How Visual Brand Identity Shapes Consumer Response

Abstract

Most brands are represented visually in print advertisements, and these visual representations must consistently identify the brand to the consumers who encounter it. At the same time, some of the particular visual elements used to represent the brand must change over time, because it is not acceptable to run the same ad year after year without refreshing its visual content. To explore these issues, a qualitative exploration was conducted with ad agency art directors and ordinary consumers. The focus was the criteria used by each group to determine when changes in the visual representation of the brand succeed, by staying consistent with the brand's identity, or fail, by violating expectations. Professionals, with their greater aesthetic sensitivity, had a more narrow latitude of acceptance for changes. A follow-up experiment with consumers showed that aesthetically aware consumers were likewise more sensitive to alterations in visual brand identity than consumers for whom aesthetics were not central. Results are interpreted in terms of assimilation effects and degree of incongruity along with the moderating effect of aesthetic skill.

Full text

How Visual Brand Identity Shapes
Consumer Response
Barbara J. Phillips
University of Saskatchewan
Edward F. McQuarrie
Santa Clara University
W. Glenn Griffin
University of Alabama
ABSTRACT
Most brands are represented visually in print advertisements, and these visual representations must
consistently identify the brand to the consumers who encounter it. At the same time, some of the
particular visual elements used to represent the brand must change over time, because it is not
acceptable to run the same ad year after year without refreshing its visual content. To explore these
issues, a qualitative exploration was conducted with ad agency art directors and ordinary
consumers. The focus was the criteria used by each group to determine when changes in the visual
representation of the brand succeed, by staying consistent with the brand’s identity, or fail, by
violating expectations. Professionals, with their greater aesthetic sensitivity, had a more narrow
latitude of acceptance for changes. A follow-up experiment with consumers showed that aesthetically
aware consumers were likewise more sensitive to alterations in visual brand identity than
consumers for whom aesthetics were not central. Results are interpreted in terms of assimilation
effects and degree of incongruity along with the moderating effect of aesthetic skill. C2014 Wiley
Periodicals, Inc.
Why can consumers identify a television commercial for
Target within a few seconds without seeing the brand
name? Would a consumer notice if a Microsoft logo were
placed in an Apple ad? Consumers often can identify
the brand sponsor of an ad with a quick glance, even
before the logo is glimpsed and without reading any
of the text. A beach scene in a beer ad elicits Corona;
a mother and child in a soup ad calls out Campbell’s.
This suggests that nonverbal elements play a promi-
nent role in branding. However, not much attention
has been paid to the holistic visual style of the brand
in academic research. This paper explores the concept
of visual brand identity (VBI) using a new definition
adapted from legal scholarship. First, consumers’ un-
derstanding of VBI is compared to the perceptions of
professionals who create brand identity on Madison Av-
enue. This comparison sets the stage for an experiment
that examines consumer response to VBI as a function
of incongruity and aesthetic sensitivity.
VISUAL BRAND IDENTITY
A brand’s identity is comprised of characteristics and
attributes of the brand that cohere into the unique
set of associations that a company aspires to cre-
ate and maintain (Alselm & Kostelijk, 2008; Esch,
2008). Brand identity helps create relationships be-
tween the company and consumers (Fournier, 1998),
and can lead to perceptions of brand personality (Aaker,
1997; Aaker, Fournier, & Brasel, 2004). When con-
sumers interact with brands, they are exposed to vi-
sual stimuli such as logos, colors, shapes, typefaces,
characters, styles, and other brand-image elements
(McQuarrie & Phillips, 2008; Schroeder, 2004). Any
of these visual elements may come to be associated
with the brand and serve to identify it. However, mar-
keting scholars know little about how these individ-
ual bits and pieces of the brand’s visual image com-
bine together to convey brand associations and mean-
ings (Keller, 2003; Keller & Lehmann, 2006; Schmitt
& Simonson, 1997). What has been lacking is a def-
inition of VBI that is not tied to or limited by any
particular visual element that might be used to ex-
press that identity, such as a color or font. A theo-
retical definition may be derived, however, from legal
scholarship, where litigation to protect brand Web sites
from copycats has driven the courts to conceptualize
visual identity in a holistic, rather than a piecemeal,
fashion.
