of rich message content. Literature is now recognized as a valuable source of insights into small word-units such as symbols and metaphors (Stern 1988a, 1988b), and larger structural units such as "drama" and "lecture" (Wells, Burnett, and Moriarty 1989). Formal structures are thought to be important processing dimensions (Craik and Tulving 1975), and have begun to be identified in an allegorical framework. A prior marketing study of the medieval variant (Stern 1988c) analyzed the use of fear to convey moral lessons to mass audiences. This paper extends examination of the genre to earlier classical types.

Uses of Allegory in Advertising: Economy, Conflict, Entertainment

Allegory's popularity in literature from Judeo-Christian and Greco-Roman works (see Barney 1979) to modern detective novels (see Fletcher 1964) suggests that its reappearance in advertisements is not unexpected. Briefly defined, allegory conveys meaning in a story-underneath-a-story, where something other than what is literally represented is also occurring (Rollinson 1981; Fletcher 1964). The word's derivation is a provocative harbinger of postallegorical commercial use. Etymologically, it is a Greek term meaning other-speak (Rollinson 1981; Van Dyke 1985), a reference to the rhetorical function of presenting a covert meaning under an overt one. Its flexibility as a persuasive tool makes it particularly attractive for advertising purposes.

Allegory is useful in three ways: it conveys textual meaning economically (doubleness), offers dramatic enactment of conflict (personification and opposition of forces), and entertains an audience (people enjoy "getting" the meaning). Perhaps the key to its popularity is its dual-layered resonance (McQuarrie 1989). Pollay and Mainprize (1984) point out that word-play occurs when two or more different meanings coexist in an ad, and the literal surface is modified by a deeper implicit core. Allegorical doubling conveys both levels with economy by super-imposing the surface message on the core. Lewis (1959) summarizes the rationale: "the function of allegory is not to hide but to reveal, and it is properly used only for that which cannot be said, or so well said, in literal speech" (p. 66). It serves advertisers well by enriching surface literal meanings with underlying ones to deliver entertaining consumer lessons. The choice of a doubled message style seems to be growing more popular as consumers become increasingly deaf to straightforward sales messages (McQuarrie 1989). More allusive doubling offers advertisers the opportunity to create interesting form/content replications that deliver an economical "double shot" of persuasion.

Second, the presence of a competitive conflict in many advertisements...

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