When Less Is More: There Must Be a Comprehensible Reason for Using Incompleteness in Advertisements to Improve Brand Attitude

Abstract

In print advertisements, product images and words are usually complete. However, some marketers rely on the effectiveness of incompleteness. In such advertisements, a part of the product image and/or some letters of words are missing. We investigated numerous advertisements with incomplete product images or words and found three mental processes through which consumers respond to incompleteness. First, when consumers are exposed to incompleteness, they are normally able to mentally envision the entire product image or read the text correctly. This process is accompanied by feelings of pleasant surprise. Second, incompleteness induces perceptions of ad originality. Third, consumers scrutinise the reason why the marketer used incompleteness; incomplete ads differ in whether consumers understand the reason why the marketer used incompleteness. If people have difficulties understanding this reason, a negative effect on brand attitude is the consequence. In our studies, we tested two types of incompleteness for which consumers comprehended the reason why incompleteness was used (1. incompleteness that emphasises the ad message to increase consumer agreement to this message and 2. incompleteness that induces feelings of humour). For these types, we found that incompleteness improved attitudes towards familiar brands.