Psychology and Marketing, Vol. 31(3): 225–236 (March 2014)
View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/mar
C2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. DOI: 10.1002/mar.20689
225

Tertium Quid
Obtaining legal protection for Web sites has been prob-
lematic because traditional intellectual property laws
only protect certain aspects of the Web site: the verbal
content and specific images are protected by copyright
law, the logo and brand name are protected by trade-
mark law, and the functional product itself may be pro-
tected by patent law (Perkins & Lin, 2009). Thus, it is
unclear what legal reasoning could be used to protect
the Web site as a holistic entity—the look and feel of the
Web site that produces an overall impression, gestalt or
style (Perkins & Lin, 2009). To protect this gestalt, le-
gal scholars adapted the concept of trade dress (Warlop
& Alba, 2004), which originally referred to the packag-
ing of a product, including nonfunctional (decorative)
aspects of the product itself. Over time, the concept of
trade dress evolved to protect any means used to iden-
tify the source of goods and to distinguish those goods
from competitors’ goods (Cohen, 2010).
Subsequently, court judgments expanded the mean-
ing of trade dress beyond its traditional application.
The expanded definition makes reference to a tertium
quid that may be present in representations of the
brand and protected by law (Anderson, 2007). Tertium
quid is Latin for “third thing”; Webster’s online dic-
tionary defines it as “a third something that fails to fit
into a dichotomy.” Perhaps its most familiar application
can be found in assertions such as “the whole is greater
than the sum of its parts.” In a key Supreme Court
case involving Wal-Mart, the court used the term to al-
lude to an amalgam of product packaging and product
design that combined to form a new, emergent factor,
recognizing that the whole of the brand’s visual iden-
tity was greater than the sum of its individual elements
(Anderson, 2007). In consequence, the legal definition of
trade dress has expanded, as presented by Cohen (2008,
pp. 145–146):
Trade dress involves the total image of a product
and may include features such as size, shape, color
or color combinations, texture, graphics, or even par-
ticular sales techniques . . . It is the manner in which
the goods and services are presented to prospective
purchasers to indicate source. Trade dress encom-
passes the arrangement of identifying characteris-
tics or decoration connected to a product, whether
by packaging or otherwise, intended to make the
source of the product distinguishable from another
and promote it for sale.
This definition of trade dress is adapted for the pur-
poses of this paper1to define VBI as the tertium quid
that arises from the combination of all of the visual
brand elements used to represent the brand, without
1Trade dress now has a specific judicial meaning tied to the four
legal requirements of (a) distinctiveness, (b) secondary meanings,
(c) nonfunctionality, and (d) consumer confusion (see Anderson,
2007 for an explanation of these conditions); thus, this paper uses
the term visual brand identity instead.
being dependent on any one of them. Thus, VBI can
be thought of as the holistic visual style that identi-
fies the brand—a recognizable something that cannot
be decomposed into a list of its visible parts.
An illustration of VBI is presented in Figure 1 in the
two Skyy vodka ads. Both ads have a similar layout,
with the product package as the dominant ad element
centered on the page. These ads use a bright, vibrant
color palette, and thin, modern typography that mim-
ics the font on the bottle label. In addition, both ads
use extreme closeups of women’s body parts in hyper-
sexualized, but also tongue-in-cheek, visual displays. It
is easy to see why Skyy ads might be recognizable to
consumers even with the brand name masked, because
the individual ad elements are so similar between ad
executions.
VBI is not solely about duplicating specific ad ele-
ments, though. Consider the two Malibu rum ads in
Figure 2. Both ads have a similar layout, with a recipe
in the top right corner, the product package in the mid-
dle of the page, and the tagline and logo in the bottom
right corner. However, many of the ads’ visual elements
are quite different. The ad on the right features a large
package shot as a dominant element, and there are
many bottles in the ad; the ad on the left shows a dis-
tant image of one bottle alone, with its label removed.
The ad on the right is set at a club or bar; the ad on
the left on a beach. Despite these differences, Malibu
rum is a brand that has a strong and consistent visual
identity. Both Malibu ads use the visual rhetorical fig-
ure of personification (Delbaere, McQuarrie, & Phillips,
2011), where the product comes alive, to convey the
message that the rum mixes well with fruit juice. This
personification links the ad executions by visual theme
instead of specific visual elements. Thus, VBI goes be-
yond the sum of the individual visual elements of an
ad, to the tertium quid of the holistic visual style of the
brand arising from both.
Consumer Processing of VBI
With VBI defined as a complex whole whose meaning
is partially independent of the individual elements that
may contribute to it, psychological research on factors
that might determine how consumers process such a
complex whole are next discussed. Two key theoretical
concepts in this regard are familiarity and congruence.
