The Creative Side

and Message Strategy

 Effective Advertising
•
Messages
Examines breakthrough advertising, and how
creative's are developing messages people want to
watch and read.
• Advertising creatives must be innovative and use
ideational thinking and processes, in spite of
constraints and political pressures from clients.
 Learning
• Outcomes…..
How do we explain the function and
most important parts of a creative
brief?
• What are some key creative
strategy approaches?
• Can creative thinking be defined, and
how does it lead to a Big Idea?
• What characteristics do creative people
have in common, and what is their
typical creative process?
 A “Whole Different
Animal”
• Frontier’s “Flip to Mexico”
campaign advertised the route
in a fun and attention-getting
way.
• Used 30 TV spots, fake news
stories, staged protests,
podcasts, blogs, a Flip anthem,
and a Flipmobile in Denver.
• Bookings rose 56% and
unaided awareness
doubled after the
campaign ran.
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The Two Sides
of
Advertising
• Media and message
strategy work
together to create
effective advertising.
• Creative activities
work in parallel with
the media strategy.

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The Art and Science of
Advertising
• The advertisement translates the logic of
planning decisions into a creative idea that is
original, attention getting, and memorable.
• Ads must persuade people to take action and make
a relevant connection with the audience be
presenting a selling idea in an unexpected way.

Principle:
Effective advertising is the product of both
science (persuasion) and art (creativity).
The Role of Creativity in Advertising
• Advertising creativity is a product
of teamwork between copywriters, art
directors, and even broadcast
directors work together to generate
concept, word, and picture ideas.
• Creativity is a special form of
problem solving.
 Message
• The creative Planning
strategy phase brings together the art
and science of advertising.
– Ad ideas must be creative (original, different, novel,
unexpected) and strategic (right for the product and
target; meets advertising objectives.
• Creative strategy/message strategy
– What the ad says
• Execution
– How it is said
 Creative Brief
• Spells out the creative strategy and key execution
details
• Prepared by the account planner to summarize
the basic marketing and advertising strategy
• Provides direction to the creative team to develop
a creative concept

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 Key Points in a Creative Brief
• Problem that can be solved by communication.
• Target audience and key insights into their attitudes and behavior.
• Brand position and other branding decisions, such as personality
and image.
• Communication objectives that specify the desired response to the
message by the target audience.
• Proposition or selling idea that will motivate the target to respond.
• Media considerations about where and when the message should
be delivered
• Creative direction that provides suggestions on how to stimulate
the desired consumer response. These aren’t creative ideas but
may touch on such execution or stylistic direction as the ad’s tone
of voice.

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The Road Crew Campaign

Social marketing
campaign to get
young men in
Wisconsin small
towns who drink
and drive to use a
ride service.

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 The Road Crew Creative Brief
• Why are we advertising at all? To create awareness for an evening
alternative ride service.
• What is the advertising trying to do? Make the new ride service
appealing to men in order to reduce the number of alcohol-related
crashes.
• What are their current attitudes and perceptions? “My car is here right
now. Why wait? There are few options available anyway. I want to keep
the fun going all night long.”
• What is the main promise we need to communicate? It’s more fun
when you don’t have to worry about driving.
• What is the key moment that we tie to? “Bam! The fun stops when
I need to think about getting to the next bar or getting home.”
• What tone of voice should we use? The brand character is rugged, cool,
and genuine. We need to be a “straight shooter” buddy on the barstool
next to the target. They do not want to be preached to or told what to do.
We need to communicate in a language they can relate to. (Words like
“program” may cause him to tune out.”)
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 Goal and Objectives
of Road Crew
• Campaign
Goal—reduce alcohol related crashes by 5%
• Objectives
– Create awareness of the ride service program and
positive attitudes toward it
– Establish a cost-efficient level of rides in the first year of
operations, which involved fund-raising, soliciting
volunteers, and other community support
– Address the gap between awareness (don’t drink and
drive), attitudes (risky, scary, potentially dangerous), and
behavior
– Encourage a behavior change consistent with new
attitudes and awareness

