Chapter 5

Creative
Strategy:
Planning and
Development

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

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 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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 Learning Objectives

▪ To analyze various types of appeals that can

be used in the development and
implementation of an advertising message
▪ To analyze the various creative execution
styles that advertisers can use and the
advertising situations where they are most
appropriate

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 Learning Objectives

▪ To analyze various tactical issues involved in

the creation of print advertising and TV
commercials
▪ To consider how clients evaluate the creative
work of their agencies and discuss guidelines
for the evaluation and approval process

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 Content

▪ 5.1 Creative Strategy and Tactics

▪ 5.2 Planning Creative Strategy
▪ 5.3 Creative Strategy Development
▪ 5.4 Creative Tactics
▪ 5.5 Client Evaluation and Approval

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 5.1 Creative Strategy and Tactics

Creative strategy

• Determines what the advertising message

will say or communicate

Creative tactics

• Determine how the message strategy will be

executed
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 Different Perspectives on
Advertising Creativity
Creative people’s
Managers’ perspective
perspective
• Advertising is creative • Creativity of an ad is in
only if it sells the its artistic value and
product originality
• Ads are promotional • Ads are communication
tools used to vehicles for promoting
communicate favorable their own aesthetic
impressions to the viewpoints and
marketplace 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 Relevance

Originality Ad-to-consumer
Flexibility Brand-to-consumer
Elaboration
Synthesis
Artistic Value

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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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 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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 5.2 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 Poets

• Advertising must • Advertising must

sell the product build an
or service emotional bond
between
consumers and
brands or
companies
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 Young’s Model of the Creative
Process
Immersion
• Gathering raw material and data, and immersing oneself in the
problem

Digestion
• Analyzing the information

Incubation
• Letting the subconscious do the work

Illumination
• Birth of an idea

Reality or verification
• Studying the idea and reshaping it for practical usefulness

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 Wallas’ Model of the Creative
Process
Preparation
• Gathering background information needed to solve the
problem through research and study

Incubation
• Letting ideas to develop

Illumination
• Finding the solution

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

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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 the704023
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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
Objective
•Refine the remaining
•Give ideas final expression

•Directed focus groups

•Message communication studies
Techniques
•Portfolio tests
•Viewer reaction profiles

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 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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 5.3 Creative Strategy
Development

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 Marketing Coordinated

Communication
Activities

In Different Centered on a Over a Time

Media Theme or Idea Period

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 Advertising Campaign Themes

The central message that will be

communicated
in all of the various IMC activities

Miller
Nike Under
BMW
Armour Red Bull
Lite

“ Just Do It” “ We Must “Red Bull Gives

Protect This You Wings”
House. I will.”

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Criteria for Effective Slogans

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 Figure 5.1 - Creative Brief Outline

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 Figure 5.2 - 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 Creating a brand

selling proposition image

Approaches

Finding the inherent

Positioning
drama

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 The Unique Selling Proposition
(USP)

Benefit Unique Potent

Buy this Must be Promise

product/serv unique to must be
ice and you this brand or strong
get this claim; rivals enough to
benefit can't or don't move mass
offer it millions

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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

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 5.4 Creative Tactics
Ad Execution Techniques
Straight-sell or factual message
• Relies on a straightforward presentation of information concerning
the product or service
• Used with informational/rational appeals

Scientific/technical evidence
• Advertisers cite technical/scientific information to support their
advertising claims
Demonstration
• Illustrates the key advantages of the product by showing its actual use
• Effective in convincing consumers of a product’s utility, quality, and
benefits

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 Ad Execution Techniques

Comparison
• Shows a brand’s particular advantage over its rivals
• Helps in positioning a new or lesser-known brand with
industry leaders
• Used to execute competitive advantage appeals

Testimonial
• Messages are presented by a person who elaborates on
his or her personal experience with it
• Endorsement - A well-known or respected individual
speaks on behalf of the company or the brand
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 Ad Execution Techniques

Slice of life
• Based on a problem/solution approach
• Used by business-to-business marketers
• Slice-of-death advertising - Focuses on the negative consequences that
result when wrong decisions are made

