Advertising Management and Brand Delivery - Essay Example

? Role of Creativity in Advertising Introduction In the book “Confessions of an Advertising Man”, while describing the relationship between advertisement and creativity, David Ogilvy (1988) stated that “If it doesn’t sell, it isn’t creative.” The aforementioned line by Davis Ogilvy, also referred to as the father of advertising, is the central theme of this essay and here we will analyze qualitative merit of his statement. Before criticizing statement, one has to understand the perspectives and viewpoint David Ogilvy (who has built one of the largest advertising agencies in the world) in order to address key assignment questions in precise manner (Rieck, 2013). David Ogilvy viewed advertising as the source of promoting products and helping the company to sell items which can help the firm to generate revenue. Consideration of the confession of David Ogilvy in the book named as “Confessions of an Advertising Man” reveals the fact that the advertising legend was not even ready to perceive advertising as creative expression which may not have sales impact (Ogilvy, 1988). Ogilvy (1988, p. 43) wrote “I tell new recruits that I will not allow them to use the word creative to describe the functions they are to perform in the agency” in order to his ignorance towards the word creativity. According to Ogilvy (1988), one cannot afford to become creative in advertisement designing for the sake of creativity without producing measurable result because it is responsibility of the advertising firm to take care of the interest of client who is paying for designing the advertisement. Now, the question is whether David Ogilvy was right while stating “If it doesn’t sell, it isn’t creative” or it was a misconception of the advertising legend? At this point of discussion, the essay is in no position to criticize or judge the validity of the statement due to two reasons, 1- the researcher needs to conduct literature review regarding the role of creativity in advertisement in order to get idea of theoretical background of the statement and until then, any judgement will bound to face degree of subjectivity and 2- the concept of creativity is pretty much tacit in nature hence one has to define the characteristics of creativity before making any subjective judgement to statement of David Ogilvy. Therefore, in the next section, the essay will try to answer the three questions such as, 1- what the role of creativity in advertising is, 2- how creativity can both positively and negatively affect the success of a campaign and 3- how the creative process can be supported by the elements of the creative brief and answering the three questions will help the researcher to criticize David Ogilvy’s statement such as “If it doesn’t sell, it isn’t creative” in non-partial and robust manner. Role of Creativity in Advertising Kawashima (2006) compared advertising campaigns in Japan, US and UK and found significant amount of differences in look, feel and style of television adverts. If advertising is paid form of communication and aim is to just promote product information to customers then why would advertisers need to experiment with form, content and layout? Well, that is a pretty interesting question and answer to the question is linked with need of creativity in advertising space. Kawashima (2006) also found that advertisements produced in UK have more cutting edge cutting edge creative production appeals in comparison to advertisements in emerging markets like Brazil, Russia, China, India and South Africa which can be classified as banal calls to attract customers to buy the products. Grabher (2001 and 2002) pointed out that with the increase in competition in globalized economy, marketers are seeking to put more creative quotients in advertisements in order increase brand visibility among customers as against competitors. In the literature regarding advertisement, importance of culture, geo-demographic dispositions on advertisement got greater importance as against literature regarding role of creativity on increasing effectiveness of advertisement (Kawashima, 2006). Due to such scarcity in literature regarding the correlation of creativity and advertising success, David Ogilvy’s statement such as “If it doesn’t sell, it isn’t creative” has never been judged with full attention. However, Smith and Yang (2004) argued that the relationship between creativity and advertising has long been experienced by advertisers, promoters of integrated marketing communication and marketers but it was difficult for them to understand the very nature of creativity due tacit aspect of the concept. Major industry awards such as Clio’s being given to advertising agencies for designing creative advertisements and on the other hand, advertising trade papers like Ad Week or Advertising in Age put significant importance on creative aspects of advertisements (Smith and Yang, 2004). However, the question is that whether advertising agencies and advertising personnel have clear idea about definition and perspectives of creativity or not? Probable answer to the question is no because most of the markets believe doing different and innovative thing is equivalent to being creative but from psychological and cognitive perspectives, meaning of creativity has far more bigger dimensions. In the next part, the study will try to understand the very nature of creativity. Smith and Yang (2004) used Webster’s dictionary’s meaning of creativity in order to understand idea behind the term. According