Familiarity. Consumer brand knowledge is the per-
sonal meaning of a brand stored in consumer memory,
which includes both descriptive and evaluative brand-
related information (Keller, 2003). Brand knowledge
is stored in memory as a schema: a relatively stable
mental framework for organizing knowledge in com-
plex structures. Schemas contain both visual and ver-
bal information: feelings, cognitions, and experiences
(Esch, 2008). Schemas are developed through repeated
exposure and experience within a domain, and it seems
likely that regular exposure to advertising that repeats
226 PHILLIPS, McQUARRIE, AND GRIFFIN
Psychology and Marketing DOI: 10.1002/mar

Figure 1. Skyy vodka ads with strong VBI.
Figure 2. Malibu rum ads with strong VBI.
certain themes and elements plays a central role in
building brand schemas (Goodstein, 1993).
Prior research applying schema theory to market-
ing has found a strong familiarity effect (Pandelaere,
Millet, & Van den Bergh, 2010). Ease of processing fa-
miliar information already stored in a schema leads to
a feeling of liking. In psychological terms, a schema
is a pattern of activation of connections between as-
sociated concepts. When part of a known pattern is
presented to an individual for processing, the intercon-
nection strength causes the rest of the pattern to be
reinstated (McClelland & Rumelhart, 1985). The ease
with which a familiar pattern can be processed is an
instance of fluency (Schwartz, 2004).
Any variable that increases fluency also increases
liking because fluent processing is marked as pleasant
and mediates evaluative judgments. Perceivers tend
not to attribute this pleasure to fluency, but rather to
VISUAL BRAND IDENTITY 227
Psychology and Marketing DOI: 10.1002/mar

the object being processed (Cho & Schwartz, 2010). A
general consensus among researchers is that numer-
ous variables can affect fluency; one key factor is rep-
etition of a stimulus (Labroo, Dhar, & Schwartz, 2007;
Lane, 2000). Based on the above explanation, it is pos-
sible that ads with a strong VBI could be perceived as
more familiar, with their brands evaluated more posi-
tively, than ads where the brand’s visual elements have
changed in a more helter-skelter fashion over time, and
been repeated less often.
Congruence. Another factor that may influence con-
sumer perceptions of VBI is congruence. As reviewed
by Fleck and Quester (2007), congruence has multi-
ple meanings in marketing scholarship, including “fit”
(e.g., co-branding), “typicality” (e.g., brand extension),
and “similarity” (e.g., celebrity endorsements). A series
of marketing studies demonstrate that consumers eval-
uate congruent products more positively than incongru-
ent products. For example, Campbell and Goodstein
(2001) find that, in all the buying situations tested,
congruent brand extensions are liked more than in-
congruent brand extensions because of the lessened
risk and uncertainty in the purchase decision. Walchli
(2007) similarly reports that under low-involvement
conditions, congruent co-brands are preferred over in-
congruent co-brands because brand associations can be
determined more easily. In a television advertising con-
text, Goodstein (1993) found that shampoo ads that
are congruent with product category expectations (e.g.,
showing women washing their hair) are liked more
than incongruent ads when prior category affect is pos-
itive. Congruence research thus suggests that existing
brands with a strong VBI may be liked better because
their ads are perceived by consumers as congruent with
brand expectations. As most advertising is processed
under low-involvement conditions, a strong VBI may
lower perceived purchase risk, make it easy to grasp
positive associations, and lead to increased liking when
prior brand experience is positive.
In summary, previous marketing research on con-
sumer processing suggests that advertisements with
consistent (familiar) visual elements may lead to pro-
cessing fluency and liking; visual themes that are con-
gruent with expectations also may lead to liking when
prior brand evaluation is positive. Theories of famil-
iarity and congruence would suggest that ads with a
consistent VBI over time would be liked more than ads
where the elements making up VBI, however positive in
themselves, have been altered in a novel or unfamiliar
way.
RESEARCH OVERVIEW
While many visual brand elements have been studied
in previous research, they usually have been studied
in a piecemeal fashion in isolation from other brand
elements (Burmann, Hegner, & Riley, 2009). This iso-
lation means that tertium quid has not been empiri-
cally examined. Among the visual elements that have
been studied one at a time are brand logos (Henderson
& Cote, 1998; van Riel & van den Ban, 2001), typog-
raphy (Childers & Jass, 2002; DeRosia, 2008; Doyle
& Bottomly, 2006; Henderson, Geise, & Cote, 2004;
McCarthy & Mothersbaugh, 2002), colors (Bottomley
& Doyle, 2006; Gorn, Chattopadhyay, Yi, & Dahl, 1997;
Labrecque & Milne, 2012, 2013; Meyers-Levy & Per-
acchio, 1995; Orth & Malkewitz, 2008), background
images (Mandel & Johnson, 2002), and product shape
(Veryzer & Hutchinson, 1998; Westerman et al., 2012).