Animation
• Uses animated scenes in advertisements

Personality symbol
• Developing a central character that can deliver the advertising message
• Aids consumers to identify with a product/service

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 Ad Execution Techniques

Imagery
• Consists of visual elements rather than information
• Encourage buyers to associate the brand with the symbols, characters, or
situation shown in the ad

Dramatization
• Focuses on telling a short story with the product or service as the star
• Steps
• Exposition
• Conflict
• Increase in action, conflict, and suspense
• Climax
• Resolution
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 Ad Execution Techniques

Humor

• Used to present other advertising appeals

Combinations

• Using various execution techniques to create a

message

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 Basic Components of Print
Advertising
▪ Headline: Words in the leading position of the
ad
‒ Types
‒ Direct headlines: Straightforward and informative
‒ Indirect headlines: Are not straightforward about
identifying the product or service or getting to the
point
‒ Subheads: Secondary heads in a print ad
‒ Reinforce the headline and advertising slogan or
theme
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 Basic Components of Print
Advertising

Body copy
• Main text portion of a print ad
• Goal - Communicate the message and hold consumer attention
Visual elements
• Play an important role in determining the effectiveness of the ad
• Goal - Work synergistically with the headline and body copy to
produce an effective message

Layout
• Physical arrangement of the various parts of the ad

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 Basic Components of Print
Advertising
Headline
Words in the Leading Position of the Ad

Subheads
Smaller Than the Headline, Larger Than the Copy

Body Copy
The Main Text Portion of a Print Ad

Visual Elements
Illustrations Such As Drawings or Photos

Layout
How Elements Are Blended Into a Finished Ad

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 Ad Layout
Headline

Visual
Element

Subhead

Copy

Identifying
mark
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 Basic Components of Television
Advertising

Video
• Visual elements that attract viewers’ attention and
communicate an idea, message, and/or image

Audio
• Includes voices, music, and sound effects
• Voiceover: Message is delivered by an announcer who is not
visible
• Needledrop: Music that is prefabricated, multipurpose, and
highly conventional
• Jingles: Catchy songs about a product or service that carry
the advertising theme and a simple message
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 Planning and Production of
TV Commercials
▪ Producing high-quality TV commercials incurs
high costs
▪ Factors contributing to the costs of producing a
TV commercial
‒ Production personnel and equipment
‒ Location fees
‒ Video editing
‒ Sound recording and mixing
‒ Music fees
‒ Talent
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 Planning and Production of
TV Commercials
▪ Developing a script
‒ Script: Written version of a commercial that
provides a detailed description of its video and
audio content
▪ Producing and getting approval for story board
▪ Preparing for production phase

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 Figure 5.3 - The Three Phases of
Production for Commercials

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 Production Stages for TV
Commercials

All work before actual

Preproduction
shooting, recording

Period of filming, taping, or

Production
recording

Work after spot is filmed or

Postproduction recorded

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 Preproduction Tasks

Select a director

Choose
Preproduction
production
meeting
company

Preproduction

Production
Bidding
timetable

Cost estimation
and timing

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 Production Tasks

Production

Location Timing Talent

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 Postproduction Tasks

Editing Processing

Release/ Sound
shipping effects
Postproduction
Audio/video
Duplicating
mixing

Approvals Opticals

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 TV Commercial Production
Costs

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 5.5 Client Evaluation and
Approval

▪ Client-side approvals include:

‒ Advertising or communications manager
‒ Product or brand managers
‒ Marketing director or vice president
‒ Legal department
‒ President or CEO
‒ Board of directors

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 Guidelines for Evaluating
Creative Output

▪ Maintain consistency with the brand’s

‒ Marketing and advertising objectives
‒ Creative strategy and objectives
▪ Creative approach must:
‒ Be appropriate for the target audience
‒ Communicate a clear and convincing message
to the customer
‒ Be appropriate for the media environment in
which it is likely to be seen

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 Guidelines for Evaluating
Creative Output

▪ Creative execution must keep from

overwhelming the message
▪ Advertisement should be truthful and tasteful

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 CASE STUDY

▪ Group activities

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