How To Advertise: An Analysis of Contemporary Advertising (part 31)

Creative Strategy and the Creative Process 

(part B)

by

Charles Lamson

How Creativity Enhances Advertising (part i)

Through the powerful use of imagery, copy, and even humor, creativity enhances advertising. But what exactly is creativity or the creativity process? What is the role of creativity in advertising? And where does creativity come from?

What Is Creativity?

To create means to originate, to conceive a thing or idea that did not exist before. Typically, though, creativity involves combining two or more previously unconnected objects or ideas into something new. As Voltaire said, "Originality is nothing but judicious imitation."

Many people think creativity springs directly from human intuition. But as we will see in the next couple of posts, the creative process is actually a step-by-step procedure that can be learned and used to generate original ideas.

The Role of Creativity in Advertising

Advertisers often select an agency specifically for its creative style and its reputation for coming up with original concepts. While creativity is important to advertising's basic mission of informing, persuading, and reminding, it is vital to achieving the boom factor.

Creativity Helps Advertising Inform

Advertising's responsibility to inform is greatly enhanced by creativity. Good creative work makes advertising more vivid, and many researchers believe vividness attracts attention, maintains interest, and stimulates consumers' thinking. A common technique is to use plays on words and verbal or visual metaphors, such as "Like a rock," "Fly the friendly skies," or "You're in good hands." The metaphor describes one concept in terms of another, helping the reader or viewer learn about the product.

Other creative techniques can also improve an ad's ability to inform. Advertising writers and artists must arrange visual and verbal message components according to a genre of social meaning so that readers or viewers can easily interpret the ad using commonly accepted symbols. For example, aesthetic cues such as lighting, pose of the model, setting, and clothing style can instantly signal viewers nonverbally whether a fashion ad reflects a romantic adventure or a sporting event.

Creativity Helps Advertising Persuade

The ancients created legends and myths about gods and heroes---symbolic for humankind's instinctive primordial longings and fears---to affect human behavior and thought. To motivate people to some action or attitude, advertising copywriters have created new myths and heroes, like the Jolly Green Giant and the Energizer Bunny. A creative story or persona can establish a unique identity for the product in the collective mindset, a key factor in helping a product beat the competition.

Creativity also helps position a product on the top rung of consumers' mental ladders. The higher form of expression creates a grander impression. And when such an impression spreads through the market, the product's perceived value also rises.

To be persuasive, an ad's verbal message must be reinforced by the creative use of nonverbal message elements. Artists govern the use of these elements (color, layout, and illustration, for example) to increase vividness. Research suggests that, in print media, information graphics (colorful explanatory charts, tables, and the like) can raise the perception of quality for some readers. Artwork can also stimulate emotions. Color, for example, can often motivate consumers, depending on their cultural background and personal experiences (see Figure 1).

Figure 1 The Psychological Impact of Color

Creativity Helps Advertising Remind

Imagine using the same invitation, without any innovation, to ask people to try your product again and again, year after year. Your invitation would become stale very quickly---worse, it would become tiresome. Only creativity can transform your boring reminders into interest, entertaining advertisements. Nike is proof. Several commercials in a Nike campaign never mentioned the company name or even spelled it on the screen. The ads told stories. And the only on-screen cue identifying the sponsor was the single, elongated "swoosh" logo inscribed on the final scene. A Nike spokesperson said the ads were not risky "given the context that the Nike logo is so well known." We are entertained daily by creative ads---for soft drinks, snacks, and cereals---whose primary mission is simply to remind us to indulge again.

Creativity Puts the "Boom" in Advertising

Successful comedy also has a boom factor---the punchline. It is that precise moment when the joke culminates in a clever play on words or turn of meaning, when the audience suddenly gets it and guffaws its approval.

Good punchlines are the result of taking an everyday situation, looking at it creatively, adding a bit of exaggeration, and then delivering it as a surprise. Great advertising often does the same thing.

In advertising, though, the boom does not always have to be funny. It may come from the gentle emotional tug of a Hallmark Cards commercial, or the breathtaking beauty of a magnificent nature photograph for Timberland shoes. In a business-to-business situation, it may come from the sudden recognition of how a new high-tech product can improve workplace productivity. In short, the boom factor may come from many sources. But it always requires the application of creativity.

*SOURCE: CONTEMPORARY ADVERTISING 11TH ED., 2008, WILLIAM F. ARENS, MICHAEL F. WEIGOLD, CHRISTIAN ARENS, PGS. 377-379*

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