to Webster’s dictionary, ‘create’ is synonymous to developing a new form or produce the new form by deploying imaginative skill. However, such definition is pretty much broad and can be applied to any context along with advertisement design. Therefore, one has to find the meaning of the term creativity which can fit the context of advertisement. In such context, Smith and Yang (2004) found that personal creativity significantly differs from the meaning of creativity in advertisement. In personal creativity, people are categorized as creative when they produce new idea, inventions, solutions or solutions to the problem which might be divergent but remain relevant among the entire social cohort. Is the case same for creativity in advertisement space? Probably not, because divergence and relevance for creativity is being directed by culture, characteristics and social recognition criteria of different target groups. For example, a social media campaign using vibrant colours and youthful theme might qualify as creative among young people but the same advertisement campaign might not qualify as creative among senior citizens and adults (Smith and Yang, 2004). From marketing viewpoint, advertisements can be perceived as intangible tool which are being produced by marketers to communicate the product/service idea to customers. In such context, advertisements can be classified as products that are being produced by domain experts. Applying the concepts of divergence and relevance reveals the fact that establishing thumb rule for designing creative advertisements which can satisfy the requirements of all the target markets is considered to be a very difficult task among marketers. In such context, Smith and Yang (2004) identified three different types of creativity aspects in case of advertisement and promotional activities. 1- Creative production team of the advertising agency has the responsibility to put innovative idea in place and develop advertisements with creative style quotients. 2- Target market has some common set of perceptions and expectations regarding creative appeal of the advertisement and marketers need to perceive expected creativity among target audience. 3- Certain level of creativity is associated with viewing experience of customers and their immediate reaction after viewing the advertisement. Smith and Yang (2004) argued that there is close interaction among these three layers of creativity and the relationship hypothesizes the existence of divergence and relevance in advertisement. For example, ‘personal creativity’ of creative directors or copywriters might help the company to develop an innovative campaign but divergence/relevance of the advertisement being ultimately judged by target audience. Therefore, the concept of creativity in advertisement is pretty much relative in nature. General Equilibrium Theory Consideration of research works of Smith and Yang (2004) reveals the fact that common idea about creativity is not very clear among people while personal creativity and psychological aspect of viewer can influence their acceptance to creative appeal of the advertisement. Guilford (1950) was probably first one who unlocked the door for understanding personal context of creativity. According to Guilford (1950), creativity is directly linked with human intelligence. For example, a human can be classified as creative person if he or she can use their intelligence to think divergently of a problem and come up with unique solution to the problem (Guilford, 1950). According to Guilford (1950), finding unconventional answers to the problem or thinking differently of the problem is alternate aspects of creativity. Guilford (1950) developed ‘Structure of Intellect Model’, which focuses on linking creativity with all three dimensions of human cognition. Dimension 1- summation of 5 aspects such as cognition, evaluation, memory, divergent production and convergent production and the summation provides clear idea about initial psychological evaluation of outside world by human. Dimension 2- summation of 4 aspects such as figural, symbolic, semantic, and behavioural and the summation provide clear idea about operations that are being used by human to express their creativity. Dimension 3- summation of 6 aspects such as units, transformations, systems, relations, classes and implications and the summation provide clear idea about the result of operations that are being used by human to express their creativity. From mathematical viewpoint, human can express their emotions or feelings through 120 (5 ? 4 ? 6) different psychological aspects. However, is creativity can be expressed through all the 120 different psychological aspects? Obviously not, only 24 psychological aspects out of 120 represent divergent thinking process of customers and generally every customer have within 16 to 24 metrics of divergent thinking process (Smith and Yang, 2004). Therefore, it can be surmised that every customer has certain level of capacity to understand creative quotient or message in advertising. Guilford (1950) named this aspect as ‘creative continuity’ which states all humans have the capacity to develop divergent cognitions and one’s creativity in certain field might not match other human’s basic understanding of creativity. Guilford (1950, p. 446) defined the concept of “creative continuity’ as, “Those persons who are recognized as creative merely have more of what all of us have. It is this principle of continuity that makes possible the investigation of creativity in people who are