Advertising Creativity & Effectiveness: How is Creative Advertising Effective?

Running head: ADVERTISING CREATIVITY AND EFFECTIVENESS

Advertising Creativity and Effectiveness: How is Creative Advertising Effective?

Amanda M. Koontz West Texas A&M University

Author Note: Amanda M. Koontz, is an undergraduate Mass Communication major with an emphasis in Advertising/Public Relations at the Department of Communication, West Texas A&M University.

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Running head: ADVERTISING CREATIVITY AND EFFECTIVENESS

Abstract

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Creativity in advertising is analyzed through its effectiveness within consumer response and interaction in this review of literature. Various creative marketing and advertising research in advertising, advertising research, marketing, and consumer research journal publications have been compiled to determine intended and unintended effects of consumer perceived creative advertising. This paper examines creativity, advertising creativity, if creativity enhances awareness of advertisements and brands, and if creativity is effective in advertising. The synthesis of previous research attempts to identify how creative advertising is effective. Analysis of advertising creativity can assist marketers, advertisers, and advertisement producers in determining to incorporate creative campaign strategies within their advertising plans. Retention, recall, divergence, and effectiveness of creativity are discussed. Further research in determining relationships between creativity levels of advertisements and consumer attention spans would fulfill the lack of information needed to determine creativity levels needed to have significant positive effects on consumers.

Keywords: advertising, advertising creativity, awareness, creativity, divergence, effectiveness, recall, retention

Running head: ADVERTISING CREATIVITY AND EFFECTIVENESS

Advertising Creativity and Effectiveness:

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How is Creative Advertising Effective?

Introduction This literature review attempts to develop a working research document analyzing previous advertising creative research conducted by advertising and advertising research journal publications to gain a rounded understanding on the importance of advertising creativity. For advertising/public relations scholars and potential adverting professionals, it is important to recognize the foundations, thought process, and effectiveness of creativity within advertising campaigns and developments.

This review of literature summarizes and relates previous research, identifying a functioning definition of creativity in the field of advertising, how creativity applies to advertising, potential results of creative advertising, and overall analysis of creative advertising effectiveness. Through this documentation and examination of advertising creativity and effectiveness, advertising researchers, marketers, advertisers and advertisement producers can conclude determining factors when developing advertising campaigns that involve creativity and creative thought process. Advertising campaign developers, such as advertising agencies and firms, can use previous research to support creative foundations and reasoning with clients by demonstrating why involving creativity in advertising can be effective in creating successful campaigns.

Research Question: How is Creative Advertising Effective?

This literature review identifies effects and results of incorporating creativity within advertising. In order to outline the research question, how is creative advertising effective, it is

Running head: ADVERTISING CREATIVITY AND EFFECTIVENESS 4

necessary to identify how creativity as a term has been defined in previous creative advertising investigations. Including characterization of creative advertising allows for distinction between perceived creative and non-creative advertising. Determining and providing foundations if creativity enhances brand and advertisement awareness leads to conclude how creative advertising can be effective.

Literature Review What is Creativity?

Creativity can be defined in numerous ways, but related to advertising; creativity “must be both original and appropriate to its goal,” (Sasser, Koslow, & Kilgour, 2013, p. 298).

Originality refers to the divergence factor or novelty of an idea or action that separates from the social norm. Divergence can be separated into two views: Divergent creativity contains fundamentals of novelty, aesthetic depiction, originality, and difference (Till & Baak, 2005; Kover, Goldberg, & James 1995); Divergence importance must find the advertisement to be relevant, connected, and meaningful to the consumer and the agency creating the advertisement (Lehnert, Till, & Ospina, 2014). Consumers perceive divergence when something moves beyond anticipated presentation and assumption, expressing flexibility and imagination within a creative object or idea.

Divergence within advertising can be broken down into fourteen variant categories that include: fluency, flexibility, originality, elaboration, resistance to premature closure, unusual perspective, synthesis, humor, richness and colorfulness of imagery, fantasy, expression of emotions, empathic perspective, provocative questions, and future orientations (Torrance, 1987).

Running head: ADVERTISING CREATIVITY AND EFFECTIVENESS

What is Creative Advertising?

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Creative advertisements incorporate designs that are intended to continually surprise and enhance awareness of the promotion (Goldenberg & Mazursky, 2008), leading the consumer to increase opportunity, perceiving and accessing information regarding the content and message communicated by the advertiser.