Despite broad recognition that individual brand ele-
ments influence consumer processing, little is known
about how these visual elements combine in brand ad-
vertising, where the VBI perceived by the consumer will
be a function of both the individual elements and the
gestalt they make up. Previous research regarding the
verbal components of advertising indicates that verbal
elements have combinatory effects (e.g., Mothersbaugh,
Huhmann, & Franke, 2002). Based on the tertium quid
definition of VBI, visual elements may likewise combine
to influence consumer response in emergent ways.
Two studies were conducted to examine these is-
sues. First, a brand was selected that is familiar
and popular, with a well-developed positive brand
schema—Campbell’s soup (Kervyn, Fiske, & Malone,
2012). In Study 1, a Campbell’s soup ad was shown to
both professional art directors and ordinary consumers
(Figure 3). Pretesting had identified this particular ad-
vertisement as incongruent with Campbell’s strong pre-
existing VBI,2and Study 1 compares the reactions of
art directors and consumers to this incongruent ad. In
Study 2, ads for two liquor brands were selected (Skyy
vodka and Malibu rum), each with its own strong VBI,
and key visual elements were swapped between them
to manipulate incongruity.
STUDY 1
Method
As part of a larger study, 15 individual in-depth in-
terviews of about one hour were conducted with art
directors in advertising agencies and design firms in
New York City (Table 1). Art directors were chosen be-
cause these individuals have primary responsibility for
the visual aspects of an ad campaign (Young, 2000). All
had consumer brand experience but none had worked
for Campbell’s soup. The art directors discussed the
Campbell’s soup ad in terms of its individual visual ele-
ments, visual themes, perceived match with Campbell’s
2In a pretest of 125 undergraduate students, participants were asked
to search for two print ads in the same product category—one brand
with a strong VBI and one brand with a weak VBI. Strong VBI was
defined quite loosely as “knowing the ad is for a specific brand
even when you cover up the brand name and logo.” Participants
submitted their ads with a written explanation for course credit.
These pretest participants did not participate in the other pretest
or studies.
228 PHILLIPS, McQUARRIE, AND GRIFFIN
Psychology and Marketing DOI: 10.1002/mar

Figure 3. Campbell’s soup ad with moderately incongruent
VBI.
Table 1. Description of Art Director Participants.
Name Gender Work Place
Years of
Experi-
ence
Tom Male Worldwide agency 14
Emma Female Worldwide agency 12
Brooke Female Worldwide agency 8
Connor Male Design firm 7
Sophia Female Design firm 6
Mark Male National agency 5
Amy Female Worldwide agency 5
Ryan Male National agency 5
Jake Male Design firm 5
Ann Female Regional agency 4
Eric Male Freelance 4
Christopher Male Worldwide agency 3
Kyle Male Worldwide agency 2
Ian Male Worldwide agency 1
Robert Male National agency 1
Note: Names have been changed to protect confidentiality.
existing VBI, and perceived effectiveness, following in-
terview guidelines set out by Kover (1995).
Subsequently, 15 individual interviews were com-
pleted with ordinary consumers (undergraduate stu-
dents enrolled in a Midwestern University; 10 females
and 5 males). All had bought and used the Camp-
bell’s soup brand. Because consumers are unlikely to
be able to discuss VBI in technical terms, and because
verbal methods may not tap visual brand associations
(Koll, von Wallpach, & Kreuzer, 2010; Reavy & John-
son, 2008), consumers were asked to individually com-
plete a collage task before discussing the Campbell’s
ad with the researcher. Collage is a projective tech-
nique that helps uncover nonverbal brand knowledge
stored in memory as images (Koll, von Wallpach, &
Kreuzer, 2010; Zaltman & Coulter, 1995). Participants
were presented with a white poster board with the
Campbell’s color logo printed in the center of the board
and asked to think about all of the visual associations
they had with that logo. Participants proceeded to cut
out pictures that matched their associations from a
large supply of magazines and glue them on the poster
board to make a collage, while drawing on the board
any associations that they were unable to find in the
magazines.
After participants explained their collages to the re-
searcher, they were presented with the Campbell’s ad in
Figure 3 and asked for their impressions, evaluations,
and ideas about it. To probe for VBI, participants iden-
tified aspects of the ad that were similar to or different
from their collage. The collage making and interview
took between one and two hours and participants were
paid for their time. The responses of both art direc-
tors and consumers were analyzed using the grounded
theory method (Strauss & Corbin, 1998), with partic-
ular attention to visual thematic analysis (Gleeson,
2011).
Results
Art directors. Robert spoke for all the art directors in
describing the brand:
Campbell’s is a classic brand. They’re something
that’s been around for a while. They’ve been able
to retain their look. I feel like they can own that.
