Repetition Variation Strategies for Narrative Advertising

This paper explores the effectiveness of repetition variation strategies for narrative advertising and argues that repetition strategies that involve varying plots will be more difficult to comprehend, and thus less persuasive than fixed plot strategies. Experiment 1 compared three strategies: using the same plot twice, using different plots, and using one continuous plot. As expected, the different plots strategy resulted in less favorable ad attitudes than the other two strategies. Experiment 2 compared the same three strategies, except that this time the character sets were kept the same in the different plots strategy. Results indicated that it was more difficult for participants to comprehend ads using the different plots/same characters strategy than those employing the other two strategies, and ad attitudes and brand attitudes were less favorable with that strategy as well. The role that ease of comprehension plays in mediating the relationship between variation strategies and ad/brand attitudes was also established. Experiment 3 compared all four strategies. Results showed that it was more difficult to comprehend ads that used different plots, regardless of whether characters were altered or not, than those that used the same or continuous plots strategies. The two different plots strategies also resulted in less favorable ad and brand attitudes than the same or continuous plots strategies.