Polysemous brand slogans have multiple meanings that may convey several product attributes. We build on extant research by suggesting that some consumers automatically access multiple meanings of a polysemous brand slogan, whereas others access only a single, immediately available meaning. A novel measure of automatic access to secondary meaning (the Secondary Meaning Access via the Automatic Route Test, or SMAART) is developed to capture this individual difference and show its consequences for consumer responses to polysemous slogans with unfavorable secondary meanings. The automatic-access account is further validated by employing the Implicit Association Test (Greenwald, McGhee, and Schwartz), suggesting that the unconscious impact of polysemous brand slogans can be more influential than intuitively expected.


*Claudiu V. Dimofte (dimofte@msb.edu) is assistant professor of marketing, Robert Emmett McDonough School of Business, Georgetown University, Washington, DC 20057. Richard F. Yalch (ryalch@u.washington.edu) is professor of marketing, University of Washington Business School, Box
353200, Seattle, WA 98195. The article is based on the first author’s doctoral dissertation at the University of Washington under the supervision of the second author. The authors acknowledge the helpful input of the editor, as sociate editor, and reviewers. In addition, the authors thank Forentiu Damian for help with software development and Anthony Greenwald and Ronald Goodstein for their helpful comments.

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