The art directors had a specific image of Campbell’s
VBI in mind, based on the holistic combination of visual
elements, as summarized by Ian:
I think the iconic pieces of the Campbell’s campaign
are the close up of the can, especially that logo, and
the colour palette of that warm red—and the white—
and also the soup shots.
Thus, familiarity with Campbell’s advertising led
the art directors to associate the visual elements of
the can, the color red, and the images of soup with the
Campbell’s brand, and to believe these elements should
remain consistent between ads over time.
Fourteen of the 15 art directors felt the ad in Figure 3
did not match the expected VBI of Campbell’s soup and
was too incongruent with the brand’s VBI to be effec-
tive. The art directors pointed to several different visual
elements that seemed misaligned with Campbell’s VBI.
First, although the ad uses the package element of the
VISUAL BRAND IDENTITY 229
Psychology and Marketing DOI: 10.1002/mar

can, the art directors felt the can should not be cut in
half. Connor explained:
I really can’t believe that they cut the can off
halfway. I feel like there must have been a thou-
sand fights and a thousand meetings over that one
decision alone. And I don’t even think it is working
for them.
In addition, although the ad had the familiar red
color at the bottom, the use of so much white space
seemed incongruent. Use of a great deal of white space
in print advertising typically conveys upscale, elegant,
and powerful meanings (Pracejus, Olsen, & O’Guinn,
2006); however, art directors did not find these mean-
ings congruent with Campbell’s established VBI.
Another visual problem identified by the art direc-
tors is that the ad did not showcase the product, the
soup. Art directors indicated that the soup should be
larger, take center stage, and be depicted attractively
as “food porn” [Emma]. Sophia captured the general
disappointment:
It doesn’t feel particularly appetizing . . . I think this
brings it down. It brings it down to a 79 cents-a-can
level.
Finally, the typography irritated the art directors,
as they found it misaligned and poorly sized.
Beyond these individual visual elements, the ad’s
primary image does not show people consuming the
product, but uses a visual rhetorical figure (i.e., a vi-
sual metaphor) to convey its main message (Phillips &
McQuarrie, 2004). This metaphor compares Campbell’s
soup to the paint on a painter’s palette; by eating more
soup, one can “live a more colorful life.” The art direc-
tors agreed that this visual treatment failed to match
the usual visual themes of Campbell’s VBI and seemed
overly “cute” [Emma]. The current ad misses the mark
because:
It doesn’t have that warm, cozy mom-at-home, sick
with a bowl of chicken noodle soup feeling, which I
definitely associate with the brand [Brooke].
It doesn’t feel as down-home and grounded as a
Campbell’s ad would be [Ian].
In summary, art directors were able to reproduce
from memory both specific visual elements associated
with Campbell’s VBI, and its holistic visual represen-
tation or tertium quid. They reacted negatively to the
particular Campbell’s ad shown because, although it
did include some individual elements historically as-
sociated with Campbell’s, overall it was judged to be
discrepant from the established tertium quid that vi-
sually identified the Campbell brand. The problem was
compounded by the fact that Campbell’s chose a visual
rhetorical figure as the main image in the ad, a bit of
cleverness that the art directors felt had strayed too far
from Campbell’s core visual themes of family, home,
and warmth.
Consumers. In terms of individual visual elements,
consumers stated that Campbell’s VBI was composed
of a prominent picture of a bowl of soup (present in 14
of 15 collages), the color red (12), and the can (9). These
elements are the same as those identified by the art
directors. In contrast to the art directors, consumers
perceived that the ad in Figure 3 was congruent with
Campbell’s VBI in depicting the can, the color red, and
the soup. Thus, while art directors were dismayed at
how these elements were presented (e.g., can cut in
half), consumers were reassured because the familiar
elements were present (in whatever form). Not surpris-
ingly, no consumer mentioned typography choices or
use of white space, consistent with the idea that ordi-
nary consumers lack the aesthetic expertise to call out
such elements.
The visual themes that consumers associated with
Campbell’s are presented in Table 2. Consumers felt
that family and warmth were primary visual themes for
the Campbell’s brand; art directors identified the same
themes.3Three of the consumers did not understand
the visual metaphor of the painter’s palette. For the
remaining 11 consumers, the primary visual theme in
the Campbell’s ad did not match their expectations for
Campbell’s VBI.
It’s different from what I was thinking because it’s
more about focusing on the soups and the differ-
ent colors. . . I always pictured them focusing more
on the emotional aspect of it, with the family stuff
and bringing everyone together. That’s what I al-
ways thought . . . It’s something different from what
I would expect from them [Jennifer].
