Open Advertisements & strong brands: an effective strategy for
global advertising
Key words
Openness
Brand strength
Interpretation
Valuing
Global advertising
About the authors
Paul Ketelaar is a
lecturer at the
Communication
Sciences section of the
Radboud University in
Nijmegen, the
Netherlands and the
Business Administration
section at the Catholic
University of Leuven in
Belgium.
Carlijn Evers graduated
in communication
sciences and is a
communication worker
at UBACHS / full contact
(brand strategy and
activation)
Malou Arends graduated
in communication
sciences and is a project
manager at DVJ Insights
Marnix van Gisbergen is
Research Director at DVJ
Insights
How do consumers interpret and value open and closed advertisements for strong
and weak brands? The Communication Sciences section of the Radboud
University in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, in collaboration with DVJ Insights Market
research studied the effects of advertisement openness on the interpretation and
valuation of advertisements. The effect of the strength of the brand in the
advertisement was included in this international study. The study, which involved
1740 respondents from the Netherlands, Germany and the United Kingdom,
showed that advertisers of strong brands do well to communicate with pictures
rather than text. This emerged from, amongst other things, the notable result that
under certain conditions open advertisements were valued higher than closed
advertisements. The use of open advertisements also gets around language
barriers, which often arise in global advertising.
The
use of open advertisements is a
relatively new advertising strategy.
Open advertisements consist primarily of
pictures and make little or no use of
textual explanation. This gentle pointing
to the message is the central
characteristic of open advertising.
Little or no guiding text, a prominent
image, rhetorical figures, a low level of
brand anchoring and the absence of the
product itself create more openness in
the advertisement. This strategy goes
against the ‘normal’ approach to
advertising, in which the text makes the
advertiser’s message clear.
Consumers take pleasure in
discovering the message for
themselves, which gives them a
feeling of satisfaction
An open advertisement offers the
recipients a great deal of freedom to
construct the meaning of a message for
themselves as the advertisement does
not guide them directly to a particular
meaning. Despite the widespread use of
open advertisements in advertising
campaigns, earlier research revealed
mainly negative effects for openness on
the interpretation and valuation of
advertisements. However, this research
took little account of the role that the brand
can have in the interpretation and valuation
of advertisements. A strong brand can, after
all, guide a consumer to the message by
association, an effect we earlier described
as ‘brand anchoring’. In addition, little
attention was given to the cross-cultural
advantages of using open advertising with
respect closed advertising.
Method
This study looked into the effects of both
openness (open/closed) and market
strength (strong/weak) on the interpretation
and valuation of print advertisements. Forty
advertisements were tested using an online
survey that involved 1740 respondents,
aged 20 to 39 inclusive, from the
Netherlands, Germany and the United
Kingdom.
Four versions were created of each of ten
advertisements (see Table 1 and Figure 1),
(a) Open advertisement with strong brand,
(b) Open advertisement with weak brand,
(c) Closed advertisement with strong brand
and (d) Closed advertisement with weak
brand. An additional advantage of creating
the advertisements ourselves was that noone could have seen then prior to the study.
A
precondition
for
creating
the
advertisements was that they were not too
hard to understand and fitted-in well with
the brand. In addition, visual metaphors
were used that would work in the
Netherlands, in Germany and in the United
Kingdom. An example if this is the lion,
which symbolises strength, courage and
leadership in all three countries.
Table 1: Advertisement overview
Nr.
Weak brand
1
Strong
brand
BlackBerry
2
Durex
Pleazure
3
Panasonic
Megapower
4
TomTom
A+ Ride
5
Volkswagen
Elgey
6
Lancôme
Deraviza
7
8
Dash
Whiskas
WashIt
Luckycat
9
Colgate
Shine
10
Jeep
Geop
Table 3: Effects of brand strength, openness,
and
openness*brand strength on valuation.
Analysis: Multiple regression
Phonos
β
Openness
1.90
Brand strength
Openness x brand strength
This study shows that brand strength plays
an important part in the interpretation and
valuation
of
open
and
closed
advertisements. Brand strength seems to
have a positive effect on interpretation. This
means that people are more often able to
form an interpretation with strong brands
than with weak brands, regardless of the
degree of openness.
In addition, the study showed that there are
no differences in interpretation between
open and close advertisements as long as
the advertisement fits in with the brand and
is not too difficult to interpret.
Table 2: Effects of brand strength, openness
and
openness*brand strength on
interpretation.
(Analysis: Logistic Regression)
Openness
Brand strength
Openness x
Brand strength
t
.03*
.05
.12
.03
4.40
.66
R² = .20
* p <.05 (two-tailed test)
** p <.01 (two-tailed test)
Control variables: interpretation, attitude to advertisements in
general and attitude to the brand.
Brand strength has a positive effect on
interpretation
B
.07**
.01
b
S.E.
Wald
sig.
-.280
.161
.434** .146
.267 .218
3.029
8.844
1.501
.082
.003
.221
Chi squared: 90.642 (df: 11 sig .000); Nagelkerke pseudo R²:
.049; * sign. at p < .05; ** sign. at p < .01
Control variables: appropriateness, difficulty, brand image,
country, education, age and sex.
Open versions valued higher
With regard to valuation, it was shown that
open advertisements are valued higher
than closed advertisements, regardless of
brand strength. Consumers apparently find
it pleasant to look for an interpretation for
these (easy) advertisements, and then it
doesn’t matter whether the advertisement
was for a strong or a weak brand.
Negligible difference between countries
Hardly any differences in interpretation and
valuing were found between the countries
studied. Dutch people, Germans and
people from the UK can therefore form an
interpretation pretty much just as often and

The advantages
Open advertisements are suitable for
communicating in a cross-cultural context. The
lack of text and the use of images is an effective
way to advertise across borders as it gets
around language barriers.

The
standardisation
of
the
advertisement lowers costs because only one,
textless, advertisement is needed for different
countries.

By using the same advertisement
everywhere, there is better chance of achieving
a uniform market image.
have about the same valuation of the
advertisements in the study.
Strategy: a matter of choice
The study shows that the open
advertisements create opportunities for
effective cross-cultural communication by
advertisers. Open advertisements are just
as
well
interpreted
as
closed
advertisements (provided that they are not
too difficult and fit in well with the brand).
The advantage of an open advertisement is
that it is less likely to evoke and aversion in
the consumer as the message is not being
pushed at them. Consumers experience
pleasure at being able to figure out the
message for themselves, which gives them
a feeling of satisfaction. Moreover, open
advertisements (images without text) offer
many
opportunities
to
advertise
internationally because the language barrier
is efficiently (quickly and cheaply) bypassed. However, this strategy seems to
apply mainly to strong brands. For
advertisers of weak brands, which evoke no
clear associations, it makes more sense to
use a closed advertisement. A weak brand
provides too little guidance towards the
desired message and in an open
advertisement that would entail a too high
risk of incomprehension or an undesirable
message coming across.
Figure 1: Four different versions of the advertisement for the strong brand BlackBerry and the weak brand Phonos.
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