ABSTRACT
The gestures of actors on TV do not fit the speech that they are designed to accompany. Actors seem to have been told to do something with their hands, to give the advertisements more life. And the ad looks both alive and curiously wrong. The physical movements and the exact timings of the gesture with regard to the speech had to be strictly choreographed. This was difficult for the actor because the start point of the preparation phase of the gesture had to begin in advance of the associated speech, so the stroke phase of the gesture would coincide with the right section of the speech. One way of making TV advertisements more effective, is to find exactly the right iconic gestures to communicate the properties we want to convey. The fact that such gestures are usually generated without any conscious awareness on the part of the speaker might also give them extra credibility in the communicational task.
