4/29/2025

Chapter 3 3. Findings

Executive Summary

This chapter presents the comprehensive empirical findings from the systematic review of 42 studies examining ambiguous advertising messages. The analysis reveals a complex landscape where ambiguity produces divergent effects on authenticity perception through two distinct mechanisms. The findings challenge the traditional view of authenticity as solely dependent on clarity, demonstrating instead that authenticity can emerge through both clarity-based and interpretation-based pathways.

Key Discovery: Dual Pathways to Authenticity

The most significant contribution of this review is the identification of two distinct mechanisms through which ambiguity affects authenticity perception:

1. Clarity-Oriented Pathway (Negative Impact):

Ambiguity reduces perceived clarity, diagnosticity, or transparency
Consumers interpret vagueness as evasion, manipulation, or lack of sincerity
Particularly problematic in high-stakes contexts (health, climate, safety)
More prevalent with utilitarian products requiring factual transparency
Results in diminished trust and lower authenticity perceptions

2. Meaning-Oriented Pathway (Positive Impact):

Ambiguity enables interpretive freedom, depth, and personal resonance
Consumers perceive ambiguous messages as meaningful, sophisticated, or sincere
Effective when inviting reflection, allowing moral nuance, or facilitating identity-based interpretation
Particularly effective with symbolic/hedonic products and artistic/philosophical brand voices
Results in enhanced authenticity through identity alignment and perceived sincerity

Theoretical Evolution and Research Landscape

The temporal analysis reveals three distinct phases of ambiguity research development:

Phase 1: Early Conceptual Foundations (pre-2005)

Established groundwork for understanding rhetorical ambiguity and cognitive processing
Focused on metaphorical slogans, puns, and stylistic embellishments
Key insight: Stylistic ambiguity enhances elaboration without impeding comprehension

Phase 2: Strategic Expansion (2006-2015)

Shift toward strategic ambiguity and covert audience targeting
Investigation of polysemy for culturally sensitive communication
Key insight: Ambiguity enables multi-audience appeal through interpretive flexibility

Phase 3: Maturation (2016-2025)

Increased focus on psychological mechanisms and authenticity outcomes
Integration of neurocognitive evidence and identity-based interpretation
Key insight: Ambiguity functions as meaning-making stimulus rather than cognitive puzzle

Ambiguity Types and Differential Effects

The analysis reveals four primary conceptualizations of ambiguity with distinct authenticity outcomes:

Metaphorical Ambiguity:

Strongest association with authenticity constructs (52.3% of studies)
Produces deep cognitive processing and long-term memory effects
Neurocognitive evidence shows enhanced activation in memory-associated brain regions
Most effective for creating meaningful brand impressions

Strategic Ambiguity:

Enables communication with heterogeneous audiences simultaneously
Mixed authenticity outcomes: positive when interpreted as inclusivity, negative when perceived as evasive
Single-audience tailoring typically more effective for persuasion
Risk of appearing manipulative if not carefully executed

Puns and Wordplay:

Amplifies attention and memory, especially with congruent visual cues
Highly dependent on cultural familiarity and linguistic proficiency
Context-dependent authenticity outcomes
Can be interpreted as sincerity or “brand personality” but may reduce trust if clarity suffers

Polysemy and Interpretational Ambiguity:

Enables audiences to derive personally resonant meanings
Particularly effective for minority groups and identity-inclusive communication
Risk of appearing evasive or opportunistic about controversial topics
Cultural specificity in interpretation creates both opportunities and challenges

Using a broadened coding framework for authenticity (including sincerity, credibility, trust, realness, honesty, congruence, legitimacy, clarity, and deception), 17 out of 42 studies (40.5%) contained authenticity-relevant constructs. The analysis reveals that authenticity effects are fundamentally contingent on contextual factors, audience characteristics, and interpretive frames.