A creative advertisement is one that conveys and combines any of Torrance’s fourteen variants of divergence to produce unique, highly original, communication (Lehnert, Till, & Ospina, 2014). According to interviews conducted with industry agency practitioners, Nyilasy and Reid (2009) found that agencies define creative advertising as “‘something separate,’ reflecting ‘fresh thinking,’ ‘unexpected,’ ‘little bit different,’ and ‘attention-getting,’” (p. 86-91).

Creative advertising media medium choices can include non-traditional media placement, participation in surrounding environments, and incorporate surprise or popout to effect consumer attention through unexpected perception.

Highly creative advertising is often found to be risky from a client perspective in that it is difficult to develop by agency creative personnel, contains steep competitive challenges, uncertain development timelines, and need for open-mindedness (Sasser, Koslow, & Kilgour, 2013). While creativity is important in advertising to increase effectiveness and performance, communication and trust are just as important from marketing responsibilities and purposes (Davies and Prince, 2005; Henke, 1995; Waller, 2004).

Creativity can cause difficulties when clients desire highly creative advertising. Work may be rejected because it is viewed too risky in that highly creative advertising must be original that is different, novel and new, changing brands’ long-established presentation and reception in the market (Sasser, Koslow, & Kilgour, 2013). It is common for clients working with advertising

Running head: ADVERTISING CREATIVITY AND EFFECTIVENESS

and marketing agencies to request highly creative advertising, but they will not purchase it

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because such creative campaigns are viewed risky and unpredictable. Another issue seen when clients request creative work is that clients may be open to exploring creative work with an agency, but the agency may not produce the highly creative work the client was expecting to receive (Sasser, Koslow, & Kilgour, 2013).

Does Creativity Enhance Awareness of an Advertisement or Brand?

Creative advertising increases advertisement and brand credibility and attitudes. Previous advertising creativity and consumer response research indicates that creativity influences perceptions, attitudes and recall of advertisements positively (Baack, 2008; Dahlen, 2008; Smith, 2008; Southgate, 2010; Sheinin, 2011). Advertising effectiveness increases through creative media choices where the medium conveys the intended message. One example is online viral videos where creatively produced videos positively impact the likelihood of sharing videos in viral form (Lehnert, 2013). A creative and refreshing advertisement can induce a desire to view and advertisement repeatedly, additionally increasing exposure to a persuasive message with preconceived positive attitudes. Creativity does not ensure effectiveness, but previous research suggests that creativity has an effect on consumer attention (Baack, 2008). Consumers may be effected by the advertisement in some way, but must put attention and process creative elements of the advertisement to receive the intended message.

Advertising novelty “increases consumer attention and processing of advertisements and brands, ultimately enhancing recognition and recall” (Lehnert, 2013, p. 214). Imagery produced by creative situations enhances image encoding by creating a distinctive memory trace for simpler recall (MacInnis & Price 1987). Repetition of highly creative advertisements increases

Running head: ADVERTISING CREATIVITY AND EFFECTIVENESS 7

recall of the actual advertisement and brand identity through increased opportunities to process the advertisement (Krugman, 1972) and encoding of the advertisement in memory leads to increased enhancement of unconscious and conscious awareness of brand familiarity. Creative advertisements increase consumer curiosity and open-mindedness, leading to positive advertising affects correlating with increased desires to view the advertisement again with a purpose (Heath, 2009).

How Effective is Creativity in Advertising?

Developing creative advertisements is important in maintaining and identifying consumer responses to the impact of creativity (Lehnert, 2013). Marketers incorporate creativity in advertisements, attempting to “break through clutter and leave a lasting impression in the consumer’s mind” (Lehnert, 2013, p. 211). Advertisers must recognize the value and potential of campaigns increased when deciding between highly creative and less creative advertising campaigns. Consumers are constantly bombarded and overwhelmed with advertisements and incorporation of creativity that can stem a divergence effect that leads to an advertisement standing out from other advertisements (Lehnert, 2013). Ultimately, the goal in creative advertising is reaching target consumer markets with a message that stands out from the advertising playing field with an eventual association to the marketed brand being recalled after the consumer exposure. Creative advertisements stimulate emotional responses (Heath, 2009; Yang & Smith 2009; Cornelis, 2012), product evaluations and purchase intentions of consumers through strategic placement and use (Dahlen, 2005; Smith, 2007; Dahlen, 2008). Marketers must understand proper placement and management of creativity to generate these effects. In theory, the perfect advertisement “would significantly impact consumers’ attitudes and be perfectly

