ABSTRACT
Advertising research has long recognized that some advertisements are more blunt than others. Some make claims so explicitly that audiences have no trouble, recognizing and playing back the communicator’s “main idea.” In others, there is much less agreement about what the communicator is trying to say about the product, and to infer a claim requires a considerable feat of interpretation. We know that Merit cigarette advertising wants us to believe that Merit has less tar, but what does Marlboro’s cowboy advertising want us to believe?