Discussion
Ordinary consumers and professional art directors
shared a common view of the elements and themes that
comprise Campbell’s VBI. This is important in so far as
it shows that the tertium quid theorized to underlie
VBI is phenomenologically visible during both the ex-
pert production and naive reception of visually styled
brand communications. Where art directors and con-
sumers differed was in their evaluation of and response
to the Campbell’s ad in Figure 3. The professionals
saw substantial departures from and even violations of
Campbell’s historical visual identity, and responded
negatively as a result; ordinary consumers saw enough
familiar and expected specific elements to accept the
ad’s visual execution as congruent with Campbell’s
established brand identity. Professional art directors,
with their higher level of aesthetic training, also were
able to discuss Campbell’s VBI in more fine-grained de-
tail, including elements such as typography, to which
ordinary consumers appeared oblivious.
3Although the visual theme healthy was present in the same num-
ber of consumer collages as warmth (11), it was almost always a
secondary or minor theme, not a primary theme, as explained by
the participants.
230 PHILLIPS, McQUARRIE, AND GRIFFIN
Psychology and Marketing DOI: 10.1002/mar

Table 2. Consumers’ Visual Collage Themes for Campbell’s Brand.
Theme Examples of Collage Images that Illustrate the Theme
Number of Collages
with This Theme
(n=15)
Family Mother cooking in kitchen with children
Family sitting around table, eating
Children laughing
14
Warmth Snow falling as viewed through a window
Family skating
Fireplace
11
Healthy Woman exercising
Bag of vegetables
Red bicycle
11
Soup situations Chicken casserole (soup used in recipe)
Sandwich
Pot
8
Convenience A clock
A kitchen (save time in the kitchen)
5
Affordable Dollar sign
Dollar bill
3
Variety Different bowls of soup
Different vegetables
3
Negative Associations Herd of dirty cows (industrialized meat)
Empty white plate (plain and bland)
2
A second observation from Study 1 is that consumers
appear less able to comprehend complex visual images
and themes than art directors; whereas all of the art
directors understood the visual metaphor in the Camp-
bell’s ad, three consumers did not. This lack of visual
aesthetic sophistication had an unexpected positive out-
come for the brand; it appeared to make consumers less
sensitive to small changes in brand elements than art
directors. A majority of art directors and a majority
of consumers agreed that the Campbell’s ad did not
meet their visual expectations in terms of the primary
theme of the painter’s palette. However, for art di-
rectors, small alterations in the ad’s visual elements
exacerbated the incongruence of the overall visual
theme. For consumers, the familiar can, color, and prod-
uct shot were enough to reassure them that despite its
incongruent theme, the ad was still a “Campbell’s ad,”
leaving them unperturbed by other alterations to indi-
vidual elements. This is similar to the positive assimila-
tion effect noted by Lane (2000) for repeated exposure to
incongruent brand extensions. Because of the assimila-
tion effect, consumers may have experienced the Camp-
bell’s ad as only moderately incongruent, which led to a
general liking of it; art directors did not experience this
assimilation effect and expressed general dislike of the
Campbell’s ad.
Given these disparate reactions to perceived incon-
gruity, Study 2 manipulates VBI to be strongly incon-
gruent, while distinguishing between more and less
aesthetically skilled consumers. Two hypotheses are
tested:
H1: Consumers will react negatively to a visual
execution that is highly incongruent with a
brand’s existing VBI.
H2: Aesthetic sensitivity will moderate the effects
of incongruity: at high levels, perceived incon-
gruity will be accentuated, and hence, more
negatively evaluated.
STUDY 2
Method
The Study 2 experiment used real ads for actual brands
that had been identified by consumers in the qualitative
pretest as containing strong positive VBI: Skyy vodka
(Figure 1, left) and Malibu rum (Figure 2, left).4In an
additional experimental pretest of 63 undergraduate
students of legal drinking age, there was no difference
4In the qualitative pretest, no other soup brand besides Campbell’s
was identified as having a strong VBI, so a different product cate-
gory was chosen for the strongly incongruent experimental ads in
Study 2.
VISUAL BRAND IDENTITY 231
Psychology and Marketing DOI: 10.1002/mar

Figure 4. Strongly incongruent experimental ads.
in liking for these ads or the brands (p>0.10). The
experimental pretest participants did not participate
in the other pretest or studies.
