Difficulty Level and Usage Rate of Literary devices in Print Advertising (Case Study: Clio award-winning and shortlist print ads (2007-2016)

On one hand, Studies about the influence of literary devices on the consumer, have only divided literary devices into two main groups of "tropes" and "schemes" in terms of difficulty level, and ignored the more precise taxonomies. On the other hand, their results contradict each other: those that encourage implementing schemes, because they do not confuse the consumers in understanding the ad's message. The others have suggested using tropes, because they increase ad recall and attitude towards ad. These results puzzle the designers which literary devices to use. Moreover, they have merely evaluated consumer response and have neglected the graphic designers' role in using the devices based on their difficulty levels. This study uses McQuarrie and Micke's four-level difficulty taxonomy of literary devices to answer this question: what is the usage percentage of each four level and why. To do that, we deployed a qualitative method with a positivist approach to analyse the frequency of literary devices of each four level of difficulty in Clio chosen ads. we aim to shed light on the relation between each difficulty level and their usage rates in ads, by using a more precise taxonomy of literary devices difficulty. The results show the repetition group (easier) has the least usage rate (6%), while the reversal group (easy) had highest usage rate (31%). This indicates designers appreciate less complex devices due to their comprehensible nature, but not the easiest devices (repetition). Also, the usage rate of schemes and tropes were equal (18%). So, it can be construed that designer want their ads to be both engaging and comprehensible.