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Results and DiscussionThe present paper defined B&W ads including color-highlighted and B&W visual-only beyond the traditional meaning of B&W ads, that is full B&W ads. Using this definition, 15.3% (120 of the 786 ads) were found as B&W ads. This proportion of B&W ads in magazine ads is more than those of "testimonials (11.0%), comparisons (10.0%), sexual appeals (8.6 %), aesthetic (4.1%), before and after appeals (4.0%) and guilt appeals (5.8%) and fear appeals (4.8%)" (see Huhmann & Brotherton, 1997, p. 40). Because its usage is higher than that of other recognized ad executions, B&W execution appears to be an important type of advertising tactic (see Table 4). Of the 120 B&W ads identified, 47.6% were color-highlighted ads, 24.2% were B&W visual-only ads, and 28.3% were full B&W ads (χ2 = 11.15, d.f. = 2, p = .004). Whereas full B&W ads may be produced either to save the advertising budget or to increase communication effects, color-highlighted and B&W visual-only ads are evidently produced for the communication strategy. Thus, it can be concluded that a significant portion (71.8%) of B&W ads are purposely used by advertisers to exploit the communication characteristics of B&W ads. The traditional view on B&W ads, which is based on advertising budget, should be reconsidered.
The results address research question 1, which type of B&W ads appears most often in B&W ads? Color-highlighted ads (57 of 120 B&W ads) appeared most often in B&W ads. Color-highlighted ads employ color in part to highlight certain features of product or objects that convey the product image. Although the highlighted features of color-highlighted ads were not coded in the study, the features mostly identified were brand logos and product packages. If this is true, the purpose of using color-highlighted ads may be to increase brand awareness, particularly brand recognition, because the color-highlighted features (i.e., brand logos and packages) are assumed to attract attention. This may be the case for the product category of fashion and beauty. Of the 34 B&W ads in fashion and beauty, 24 ads (70.6%) were color-highlighted ads. Specifically, fragrance (81.8 %) and cosmetics (77.8%) had higher proportion of color-highlighted ads. Thus, it can be interpreted that a trend in B&W ads is to use color-highlighted ads, probably to increase brand recognition in today's visually cluttered brand competition.
Table 5 shows that magazines such as Advertising Age (23.1%), Playboy (18.3%), Business Week (18.3%), Newsweek (18.2%), and YM (15.4%) contain more B&W ads than the average (15.3%) of total magazines. Magazines such as Cosmopolitan(13.3%), Sports Illustrated (12.5%), and Ladies Home Journal (11.1 %) appear to contain less B&W ads than the average rate. Interestingly, there was no significant difference of B&W usage across magazine types (χ2 = 7.56, d.f. = 7, p = 0.37). This finding provides two important insights into the understanding of B&W ads. First, the use of B&W ads may be a broad phenomenon across magazine types or general demographic variables such as gender and age. Second, it needs an alternative level (e.g., product category) of analysis or more specific level of analysis to understand the strategic application of B&W ads characteristics. Therefore, addressing research question 4, does the use of B&W ads vary across product categories, would be an alternative effort to uncover implicative information about B&W ads. The product categorization shows significant differences in the use of B&W ads (see Table 6). Health care (25.3%), publication (25.3%), services (22.7 %), and fashion and beauty (17.3%) had far more B&W ads than electronics (10.8 %), personal tastes (9.5%), food and beverage (4.2%), and cleansing products (3.1 %) (χ2 = 31.67, d.f. = 8, p < 0.001). These differences across product categories indicate that advertisers recognize a potential interaction effect between product attributes and characteristics of B&W ads. As mentioned earlier in the literature, one major characteristic of B&W ads is that B&W ads effectively evoke particular emotions. The results of this study showed that most B&W ads employed emotional appeals (84.7%) rather than informational appeals (15.3%) (χ2 = 57.89, d.f. = 1, p < 0.00) implying that most advertisers use B&W ads to induce emotional reactions in their audience. The results of emotional types of B&W ads provide more specific information. Of the 120 B&W ads, serious (27.5%), aesthetic (24.2%), powerful (12.5%), other emotions (20.8%), none (15.0%) were identified. Although no statistical difference was found across emotional type (χ2 = 9.33, d.f. = 4, p = 0.05), three types of emotions (i.e., serious, aesthetic, and powerful) appeared to be important types of emotions that B&W ads evoke. Interestingly, among the 5 classifications of emotions, the serious emotion took the lions share in B&W ads for health care (68.4%) and publication (42.1%), whereas the aesthetic emotion occupied the major proportion in fashion and beauty (44.1%) and electronics (40.0%). These findings may indicate that category needs of health care and publication are of high relevancy with serious emotion whereas basic category needs of fashion and beauty, and electronics are closely related to aesthetic emotion. B&W ads for services produced interesting results. B&W ads for consumer services (e.g., insurance & hotel) were found to use emotional appeals (77.8%, 7 of the 9 B&W ads) such as serious and aesthetic, whereas those for business-to-business services mostly used an informational approach (66.7%, 6 of the 9 B&W ads). The reason why ads for business-to-business services use an informational approach is stemmed from the unique characteristics of business-to-business services. The brand choice may be high-involvement and informational in most business-to-business services (Rossiter & Percy, 1997). Industrial buying decisions reflect rational buying process through a buying center (Haas, 1989). What is particularly interesting in this study is why informational ads for business-to-business services employed B&W. One reason would be to save the advertising budget (77.8% of B&W ads for business-to-business services were full B&W ads). On the other hand, the consumer behavior theory offers a different interpretation. On the basis of elaboration-likelihood notions and general principles, about how attitudes can be affected by the correspondence between the cognitive resources made available and those required for ad processing, Meyers-Levy and Peracchio (1995) proposed that B&W ads are more effective than color ads "when consumers are motivated to expend heavy resources processing an ad that is extremely resource demanding, and insufficient resources remain to engage adequately in ad claim substantiation." Because ads for business-to-business services may emphasize the informational content strategy, the ads probably require much of the cognitive resources of audience. And also the audience, as the decision-makers in the industry, is assumed to be motivated to expend resources processing an ad. In this case, color may undermine ad claim substantiation by usurping resources. Consequently, this may be the theoretical reasoning to understand the use of B&W ads in the business-to-business services. In summary, this study shows the current usage pattern of B&W ads. B&W ads appeared to be an important type of advertising tactic. Color-highlighted ads appeared most often in B&W ads. Thus, a trend in B&W ads may be to use color-highlighted ads that can break through the advertising clutter by drawing consumers attention selectively to the color-highlighted objects (brand logos or brand packages) in the ad. Because there is no significant difference of B&W usage across magazine types, the use of B&W ads may be a broad phenomenon. However, the product categorization shows significant differences in the use of B&W ads. Health care, publication, services, and fashion and beauty had far more B&W ads than electronics, personal tastes, food and beverage, and cleansing products. These differences across product categories indicate that advertisers recognize a potential interaction effect between product attributes and characteristics of B&W ads. Most B&W ads employed emotional appeals rather than informational appeals implying that advertisers use B&W ads to induce emotional reactions in their audience. In contrast, B&W ads for business-to-business services were found to be informational rather than emotional. Three types of emotions (i.e., serious, aesthetic, and powerful) appeared to be important types of emotions that B&W ads evoke. It was found that serious emotion was the major type that B&W ads for health care and publication may evoke, whereas aesthetic was most frequently elicited by B&W ads for fashion & beauty and electronics. |
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