To create a strongly incongruent VBI, the brands’
packages were switched from one ad to the other. That
is, the Skyy vodka bottle was placed in the Malibu rum
ad, and the Malibu rum bottle was placed in the Skyy
vodka ad (Figure 4). Each of these liquor ads contains
consistent and positive visual elements and themes for
its target audience when associated with the correct
brand (identified through the visual cue of the pack-
age). When associated with a different brand, the VBI
is strongly incongruent because none of the visual cues
in the ad are associated with that brand. Because liking
for the ad with the correct package is positive, differ-
ences in consumer liking for strongly incongruent ads,
if obtained, can be attributed to unmet expectations of
VBI, and not to the use of differently liked visual ele-
ments.
Centrality of visual product aesthetics (CVPA) was
included as a moderating variable (Bloch, Brunel, &
Arnold, 2003) in the experiment. CVPA was developed
to measure the importance of the visual aspects of prod-
ucts in consumers’ experiences. CVPA is the overall
level of significance that visual aesthetics holds for a
particular consumer and is a general trait. If it is true
that art directors’ sophisticated understanding of vi-
sual aesthetics helps them distinguish between consis-
tent and inconsistent VBI, then CVPA may likewise
moderate ordinary consumers’ response to strongly in-
congruent ads.
Participants were 146 undergraduate students of
legal drinking age who received course credit. Each
participant received a booklet of four full-page color
ads; the first and third ads served as fillers and were
not used in the analysis. The remaining two ads were
the experimental ads. Half the subjects saw brand-
congruent versions of an ad for Skyy vodka and for
Malibu rum (i.e., the original ads). The other half saw
the altered, brand-incongruent version of each ad, in
which the branding information for the one (bottle with
brand label) was inserted into the visual representation
for the other (Figure 4). Within the conditions, the pre-
sentation of the ads was counterbalanced to control for
possible order effects. Participants were asked to look
at each ad as if they were viewing it in a magazine.
After each ad, participants indicated their attitude to-
ward the ad by rating it on three 7-point semantic dif-
ferential scales: appealing/unappealing, good/bad, and
likable/unlikable, with alpha =0.93. Then participants
completed the CVPA scale (Bloch, Brunel, & Arnold,
2003), with alpha =0.77, followed by demographic
questions.
Results
The hypotheses were tested using a 2 (congru-
ent/incongruent) ×2 (high/low CVPA score, split at
the median) between-subjects MANOVA design, with
scores for the two test ads averaged within each cell.
As predicted, liking for the congruent ads was greater
(Mcongruent =4.92, Mincongruent =4.59). However, this
mean difference was driven by the responses of the
high CVPA group, as seen by the significant interac-
tion with aesthetic centrality F(1, 142) =4.68, p<
0.05, two-tailed), which is fan-shaped (Figure 5). The
simple main effect for congruity within the low CVPA
232 PHILLIPS, McQUARRIE, AND GRIFFIN
Psychology and Marketing DOI: 10.1002/mar

4
5
6
lo CVPR hi CVPR
Aad
Congruent
incongruent
Figure 5. Interaction between brand congruence and aesthetic centrality: Aad.
condition was not significant (Mcongruent =4.46,
Mincongruent =4.54, F<1), while the simple main effect
within the high CVPA group was significant (Mcongruent
=5.37, Mincongruent =4.66, F(1, 142) =7.43, p<0.01).
The second hypothesis concerning moderation by CVPA
was thus supported: participants low in aesthetic cen-
trality did not see much difference between congruent
and incongruent ads, while participants high in aes-
thetic centrality liked the congruent ads significantly
more.
Discussion
The results suggest that visual elements and themes in
ads that are perceived positively by consumers are liked
more when they are congruent with visual brand expec-
tation than when they are incongruent. However, this
effect appears to be driven by individuals with CVPA
scores above the median. These experimental findings
parallel those of the qualitative study comparing or-
dinary consumers to art directors. Just as art direc-
tors are highly sensitive to the visual aesthetics in VBI
while ordinary consumers tend to view it more super-
ficially, within consumer populations it appears that
more aesthetically aware consumers may be sensitive
to and positively influenced by VBI in a way that less
sensitive consumers are not.
GENERAL DISCUSSION
An extensive scholarly literature exists to explain con-
sumer response to individual visual elements in ad-
vertisements: for example, the effect of choosing a red
versus blue background (Labrecque & Milne, 2012) or a
heavy angular font versus a light curved font (Hender-
son, Geise, & Cote, 2004). What the literature has not
addressed is how these visual elements combine into
a cohesive brand image, and how consumers respond
when these elements are all processed at the same time.
This paper drew on legal scholarship to define VBI as
the tertium quid that arises from the combination of
all the visual brand elements used to represent the
brand, without being dependent on any one of them.
