How effective is the use of wordplay in adverstising?
Personal study conclusion
Time and memory are the most valuable and difficult things for a designer to possess from their target audience. I believe a clever arrangement of simple, readable and easily understood wordplay has more effect of the memory of the viewer than anything else that a designer can use. Shocking images and bright colours can capture the audience’s attention for a second but wordplay can be thought and talked about for days, months, even years to come.
The key is in the participation of the audience, as they unlock the code to the message they are left with a sense of accomplishment, as Arthur Koestler, journalist, novelist and essayist quotes: “The urge to understand is derived from an urge as basic as hunger or sex… admiration for the cleverness of a joke and satisfaction in one’s own cleverness in seeing the joke equals intellectual gratification.”6 These intellectual puzzles and codes using wordplay are especially effective with complementing graphics, since imagery gives clues and hints so that the message can be decoded and they can give the message added force and detail. Brands and logos (if used sensitively and intelligently) can do this with the added bonus of having the brand name remembered by the viewer.
So, in answer to my original question, I believe wordplay can be very successful if it is used in the right context and with appropriate and well thought-out graphics/imagery. The fact that it can be used in a humorous context as well as a serious context gives this technique diversity so that it can be used in many different types of advertising across different media and categories: “(Wordplay) can have broad popular appeal, and yet specifically target the individual who is alert to decode their deeper meaning”2. Finally, I will try to construct ideas and a final design with an outcome of a similar quality as the designs I have researched for my anti-ketamine campaign, and use some of the techniques where suitable as I think
Time and memory are the most valuable and difficult things for a designer to possess from their target audience. I believe a clever arrangement of simple, readable and easily understood wordplay has more effect of the memory of the viewer than anything else that a designer can use. Shocking images and bright colours can capture the audience’s attention for a second but wordplay can be thought and talked about for days, months, even years to come.
The key is in the participation of the audience, as they unlock the code to the message they are left with a sense of accomplishment, as Arthur Koestler, journalist, novelist and essayist quotes: “The urge to understand is derived from an urge as basic as hunger or sex… admiration for the cleverness of a joke and satisfaction in one’s own cleverness in seeing the joke equals intellectual gratification.”6 These intellectual puzzles and codes using wordplay are especially effective with complementing graphics, since imagery gives clues and hints so that the message can be decoded and they can give the message added force and detail. Brands and logos (if used sensitively and intelligently) can do this with the added bonus of having the brand name remembered by the viewer.
So, in answer to my original question, I believe wordplay can be very successful if it is used in the right context and with appropriate and well thought-out graphics/imagery. The fact that it can be used in a humorous context as well as a serious context gives this technique diversity so that it can be used in many different types of advertising across different media and categories: “(Wordplay) can have broad popular appeal, and yet specifically target the individual who is alert to decode their deeper meaning”2. Finally, I will try to construct ideas and a final design with an outcome of a similar quality as the designs I have researched for my anti-ketamine campaign, and use some of the techniques where suitable as I think