Running head: ADVERTISING CREATIVITY AND EFFECTIVENESS 8

recalled after the first exposure, continue to impact consumers with each additional exposure,” never reaching advertising fatigue,” (Lehnert, 2013, p. 212). In the real world, advertisements are not perfect and their effectiveness leads to decline and creates consumer fatigue. Marketers attempt to reduce repeated exposure that could create consumer fatigue, hoping to decrease advertising costs within promotional budgets.

Lehnert and Till (2013) suggest that repetition of advertising can lead to two phenomena: wearin and wearout (p. 212).

Pechmann and Stewart (1988) define these terms: An ad is said to have worn in at a particular level of repetition if, when consumer are exposed to it, it has a significant positive effect on them. An ad that has worn in is said to have worn out at a particular level of repetition if, when consumers are exposed to it, it no longer as any significant effect on them or has a significant effect. (p. 286).

Consumers may stop paying attention to the over-exposed advertisement or become irritated with the repeated message (Brucks, 1985), leaving a potential negative attitude towards advertising response and impact (Lehnert, 2014). Creative advertisements that are more novel, provide surprise and awareness, and “reduce wearout [that acquires] continued attention because viewers may become aware of previously unnoticed ad elements” with each additional exposure (Lehnert, 2014). Creativity directs attention and enhances motivation of the consumer to process and make meaning of the advertisement and advertising messages (Pieters, 2002). The composition and structure of creative advertisements induces consumers to increase the likelihood to attend to the advertising visual, audio, and other sensory elements.

Creativity in advertisements leads to a positive view on consumer creativity with positive perceptions of advertisements and promoted products or brands (Rosengren, Dahlen, & Modig,

Running head: ADVERTISING CREATIVITY AND EFFECTIVENESS

2013). Previous research conducted concludes advertising creativity produces a positive and

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beneficial effect (Rosengren, Dahlen, & Modig, 2013). Creativity can benefit the advertiser, advertisement producer, and consumer. Consumers find creative advertising signals more effort and expense than average and efficient advertising signals that signal less effort and expense on brand attitudes, brand interest, and brand word-of-mouth intentions (Modig, Dahlen & Colliander, 2014). Advertisements that were perceived to be efficient and lower in quality were responded to in a negative impact by consumers that contrasted to advertisements were perceived to be more expensive to produce. Perceived expensively produced advertising is received by consumers to contain high creative effort that leads to positive brand attitudes and interests (Modig, Dahlen & Colliander, 2014). Frequently, marketers will reduce advertising budgets to reduce waste and increase efficiently. Designated time for creative development declines with a client shift to risk-averse and efficient campaigns. Decreasing creative development leads to an advertisement that is viewed less creatively by the consumer (Modig, Dahlen & Colliander, 2014).

Conclusion This comprehensive review of literature has outlined definitions of creativity, advertising creativity, how creativity enhances awareness of an advertisement or brand through retention and recall, and the effectiveness of advertising. Creativity helps advertisements be distinctive from other advertisements through divergence in emotional responses and strategic placement.

Creative advertisements are able to wearin within consumer markets, and avoid wearout through a novel and surprising presentation. Campaigns involving higher levels of creativity and

Running head: ADVERTISING CREATIVITY AND EFFECTIVENESS 10

uniqueness are interpreted by consumers to be expensive to produce, leading to positive brand attitudes and interests about the subject advertised.

Further research involving the relationship between creativity levels of advertisements and consumer attention spans on print, TV, radio, digital, and non-traditional advertising mediums would fulfill the lack of information needed to determine creativity levels needed to have a significant positive effect on consumers. Continuing research in creativity effectiveness in digital formats is lacking as an industry shift towards digitally focused advertising currently occurs.

Concluding, creativity within advertising is effective and leads to a positive consumer response with increased attention levels towards creative advertisements as it reduces consumer fatigue. An advertisement that is creative is only effective if its creative elements are strategically communicated and placed in the appropriately identified medium targeted to appropriate audiences.

Running head: ADVERTISING CREATIVITY AND EFFECTIVENESS

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