Visual Communication in Advertising

The role of visual communication in advertising is finally coming to be appreciated for its theoretical and practical importance. Early studies of advertising effects (reviewed by Hendon, 1973 ) focused on visual characteristics of print advertising and their effects on recognition scores but did not attempt to advance any theory as to how advertising communicates visually. Not until the mid-1960s and the pioneering ideas of Krugman (1966-67 ) did any theory of advertising effects make reference to visual processes, and even in Krugman’s theory the processes were poorly specified and have remained so in later versions of his theory. In 1975 one of the authors published a paper ( Rossiter, 1975 ) that contained the first reference to visual information processing in advertising. This was followed by a theoretical paper ( Rossiter & Percy, 1978 ) on visual information processing. There have been several speculative papers ( Calder, 1978 ; Calder, Robertson, & Rossiter, 1975 ; Krugman, 1977 ; Lutz & Lutz, 1978 ) and a few empirical studies ( Holbrook & Moore, 1981 ; Lutz & Lutz, 1977 ; Rossiter, 1976 ; Rossiter & Percy, 1980 ; Wright, 1979 ) concerning visual communication in advertising. However, more centrally to this book, few of these studies have contributed to the theoretical understanding of visual information processing in advertising. The paper by Rossiter and Percy (1978 ) stands as the sole attempt at a comprehensive theory development in this area.