Puns, relevance and appreciation in advertisements

Puns are popular rhetorical figures in advertisements. A distinction can be made between puns in which both interpretations are relevant to the advertiser's message (e.g., “The gift that leaves you beaming” in an advertisement for a small flashlight) and puns in which only one interpretation is relevant (e.g., “Roses grow on you” for Cadbury's Roses chocolates). In recent publications, different predictions have been made as to whether slogans containing puns in general are appreciated more than slogans without a pun, and also whether puns containing two relevant interpretations are appreciated more than puns containing only one relevant interpretation. This paper reports on an experiment to test these hypotheses. Sixty-eight participants rated their appreciation of 24 slogans. The results showed that the presence or absence of puns had a significant impact on the respondents' appreciation of the slogans. Furthermore, whether the pun contained two relevant interpretations or only one did not influence the extent to which they were considered funny, but the former were considered a better choice than the latter.