A Survey on Optimal Innovation and Salience Hypothesis in the Persian Advertisement

The present study intends to test the Optimal Innovation Hypothesis, according to which an optimally innovative stimulus (advertisement in this article) would be rated as more pleasing and attractive than either a more or a less familiar stimulus. Twenty students served as subjects. Twenty Persian advertisements from television of Iran were selected. One questionnaire constituted a familiarity test; the other was an attractiveness test in which the same items were presented. In the first part of the experiment, the researchers themselves rated the familiarity of each item on a 7-point familiarity scale. For this purpose, the advertisements were carefully read and analyzed to calculate the frequency of deviations in them in light of Leech's (1969) deviation model. In the second part, participants were asked to rate the attractiveness of each item on a 7-point attractiveness scale. One-way ANOVA was used for comparing attractiveness among the familiarity groups. Results lend support to the Optimal Innovation Hypothesis. They show that optimal innovation-innovation occupying mid position on the familiarity scale allowing for both the salient and the innovative to be induced-is most attractive. In contrast, pure innovation-innovation that does not allow for the recoverability of salient responses-is least attractive.