not necessarily distinguished.” At this point, important thing to note that the concept of “creative continuity’ is not supporting David Ogilvy’s phrase such as “If it doesn’t sell, it isn’t creative.” Let’s use the Pratt’s (2006) example of Coco-Cola print media advertisement published in London during 2005. The advertisement was creatively designed with vibrant colours and catchy taglines and the advertisement increased sales of Coco-Cola at that quarter in UK. Pratt (2006) found that creativity in the Coco-Cola advertisement was successful in grabbing the attention of customers and customers analyzed the creativity in advertisement as per their creative potential. Concept of “creative continuity’ also states that it is up to customers to analyze creativity of the advertisement while using sales revenue to measure creative appeal of advertisement among customers can not be considered as justifiable approach (Pratt, 2006; Smith and Yang, 2004). Therefore, Smith and Yang’s (2004) research paper contradicts the sales driven approach of Ogilvy (1988) to measure creativity of advertisements. Was Ogilvy’s (1988) idea about creativity in advertisement wrong? To get this answer, the study will try to understand role of creativity in advertising. Smith and Yang (2004) stated that advertising is all about communicating the product/service idea to customers and it is the one way (TV commercials, radio jingles, print advertisements, bill board promotions, ambient positioning of posters or promotional structures) or interactive (social media campaign in Facebook, Twitter, web advertisements) between companies and its target customers. So, what is the role of creativity in communicating the message to customers through advertisement? To answer this question, Smith and Yang (2004) identified aspects like creativity in the communication process, creativity as a societal process, creativity as a group process and creativity as a personal process. Creativity in the communication process- companies uses creative appeal to influence advertisement effectiveness. Ad agencies use creative positioning of image of the product, creative sales promotion activities to highlight the effectiveness of discount schemes and creative presentation of forms or layout to attract customers. For example, Pratt (2006) gave example of advertisement of Benson and Hedges cigarette advertisements prepared by Collett, Dickinson, Pearce (CDP) agency which positioned the product in terms of aristocracy, ego and men chauvinism. Creativity as a societal process- advertising agencies and companies creatively uses emotional appeal and social appeal to encourage customers to involve in benevolent or fund raising activities or wild life saving activities. In many case, advertisers use pictures, placards or message of social activists to communicate the message. For example, Smith and Yang (2004) gave example societal advertisements of NGOs and community development agencies use the child labour agenda creatively to deliver emotional message to customers. Creativity as a group process- advertising agencies might target particular group in the society and role of personal/social identity in order to promote the product. Reward, mood of customers and shifting of self-construal levels are being used to deliver the creativity in advertisements. For example, advertisement of P&G’ Olay Skin Care products target a particular segment of woman who has crossed their 30 and the advertisement creatively uses problems of woman’s aging to influence purchase decision of customers. Creativity as a personal process- creative message in advertisement is being processed by customer through above mentioned 24 cognitive variables and therefore advertising agency integrates creativity by experimenting witch colours, forms and layout which might communicate relatively different messages as per personal assessment of customers. For example, Smith and Yang (2004) gave examples of Fast Moving Consumer Durables (FMCG) companies which directly seek consumer help to develop creative advertisements. Positive and Negative Effect of Creativity on Advertisements An and Kim (2007) gave example of stereotypes in advertising such as “female role portrayals” or “sex role portrayals” that may decrease the appeal of the advertising campaign among woman. For example, stereotype advertising or biased “female role portrayals” in advertisements by retail companies across New Zealand created significant uproar among females and ultimately sales of the promoted retail merchandises negatively affected (Zimmerman and Dahlberg, 2008). Zimmerman and Dahlberg (2008) stated that creativity helps the advertisement to become more appealing while with the emergence of social media advertisements, scope of achieving competitive advantage through stereotypical advertisements has become limited for marketers. Smith and Yang (2004) identified five different types of positive effects of creativity on advertisements such as Ad & Brand-to-consumer, Brand-to-consumer, the divergence factors, Originality, Flexibility and Unusual perspective. Ad & Brand-to-consumer- creativity advertisement can tinker imaginations of customers and can create curiosity among them to experience the advertisements. In some cases, creative advertisements help the company to develop brand awareness among customers. For example, AFLAC commercials were broadcasted in part by part manner which not only created curiosity among viewers but also helped the company to promote the brand (Smith and Yang, 2004). Divergence