This combination represents the holistic visual style
of the brand that cannot be encapsulated by a list of
its visible parts. An exploratory qualitative study sup-
ported the idea that, for familiar brands, both visual
experts and ordinary consumers hold this type of VBI
in memory as an expected schema. A simple experiment
demonstrated that visual elements that are generally
perceived positively nevertheless are liked better when
they match the tertium quid of specific visual brand ex-
pectations, especially for consumers high in aesthetic
sensitivity.
The findings also suggest that individual visual el-
ements may play a compensatory or assimilative role
for ordinary consumers. This assimilation process may
explain why brands can produce variations in their ad-
vertising executions year after year: these visual de-
partures may be assimilated by consumers who are
reassured by the consistent elements that do reappear
in the ads. Thus, this research highlights the impor-
tance of examining visual elements within a tertium
quid relationship, rather than as isolated drivers of
consumer response.
A final contribution is the discovery that the CVPA
for a particular consumer maybe an important indi-
vidual difference factor in a consumer’s judgment of
visual (in)congruity. Just as visual experts (i.e., art
directors) noticed and were more critical of moderate
VISUAL BRAND IDENTITY 233
Psychology and Marketing DOI: 10.1002/mar

visual incongruity in brand advertising, consumers
with a greater appreciation for visual aesthetics noticed
and were more critical of strong visual incongruity.
Limitations and Future Research
The findings are limited by the small number of brands
and products examined, and by the nature of the manip-
ulation in Study 2. Soup and liquor are specific types of
products, and Campbell’s, Skyy, and Malibu may be id-
iosyncratic brands. Future research could examine a set
of brands and products structured by built-in contrasts,
such as packaged versus durable goods, brands that dif-
fer along specific personality dimensions (Aaker, 1997),
or brands that elicit different kinds of consumer rela-
tionships (Fournier, 1998). Future research also could
modulate the manipulation in Study 2, which took the
form of a wholesale swap of visual elements. A more
fine-grained test of the assimilation effect might remove
visual elements one by one, and seek the tipping point
at which assimilation fails. Such research might be able
to construct a hierarchy of visual elements (e.g., color
vs. typography vs. visual theme) that distinguishes ele-
ments crucial to maintaining existing VBI from others
that are peripheral and can be altered with greater
impunity.
Previous laboratory research in advertising has
shown that small differences in individual elements
can produce differences in consumer response, when
these elements are tested in isolation, and for fictitious
brands. But for real brands in the marketplace, these
findings suggest that individual visual elements may
play a compensatory or assimilative role based on the
brand’s other visual elements. For example, in a lab-
oratory experiment, depicting only half of the product
package for Brand X may lead to decreased brand lik-
ing. But in a more natural exposure context, seeing any
part of a real brand’s familiar package may reassure
consumers, leading to increased liking for an ad. Prac-
titioners charged with evolving an existing VBI should
keep the assimilation effect in mind. Further research
is required to tease out which alterations to visual el-
ements tend to be disruptive, and which can be read-
ily assimilated. This research also will have to grapple
with the challenges to internal validity posed by us-
ing a real brand with an existing VBI that rests on a
strong tertium quid—inasmuch as it may not be pos-
sible to test these effects with fictitious brands. Thus,
this research highlights the importance of testing the-
ories with familiar, real brands (Kent & Allen, 1994;
McQuarrie, Phillips, & Andrews, 2012).
Finally, the idea that consumers differ in aesthetic
skill, and that this individual difference can be an im-
portant moderator, remains novel. This paper demon-
strates that the Bloch, Brunel, and Arnold (2003) CVPA
scale, developed in the context of aesthetic judgments
of products, can be applied to aesthetic judgments of
advertising as well. In addition, CVPA moderated con-
sumers’ response to incongruity, a stimulus property
that plays an important role in Berlyne’s (1971) ex-
perimental aesthetics. Future research might consider
other contexts and stimulus properties where differ-
ences in aesthetic sensitivity may moderate consumer
response.
Conclusion
In a world flooded with imagery, visual aspects of
branding have become more central, even as branding
itself has become ever more crucial to marketing suc-
cess. Every established brand has a VBI, built up over
time at considerable cost, whose constraints must be
respected without allowing the brand to become stag-
nant or stale. Brand teams and agency art directors
have struggled with the dilemma on a practical level
for some time. The present research contributes by ar-
ticulating the idea of tertium quid, and showing the de-
gree to which VBI depends on the presence of many vi-
sual elements in combination. This paper suggests that
consumer assimilation effects allow brand managers to
change visual advertising elements with positive re-
sults. However, more aesthetically aware consumers
show greater sensitivity to alterations in VBI, and react
negatively to strongly incongruent brand depictions.
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Correspondence regarding this article should be sent
to: Barbara J. Phillips, Professor, Edwards School
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