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Copyright © 2015 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.

Chapter 8 Creative Strategy:

Planning and Development

8-2

Learning Objectives

To discuss what is meant by advertising creativity

and examine the role of creative strategy in

advertising

To consider the process that guides the creation of

advertising messages and the research inputs into

the stages of the creative process

8-3

Learning Objectives

To examine creative strategy development and the

roles of various client and agency personnel

involved in it

To examine various approaches used for

determining major selling ideas that form the basis

of an advertising campaign

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Creative Strategy and Tactics

• Determines what the advertising message will say or communicate

Creative strategy

• Determine how the message strategy will be executed

Creative tactics

8-5

Different Perspectives on Advertising

Creativity

Managers’ perspective

• Advertising is creative only if it sells the product

• Ads are promotional tools used to communicate favorable impressions to the marketplace

Creative people’s perspective

• Creativity of an ad is in its artistic value and originality

• Ads are communication vehicles for promoting their own aesthetic viewpoints and personal career objectives

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Advertising Creativity

Ability to generate fresh, unique, and appropriate ideas that can be used as solutions to communication problems

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Determinants of Creativity

Divergence

Originality

Flexibility

Elaboration

Synthesis

Artistic Value

Relevance

Ad-to-consumer

Brand-to-consumer

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Divergence

Extent to which an ad contains elements that are

novel, different, or unusual

Achieved through:

Originality

Flexibility

Elaboration

Synthesis

Artistic value

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Relevance

Degree to which the elements of an ad are

meaningful, useful, or valuable to the consumer

Achieved through:

Ad-to-consumer relevance - Ad contains execution

elements that are meaningful to consumers

Brand-to-consumer relevance - Advertised brand of

a product or service is of personal interest to

consumers

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8-10

D’Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles’s

Universal Advertising Standards

Does the advertising position the product simply, with unmistakable clarity?

Does the advertising bolt the brand to a clinching benefit?

Does the advertising contain a Power Idea?

Does the advertising design in brand personality?

Is the advertising unexpected?

Is the advertising single-minded?

Does the advertising reward the prospect?

Is the advertising visually arresting?

Does the advertising exhibit painstaking craftsmanship?

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Planning Creative Strategy

Creative challenge

Every marketing situation is different and each

campaign or advertisement requires a different

creative approach

Creative risks

Essential for creating breakthrough advertisements

that get noticed

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Creative versus Hard-sell Advertising

Rationalists

• Advertising must sell the product or service

Poets

• Advertising must build an emotional bond between consumers and brands or companies

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Young’s Model of the Creative Process

• Gathering raw material and data, and immersing oneself in the problem

Immersion

• Analyzing the information

Digestion

• Letting the subconscious do the work

Incubation

• Birth of an idea

Illumination

• Studying the idea and reshaping it for practical usefulness

Reality or verification

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Wallas’ Model of the Creative Process

• Gathering background information needed to solve the problem through research and study

Preparation

• Letting ideas to develop

Incubation

• Finding the solution

Illumination

• Refining the idea and analyzing whether it is an appropriate solution

Verification

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Account Planning

Conducting research and gathering relevant

information about a client’s:

Product/service and brand

Consumers in the target audience

Account planners

Provide decision makers with information required

to make an intelligent decision

Responsible for research conducted during the

creative strategy development process

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Background Research

Fact-finding techniques

Read everything related to the product or market

Ask everyone involved with the product for

information

Listen to what people are talking, particularly the

client

Use the product or service and become familiar with

it

Learn about the client’s business

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General Preplanning Input

Gather and organize information on the product, market, and competition

Analyze the trends, developments, and happenings in the marketplace

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Product- or Service-Specific

Preplanning Input

Gathering information through studies conducted by the client on:

• Product or service

• Target audience

Problem detection

• Asking consumers familiar with a product to list all the aspects they do not like, provides:

• Input for product improvements or new product development

• Ideas regarding which features to emphasize

• Guidelines for positioning brands

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Product- or Service-Specific