Boundary Conditions and Contextual Moderators

The effectiveness of each pathway varies significantly across contexts:

Clarity-Oriented Pathway Dominates When:

Consumers want clear facts or high diagnosticity
Product is utilitarian or technical
Stakes are high (health, safety, climate, environmental)
Claims involve ethical considerations
Ambiguity appears designed to obscure or manipulate

Meaning-Oriented Pathway Prevails When:

Product is symbolic, hedonic, experiential, or identity-driven
Brand voice aspires to creativity, artistry, or philosophical tone
Audiences value interpretive effort or meaning-making
Communication must resonate across diverse or sensitive audiences
Topics require moral nuance or inclusive communication

Disciplinary and Methodological Distribution

The analysis reveals clear patterns in research approaches:

Disciplinary Distribution:

Marketing and Advertising dominate (reflecting focus on persuasion and branding)
Experimental methods most common (emphasizing causal inference)
Recent years show hybrid approaches combining cognitive experimentation with interpretive frameworks
Qualitative work provides crucial insights into interpretive processes

Methodological Insights:

Ambiguity investigated through multiple epistemological approaches
Cognitive psychology, cultural interpretation, branding theory, and rhetorical studies all contribute
Methodological diversity reflects complexity of ambiguity-authenticity phenomenon

Theoretical Implications

These findings challenge the traditional view that authenticity emerges solely from clarity and transparency. Instead, the review demonstrates that authenticity can arise through fundamentally different mechanisms:

Interpretive Engagement: Ambiguity prompts cognitive elaboration for motivated consumers
Strategic Multi-Audience Appeal: Different audiences find “their own truth” in messages
Motive Attribution: Perceived moral nuance versus manipulation determines authenticity outcomes
Linguistic Depth: High need-for-cognition consumers appreciate interpretive complexity

This dual-pathway model represents a major theoretical advancement by integrating two parallel streams of authenticity research that have previously operated in isolation, providing a comprehensive framework for understanding when and how different message types enhance authenticity perceptions.

3.1. Overview of Included Studies

The final synthesis consists of 42 empirical studies that directly examine ambiguous advertising messages, including wordplay, puns, polysemy, metaphorical slogans, visual–verbal ambiguity, and other forms of interpretive indeterminacy. This dataset reflects the development of ambiguity research over more than three decades and reveals evolving theoretical priorities, methodological diversification, and widening applications of ambiguous messaging in branding and persuasion research.

3.2. Theoretical Foundation Phases

A temporal analysis of the 42 studies indicates three major phases of scholarly development:

3.2.1. Early Conceptual Foundations (pre-2005)

This period established the groundwork for understanding rhetorical ambiguity and cognitive processing. Studies in this era primarily examined metaphorical slogans, puns, and stylistic embellishments, demonstrating that ambiguous rhetoric increases elaboration and often enhances attitude formation without causing comprehension breakdown. Foundational work using visual rhetoric frameworks and incongruity resolution theory showed that stylistically complex ads encourage deeper consumer engagement and produce favorable evaluations.

Key insights from this phase include:

Stylistic ambiguity enhances elaboration and persuasion
Metaphorical and pun-based slogans improve brand recall
Ambiguity does not necessarily impede comprehension

These early studies set the theoretical stage for examining ambiguity as both a cognitive and rhetorical phenomenon.

3.2.2. Strategic Expansion and Consumer Segmentation (2006–2015)

The second phase marks a shift from stylistic ambiguity toward strategic ambiguity, including deliberate polysemy and covert audience targeting. Research began investigating how messages with intentionally layered meanings allow brands to address multiple audiences simultaneously, sometimes with culturally or politically sensitive content. This period also introduced the notion that audiences interpret ambiguous ads through the lens of their own cultural identities, subcultural awareness, or social positioning.

Key insights include:

Ambiguity as a tool for culturally sensitive or minority-focused communication
Interpretive flexibility enabling differentiated meaning across audience segments
Early recognition that ambiguity may influence perceived sincerity or inclusiveness

3.2.3. Maturation of Ambiguity Research (2016–2025)

The most recent period exhibits increasing sophistication in theoretical framing and methodological design. Scholars expanded the study of ambiguity beyond stylistic creativity toward deeper psychological mechanisms, including identity-based interpretation, perceived sincerity, credibility judgments, and authenticity outcomes. New technologies contributed evidence that metaphorical and polysemic messages activate deeper encoding and memory retention. Researchers also examined how audiences in marginalized or politically sensitive contexts interpret ambiguity as protective, inclusive, or morally nuanced.