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 Targeting
• Target decisions are very important to message
strategy.
• Target audience for Road Crew Campaign
– 21- to 34-year old single men with a high-school
education and a blue-collar jobs
– They are responsible for most alcohol-related crashes;
most likely to kill or be killed
• Consumer insight
– Tended to worry about driving home drunk and this
worry
took the edge off an otherwise delightful evening

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Creative Strategy Approaches
• Head and Heart
– Head: uses more rational, cognitive (thinking) objectives
– Heart: uses more emotional, affective (feeling) objectives
• Hard Sell and Soft Sell
– Hard sell: uses an informational message that touches
the mind and creates a response
– Soft sell: uses emotional appeals or images to create a
response based on attitudes, moods, and feelings

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Creative Strategy Approaches
• Frazer’s Six Creative Strategies
– Six creative strategies that address various types of
advertising situations; identify common approaches to
advertising strategy.
• Taylor’s Six-Segment Strategy Wheel
– Divides strategies into the Transmission view
(“head”
strategies and the Ritual view (“heart” strategies).
– Each view is divided into three segments: Rational,
Acute Need, and Routine on the Transmission side; and
Ego, Social, and Sensory on the Ritual side.

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Table 12.1 Frazer’s Six Creative Strategies
Strategy Description
Preemptive Uses a common attribute or
benefit but brand gets there first–
forces competition into me-too
positions.
Unique Selling Uses a distinct difference in
Proposition attributes that creates a meaningful
consumer benefit.
Brand Image Uses a claim of superiority
distinction based on extrinsic
factors such as psychological
differences in the minds of
consumers.
Positioning Establishes a place in the
consumer’s mind relative to the
competition.
Resonance Uses situations, lifestyles, and
emotions with which the
target audience can identify.
Affective/ Uses an emotional, sometimes even
Anomalous ambiguous message, to break
through indifference.
Uses
Used for categories with little
differentiation or new
product categories.
Used for categories with high
levels of technological
improvement and innovations.
Used with homogeneous
low- tech goods with little
differentiation.
Used by new entries or small
brands that want to
challenge the market leader.
Used in highly competitive,
undifferentiated product
categories.
Used where competitors are
playing it straight and
informative.
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Table 12.3 Taylor’s Six-Segment Strategy Wheel

The wheel divides

message strategy into two
general views—the
Transmission view and
the Ritual view. These are
roughly equivalent to
our “head” and “heart”
strategies.

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 What is a Creative Concept?
• It’s an idea—a thought or
concept formed by
mentally combining pieces
and fragments into
something meaningful.
• Concepting—the process
of coming up with a new
advertising idea.
• James Webb Young
defines an idea as a new
or unexpected combination
of thoughts.

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 Advertising Big Ideas
• The point of focus for
communicating the
message.
• A theme or central concept
(creative concept).
• The “Road Crew”
name helped define
the campaign’s big
idea.
• The “Beats driving” slogan
supported the Big Idea and
communicated a benefit.

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 The ROI of Creativity
• According to DDB
agency, an effective ad
is relevant (means
something to target
audience), original
(novel, fresh,
unexpected,
unusual), and has
impact (makes an
impression)
Principle:
An idea can be creative for you if you have never thought of
it before, but to be truly creative it has to be one that no one
else has thought of before.

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 The Creative Leap
• Divergent, right-brain thinking
explores possibilities rather
than using rational thinking
• “Thinking outside the box”
• Taking creative risks

Principle:
To get a creative idea, you must leap beyond the
mundane language of the strategy statement and
see the problem in a novel and unexpected way.
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 Dialing Up Your Creativity
• Characteristics of creative people
– Assertive, self-sufficient, persistent, self-disciplined.
– High tolerance for ambiguity and powerful egos; risk takers who
are internally driven.
– Don’t care much about group standards and opinions;
typically
have inborn skepticism and strong curiosity.
• Key characteristics of advertising creatives
– Problem solving
– The ability to visualize
– Openness to new experiences
– Conceptual thinking
Principle:
Emphasize concepts. Worry about execution later.

