CHAPTER OBJECTIVES
- To discuss what is meant by advertising creativity and examine the role of creative strategy in advertising.
- To examine creative strategy development and the roles of various client and agency personnel involved in it.
- To consider the process that guides the creation of advertising messages and the research inputs into the stages of the creative process.
- To examine various approaches used for determining major selling ideas that form the basis of an advertising campaign.
CREATIVE STRATEGY
Determining what the advertising message will say or communicate
CREATIVE TACTICS
Determining how the message strategy will be executed
ADVERTISING CREATIVITY
The ability to generate fresh, unique and appropriate ideas
YOUNG’S CREATIVE PROCESS
- Immersion: Getting raw material or data, immersing one’s self in the problem to get background
- Digestion: Ruminating on the data acquired, turning it this way and that in the mind
- Incubation: Ceasing analysis and putting the problem out of conscious mind for a time
- Illumination: Often a sudden inspiration or intuitive revelation about a potential solution
- Verification: Studying the idea, evaluating it, and developing it for practical usefulness
WALLAS’S CREATIVE PROCESS
- Preparation: Gathering information
- Incubation: Setting problem aside
- Illumination: Seeing the solution
- Verification: Refining the idea
INPUTS TO THE CREATIVE PROCESS
Campaign
ADVERTISING CAMPAIGN
A set of interrelated and coordinated integrated marketing communication activities that centre on a particular theme or idea that appears in different media across a specified time period.
CAMPAIGN THEME
The central message that will be communicated in all of the various IMC activities
TOP TEN ADVERTISING SLOGANS OF THE CENTURY
UNIQUE SELLING PROPOSITION
The unique selling proposition (a.k.a. unique selling point or USP) is a marketing concept that was first proposed as a theory to understand a pattern among successful advertising campaigns of the early 1940s. It states that such campaigns made unique propositions to the customer and that this convinced them to switch brands.
Three characteristics of a unique selling proposition:
- Each advertisement makes a proposition to the customer
- It must be one the competition cannot or does not offer
- It must be strong enough to pull over new customers to the brand
BRAND IMAGE
CREATING A BRAND IMAGE
- David Ogilvy’s Approach
- Brand image or personality is particularly important when brands are similar
- Every ad must contribute to the complex symbol that is the brand image
- Leo Burnett’s Approach
- Find the inherent drama or characteristic of the product that makes consumers buy it
- “(Inherent drama) is often hard to find but it is always there, and once found it is the most interesting and believable of all advertising appeals.”
Inherent Drama
- Focus on consumer benefits with an emphasis on the dramatic element in expressing them
- Messages generally presented in a warm, emotional way
Positioning
- Establish a particular place in the customer’s mind for the product or service
- Based on product attributes/benefits, price/quality, use or application, type of user, problem solved
The creative development and execution of the advertising message are a crucial part of a firm’s integrated marketing communications program and is often the key to the success of a marketing campaign. Marketers generally turn to ad agencies to develop, prepare, and implement their creative strategy since these agencies are specialists in the creative function of advertising. The creative specialist or team is responsible for developing an effective way to communicate the marketer’s message to the customer. Other individuals on both the client and the agency sides work with the creative specialists to develop the creative strategy, implement it, and evaluate its effectiveness.
The challenge facing the writers, artists, and others who develop ads is to be creative and come up with fresh, unique, and appropriate ideas that can be used as solutions to communications problems. Creativity in advertising is a process of several stages, including preparation, incubation, illumination, verification, and revision. Various sources of information are available to help the creative specialists determine the best campaign theme, appeal, or execution style.
Creative strategy development is guided by specific goals and objectives and is based on a number of factors, including the target audience, the basic problem the advertising must address, the objectives the message seeks to accomplish, and the major selling idea or key benefit the advertiser wants to communicate. These factors are generally stated in a copy platform, which is a work plan used to guide development of the ad campaign. An important part of creative strategy is determining the major selling idea that will become the central theme of the campaign. There are several approaches to doing this, including using a unique selling proposition, creating a brand image, looking for inherent drama in the brand, and positioning.