Key insights:

Ambiguity as a meaning-making stimulus, not merely a cognitive puzzle
Polysemic messages enabling multi-audience appeal
Ambiguous climate, sustainability, or political messages producing polarized authenticity responses
Ambiguity increasingly studied as a relational and moral communication strategy

3.3. Disciplinary and Methodological Distribution

Across the 42 studies, several patterns emerge:

Marketing and Advertising dominate the field, reflecting the discipline’s emphasis on message design, persuasion, and branding effects
Experimental methods are most common, mirroring the tradition of isolating cognitive mechanisms such as elaboration, memorability, or incongruity resolution
Interpretive qualitative work, though less prevalent, offers critical insights into how polysemic messages operate within marginalized or culturally complex audiences
Recent years show hybrid approaches, blending cognitive experimentation with interpretive or moral reasoning frameworks, especially in studies examining authenticity, trust, and moral meaning

The methodological landscape demonstrates that ambiguity is not tied to any single epistemological approach but is investigated through cognitive psychology, cultural interpretation, branding theory, and rhetorical studies.

3.4. Conceptualization

The dataset reveals four primary conceptualizations of ambiguity. Below is a summary of each category’s prevalence and the patterns observed in cognitive or persuasive effects. All summary statistics are descriptive and correspond to the 42-study ambiguity-only dataset, not to comparisons with ordinary messages.

3.4.1. Metaphorical Ambiguity

Metaphorical ambiguity appears consistently associated with deep cognitive processing and long-term memory effects. Neurocognitive evidence shows heightened activation in memory-associated brain regions during recall of metaphorical slogans, suggesting superior memorability and impression “stickiness.”

These studies also show the highest association with authenticity-like constructs, such as perceived sincerity, meaningfulness, or identity alignment.

3.4.2. Strategic Ambiguity

Strategic vagueness enables brands to communicate with heterogeneous audiences simultaneously. Although this can broaden message acceptance and increase perceived inclusiveness, single-audience tailoring typically remains more effective for persuasion.

Authenticity outcomes here are mixed: positive when interpreted as inclusivity or moral nuance; and negative when perceived as evasive or manipulative.

3.4.3. Puns, Wordplay, and Playful Ambiguity

Puns amplify attention and memory, particularly when paired with congruent visual cues. Their success is highly dependent on cultural familiarity, linguistic proficiency, and audience tolerance for ambiguity.

Authenticity outcomes are modest and context-dependent. Some studies report that cleverness and creativity can be interpreted as sincerity or “brand personality,” while others show declines in trust when wordplay interferes with clarity.

3.4.4. Polisemy and Interpretational Ambiguity

Polysemy enables audiences to derive personally resonant meanings from the same message. This is especially evident among minority groups, who may perceive polysemic cues as affirming or identity-inclusive. However, polysemy also introduces risk. Messages may appear evasive or opportunistic if perceived as pandering or strategically ambiguous about controversial topics.

Across these studies, two distinct mechanisms become visible. The first mechanism reflects a clarity-oriented route to authenticity, in which ambiguity functions as a threat rather than a resource. Ambiguous messages undermine authenticity when they reduce clarity or appear vague or evasive. Consumers become particularly sensitive to these signals when the stakes of the communication are high, as in health, climate, safety, or other consequential domains; or when the product itself is utilitarian and therefore expected to be described with factual transparency. Under these conditions, ambiguity can easily be interpreted as deliberate obfuscation or manipulation, resulting in diminished trust and lower authenticity.

In short, when clarity norms dominate, the sequence of Ambiguity → Lower clarity → Lower authenticity becomes the prevailing interpretive route.

The second mechanism reveals an entirely different dynamic. Here, ambiguity enhances rather than undermines authenticity by enabling consumers to engage in interpretive freedom. In these cases, ambiguity invites personal meaning-making, allows moral nuance, encourages cultural inclusivity, and signals artistic or intellectual sophistication. These effects are especially pronounced in symbolic or hedonic product categories, or when the brand voice carries philosophical, literary, or artistic tones. Consumers who enjoy interpretive engagement, or those encountering messages that revolve around sensitive, identity-based, or morally complex topics, often perceive such ambiguity as sincere, thoughtful, and value-expressive.

Under these conditions, ambiguity deepens identity alignment and enhances perceived sincerity, leading to the sequence of Ambiguity → Perceived sincerity/identity alignment → Higher authenticity.

These two mechanisms illustrate a central contribution of this review: ambiguous advertising does not have a singular, uniform effect on authenticity. Instead, ambiguity simultaneously contains the potential to erode or elevate authenticity, with outcomes shaped by the contextual demands of the communication, the cultural and psychological orientation of the audience, and the interpretive expectations surrounding the message. This underscores the fundamentally contingent nature of ambiguous advertising and highlights the importance of studying ambiguity not as an inherently positive or negative device, but as a meaning mechanism whose authenticity effects depend on how, when, and for whom it is deployed.

Chapter 3

3. Findings