Preplanning Input

Psychographic studies

• Construct detailed lifestyle profiles of consumers

Branding research

• Helps gain better insight into consumers and develop more effective campaigns

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Qualitative Research Input

Provides valuable insight at the early stages of the

creative process

Focus groups: Consumers from the target market

are led through a discussion regarding a particular

topic

Give a better idea of:

Who the target audience is

What the audience is like

Who the creatives need to write, design, or direct to

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Qualitative Research Input

Criticisms

Testing can weaken a creative execution

Strong personalities can wield undue influence

Participants may not admit or even recognize their

behavior patterns and motivations

Ethnographic research: Observing consumers in

their natural environment

Expensive to conduct and more difficult to

administer

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Input Verification and Revision

•Evaluate ideas

•Reject the inappropriate

•Refine the remaining

•Give ideas final expression

Objective

•Directed focus groups

•Message communication studies

•Portfolio tests

•Viewer reaction profiles

Techniques

8-23

Verification and Revision

Techniques used

Directed focus groups

Message communication studies

Portfolio tests and evaluation measures

Storyboard: Series of drawings that present a

proposed commercial’s visual layout

Animatic: Videotape of a storyboard along with an

audio soundtrack

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Storyboards and Animatics

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Advertising Campaign

Set of interrelated and coordinated marketing communications activities that center on a single theme or idea

• Appear in different media across a specified time period

Campaign theme

• Central message communicated in all the advertising and promotional activities

• Expressed through a slogan or tagline

Slogan

• Summation line that briefly expresses the company or brand’s positioning and the message it is trying to deliver to the target audience

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An Advertising Campaign

Integrated

Interrelated Coordinated

In Different Media

Over a Time Period

Marketing Communication

Activities

Centered on a Theme or Idea

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“We Must Protect This House. I will.”

BMW

“ Just Do It”

MillerLite

“Red Bull Gives

You Wings”

Red BullUnder ArmourNike

Advertising Campaign Themes

The central message that will be communicated

in all of the various IMC activities

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Criteria for Effective Slogans

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Figure 8.3 - Creative Brief Outline

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Figure 8.4 - Model of Marketing Information Flow

from the Marketing Manager to the Creative Staff

Source: John Sutherland, Lisa Duke, and Avery Abernethy, “A Model of Marketing Information Flow,” Journal of Advertising 33, no. 4 (Winter 2004), p.

42. Copyright © 2004 by American Academy of Advertising. Reprinted with permission of M. E. Sharpe, Inc. All rights reserved. Not for reproduction.

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Major Selling Idea

Strongest singular thing a company can say about

its product or service

Has the broadest and most meaningful appeal to the

target audience

Important in business-to-business advertising

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Developing the Major Selling Idea

Using a unique selling proposition

Creating a brand image

Finding the inherent drama

Positioning

Approaches

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The Unique Selling Proposition

(USP)

Must be unique to this brand or claim; rivals can't or don't offer it

Unique

Buy this product/service and you get this benefit

Benefit

Promise must be strong enough to move mass millions

Potent

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Unique Selling Proposition

Characteristics

Each advertisement must make a proposition to the

consumer

Proposition must be unique in brand or in claim

Proposition must be strong enough to move the mass

millions

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Creating a Brand Image

Image advertising: Strategy used to develop a

strong, memorable identity for a brand

To be successful:

Associate the brand with symbols or artifacts that

have cultural meaning

Use visual appeals that convey psychosocial

associations and feelings

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Inherent Drama

Characteristic of a product that makes the

consumer purchase it

Advertising should:

Be based on a foundation of consumer benefits

Emphasis on the dramatic element in expressing

those benefits

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Positioning

Establishes the product or service in a particular

place in the consumer’s mind

Done on the basis of a distinctive attributes

Basis of a firm’s creative strategy when it has

multiple brands competing in the same market

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Contemporary Approaches to the Big

Idea

Big ideas must:

Be adaptable - Used across a variety of media

Be able to connect - Engage consumers and enter

into a dialogue with them