Service advertisers often are confronted with the problem of how best to communicate the intangible qualities of a service to their target audiences. In this conceptual article, the author describes what intangibility means, discusses how it influences the service advertising task, and derives propositions to handle that task. The article (a) identifies five conceptual properties of intangibility, (b) describes the advertising challenge of each, (c) suggests approaches to meet each challenge, and (d) elucidates the power of transformational advertising in embedding intangible service performance into a consumer’s life experiences. The author argues that in services, intangibility can contribute to value rather than detract from it and that it is well within the advertising’s special talent to communicate intangibility. The author advances propositions to guide copy and creative strategy for service advertising managers.
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