Two weeks ago, U.K. supermarket chain Tesco unveiled an ad campaign that became an immediate darling of marketeers—and likely puzzled the bulk of the public. Abandoning its logo—aside from its classic blue chevrons—Tesco instead substituted staples from its shelves for each of the letters in its name.

The resulting ad campaign requires passersby to identify each food item correctly to spell out the company’s name: TESCO. Marketeers likely thought U.K. consumers would appreciate the cleverness of the ad campaign while also noticing and recalling it more than they would an ordinary appeal that left little to consumers’ imaginations. When readers must supply at least part of the message, they typically display better recall, courtesy of the well-established generation effect.

The most widely-cited study on the generation effect attests to its power. However, that study also omits pictures, rhymes, anagrams, and word completion among its challenges. Similarly, another study of the generation effect noted that readers had stronger recall of unfamiliar words than they did of familiar words. Theoretically,........

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