Grabbing attention

The importance of modal density in advertising

Bibliographic Data

ID12700136
AuthorsPaul White (0000-0002-7503-9896, Auckland University of Technology, corresponding author)
Year2010
Volume9
Issue4
Pages371-397
Publication date2010-11-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueVisual Communication (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1470-3572 • E-ISSN: 1741-3214
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/1470357210382194
OpenAlexW2325476702
LanguageEN
Citations received7
References cited4

This article compares marketing communications mediated by conventional media (street posters) with those employing a convergence of old and new technologies (posters, SMS texting, Bluetooth transmitters). The author first analyses in detail the famous Lord Kitchener poster created in 1914 and shows that the semiotic and modal structure of the Kitchener poster became a template on which many subsequent communications have been and still are based. He then goes on to compare the semiotic and modal structure of the famous Kitchener poster with the New Zealand Army interactive recruitment posters created by Saatchi & Saatchi (New Zealand) in 2007. Building on Rodney Jones’s notion of sites of engagement as sites of attention and using Sigrid Norris’s concept of modal density, this article analyses the New Zealand Army interactive posters and shows how communications in the age of information overload are more likely to be successful if they find new ways of getting and keeping attention. Furthermore, it suggests that multimodal discourse analysis can have an important and, as yet unrealized, role to play in refining the study of advertising and marketing communications effectiveness

Advertising · Business · Linguistics · Modal · Semiotics · Sociology · Digital Communication and Language · Discourse Analysis in Language Studies · Media, Communication, and Education

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