factors- creativity in terms of artistic expression, colourful imagery or richness of content can help the brand to distinguish itself from other brands. For example- recent advertisements of Nokia Lumia 1020 has used colourful imagery and richness of content to separate its brand from other competitors like Apple, Samsung and HTC. Originality- creative presentation is needed when it comes to diverge from family-oriented campaigns without deviating from the agenda to stick to originality of the campaign. For example, Las Vegas ads used the tagline ‘what happens here stays here’ to attract casino loving customers (Smith and Yang, 2004). Flexibility- flexible disposition of cultural shift or celebration of emergence of new culture can increase popularity of advertisements. For example, Pepsi and Coco-Cola always try to capture latest musical culture shift or rise of any sporting icon in the advertisements in order to attract customers (Pratt, 2006). Unusual Perspective- unusual presentation of advertisement even create wave of curiosity among viewers and position the brand separately. For example- Smith and Yang (2004) depicted Chevy Trucks campaign where small background is being used as against gigantic trucks in order to create unusual feelings among viewers. It is evident from the discussion that integration of creativity in advertisements can not only help the brand to create vibe among users but also encourage customers to make the purchasing decision which positively increases sales revenue earning capacity of the company. Consideration of research work of Ying (2005) reveals the fact that over indulgence of creativity and using irreverent creativity as against requirements of customers might seriously hamper effectiveness of advertisement. For example, Ying (2005) gave example of IKEA (renowned Swedish furniture retailing giant) which used westernized creative appeal in the advertisement to attract Chinese customers while it was trying to enter Chinese furniture retailing market. IKEA used European models and Scandinavian style appeal to design the advertisement. However, Chinese customer failed to connect with the creative appeal of the advertisements of IKEA and found westernized appeal of the advertisement is pretty irrelevant in context to their Chinese cultural value (Ying, 2005). As a result, IKEA advertisements failed to create impact on purchasing decision of Chinese customers and for initial years, market penetration of the company was pretty low. Therefore, it can be said that integrating creative idea for sake of creativity in the advertisement without understanding cultural difference, customer requirements or value proposition etc not only negatively affects the effectiveness of advertisement but also creates negative words of mouth about the company. In such context, David Ogilvy’s phrase such as “If it doesn’t sell, it isn’t creative” seems pretty much relevant. Pratt (2006) gave example McDonald advertisements launched it USA very creative in presenting the idea of health benefits of eating low calorie fast food items but the advertisement failed to create vibe among customers. Therefore, Ogilvy’s (1988) assumption cannot be rejected because it has certain points which indicate ultimate aim of advertisements. Pratt (2006) gave examples of global advertising agencies like Wieden & Kennedy (U.S.), Dentsu (Japan) and Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO (U.K.) and Bartle Bogle Hegarty (U.K.) which do proper market research before launching advertisement and these advertising agencies are also being concerned about misplacement of the creative context of the advertisement among customers. Pratt (2006) found that although advertisement requires certain level of creativity but level of creative context should not be as rich as paintings or sculpture. In simple words, target audiences for commercial advertisements are not any art house experts or experts in creative designing, therefore advertising agencies cannot afford to integrate very complex creative context in the advertisement which might not be understand by most of the target audience. Christy (2006) and Eisend (2009) gave examples of magazine advertisements which can be classified as very creative from artistic viewpoint but from sales & marketing viewpoint, these advertisement failed to encourage purchasing decision of customers because lack of understanding of the content of advertisement among customers. Therefore, the study has found rationale and validity in Ogilvy’s (1988) assumption that creativity of the advertisement should be judged from its ability to fulfil business expectations like addressing requirements of customers, attract customers (A), generate interest among customers regarding the product/service that is being communicated through the advertisement (I), develop the desire of purchase among consumers (D) and finally encourage them to make the purchasing decision or sell of the product for company (A). In the previous section of the essay, it has been mentioned that Guilford’s (1950) “creative continuity’ model contradicts the Ogilvy’s (1988) assumption that creativity in advertisement has no meaning if it fails to generate sales for the company. However, in real context, Guilford’s (1950) “creative continuity’ highlights personal creative contexts while Ogilvy’s (1988) assumption was based commercial creative aspects. Therefore, both the model should not be merged in same place or being compared with each other. Therefore, the study has found significant relevance of Ogilvy (1988) that “If it doesn’t sell, it isn’t creative.” Creative Process & Creative Elements of Advertisement Duke and Sutherland (2001) and Smith and Yang (2004) identified certain elements such as colours, content, use of celebrity in the advertisement, presentation of idea, format of advertisement, theme of communication message etc as the basic requirements for designing creative advertisements. According to Duke and Sutherland (2001), there is no certain process of designing creative advertisement rather setting certain rules would decrease creativity context of the advertisements. Smith and Yang (2004) defined the process of creative advertisement design as the series of interlinked effects such as the elaboration effect, resistance to wear-out and route to persuasion. Elaboration Effect- divergences in the advertisement concept presentation are being judged by consumers and the process is being known as understanding and closure. In such context, advertisers should gather information from external environment and use the information to design advertisements that can not only innovative in presentation but also create purchase intention of customers. For example, Ying (2005) stated that IKEA used Chinese cultural elements like pictures Animals or cartoons to design TV commercials and print advertisements. It took almost 5 years for IKEA to understand the Chinese cultural requirements and incorporate to the Chinese culture elements in advertisements which were considered as creative by Chinese customers. Smith and Yang (2004) used the term ‘ad resonance’ in order to identify cognitive link up of customers with elements of advertisement. The scholars found that advertisers can use combination of wordplay and pictures to develop creative appeal of advertisements that can create ambiguity and incongruity stimuli among customers. For example, Big Brother Apple advertisement was only once promoted during Super Bowl in 1984 but almost 20 years later; viewers of the advertisement still remember the creative appeal of the advertisement (Smith and Yang, 2004). Resistance to wear-out- frequent repetition of advertisement in marketplace or social media platform like Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter might decrease creative appeal of the advertisements. For example, Ashe (2012) gave example of AUDI (famous car manufacturer) advertisement in Facebook which got huge numbers of likes in the first day of promotion and people praised the creative appeal of the series of advertisement such as 60-second TV spot in Super Bowl and Audi's y LED headlight showing time line in Face book page. However, craze regarding the advertisement was decreased with the pass of time and divergence of the advertisement from expected originality or fantasy of customers caused reduction in creative appeal. Route to persuasion- creative presentation in the advertisement might be misjudged by customers due to absence of sensitivity and social context in the advertisement. In such context, viewers of the advertisements lack the motivation to process the creative context of advertisement and as a result, the advertisement fails to influence purchasing decision of customers. For example, in 2013, American Apparel (clothing retailer of USA) exhibited sheer amount of negligence while promoting advertisement through Facebook (Fiegerman, 2013). American Apparel created viral campaign regarding 20% flat discount on clothes and Facebook advertising of the company promoted the offer while people of different states of USA were suffering from property loss, death and agony caused by Hurricane Sandy (Fiegerman, 2013). American Apparel carelessly tried to put creative sense in the advertisement which was basically using loss caused by Hurricane Sandy as the central theme for discount offer. As a result, customers turned their back to the advertisement and the advertisement campaign failed. Therefore, it can be said marketers and advertisement agencies need to be selective while choosing creative theme of creative element for the advertisement in order to remain penetrative and relevant among customers. Conclusion Key objective of this paper was to criticize Ogilvy’s (1988) phrase “If it doesn’t sell, it isn’t creative” and the essay has taken help of multitude of theories in order to understand the merit of the statement. It has been found that the concept of creativity is pretty much relative in nature and personal creative context might not be used to assess marketing side of creativity in commercial advertisement. It has been also found that marketers should decide creative appeal of the advertisement as per knowledge, cultural difference, product requirement, and geo-demographic variance of customers in order to remain relevant and influence customers to make purchasing decision. In conclusion, it can be said that the essay has found validity and relevance of Ogilvy’s (1988) assumption in context to juxtaposition of creativity and ability drive sales revenue by advertisements in modern business world. Reference List An, D. and Kim, S., 2007. Relating Hofstede’s masculinity dimension to gender role portrayals in advertising: A cross-cultural comparison of web advertisements. International Marketing Review, 24(2), pp. 181-207. Ashe, S., 2012. Audi debuts Super Bowl ad on Facebook. 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Zimmerman, A. and Dahlberg, J., 2008. The sexual objectification of women in advertising: A contemporary cultural perspective. Journal of Advertising Research, 48, pp. 71-9. Read More