The effects of creativity on advertising wear-in and wear-out

Both ad creativity and ad repetition play a pivotal role in advertising strategy. It is therefore of practical and theoretical importance to understand how they interact with one another on advertising effectiveness. After reviewing existing theories, we predict three-way interactions among: divergence, relevance, and repetition over six important dependent variables. Using a 2×2×3 between-subjects experimental design, we find that the classic inverted U-Shape (repeatedly found in previous repetition research) is observed only for ads with low divergence and relevance. In contrast, creative ads (high divergence and relevance) wear in immediately and show little sign of wearing-out even over repeated exposures. Mixed levels of divergence and relevance produce immediate wear-in but do show wearing-out over repeated exposures. Implications for advertising management and media programming are discussed.