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 The Creative
Process: How to
Get an Idea
It is hard work; usually involves a series of steps:
1. Immersion—read, research, learn about problem
2. Ideation—look at the problem from every angle;
generate as many ideas as possible
3. Brainfog—you may hit a wall and want to quit
4. Incubation—let your subconscious work on it
5. Illumination—the idea often comes when
you’re relaxed
and doing something else
6. Evaluation—Does it work? Is it on strategy?

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 Brainstorming
• Get a group of 6–10 people together to come up with
ideas.
• People and ideas play off of each other and stimulate
more ideas than one could alone.
• Stay positive, don’t judge, don’t criticize.
• No distractions or interruptions.
• Write everything down.
• Only after all ideas have been expressed and every
avenue exhausted, you start picking through and
evaluating the ideas.

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 How to Create Original Ideas
• What If?
• An unexpected association
– free association
• Dramatize the obvious
• Catchy phrasing
• An unexpected twist
• A play on words
• Analogy and metaphor
• Familiar and strange
• A twisted cliché
• Twist the obvious
• To prevent unoriginal ideas, avoid
“the look-alike” and the
tasteless.
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 Managing Creative Strategy
• Extension: an Idea with Legs
– A strong “Big Idea” be an umbrella for a variety of executions
• Adaptation: taking an Idea Global
– Standardizing the campaign across multiple markets only works if the
strategy and objectives are the same
– Creative executions may be customized due to cultural differences
• Evaluation: the Go/No Go Decision
– Is it on strategy?
– Structural analysis:
• The power of the narrative
• The strength of the product claim
• How well the two are integrated
• Copy Testing
– A formal method to evaluate effectiveness
– Vampire creativity—so creative the product may not be
remembered
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Discussion Questions
 Discussion Question
•
1
Find an ad that you think is the most
creative.
• What is its Big Idea? How and why does
it work?
• Analyze the ad in terms of the ROI formula
for evaluating effective, creative
advertising.
• Re-create the creative brief that
would summarize the ad’s message
strategy.
 Discussion Question 2
• Divide the class into groups of 6 to 10 people and
discuss this problem: Your community wants to
encourage people to get rid of their cars and use
alternative forms of transportation. Brainstorm for 15
minutes as a group, accumulating every possible idea.
How many ideas are generated? Here’s how to run
this brainstorming group?
– Appoint one member to be the recorder who lists ideas as
they
are mentioned.
– Appoint another member to be the moderator and suggest
techniques described in this chapter as idea starters.
– Identify a cheerleader to keep the discussion positive and
find
gentle ways to discourage critical or negative12-30
comments.
 Discussion Question 2 (cont.)
– Identify a cheerleader to keep the discussion positive and find
gentle ways to discourage critical or negative comments.
– Work for 15 minutes throwing out as many different creative
concepts as your team can come up with, regardless of how
crazy or dumb they might initially sound.
– Go back through the list as a group and put an asterisk next to
the 5 to10 ideas that seem to have the most promise
• When all the groups reconvene in class, each recorder
should list the groups best ideas on the blackboard. As a
class, pick out the three ideas that seem to have the most
potential. Analyze the experience of participating in a
brainstorming group and compare the experiences of the
different teams.

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 Discussion Question 3
• Three-minute debate: Here’s the topic: Is entertainment
a useful objective for an advertising campaign? This is an
issue that advertising experts debate because, although
entertainment may get and keep attention, some experts
believe the focus should be on selling products not
entertaining consumers. Build a case for your side—either
pro or con on the effectiveness of entertaining ads.
• In class, organize into small teams with pairs of teams
taking one side or the other. Set up a series of three-minute
debates with each side having half that time to argue its
position.
• Every team of debaters has to present new points not
covered in the previous teams’ presentations until there
are not more arguments left to present. Then the class
votes on the most compelling argument.

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