Creative vs hard sell advertising

Chapter 8 Creative Strategy:

Planning and Development

8-2

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

8-3

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

8-4

Advertising Creativity

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

8-5

Determinants of Creativity

Divergence

Originality

Flexibility

Elaboration

Synthesis

Artistic Value

Relevance

Ad-to-consumer

Brand-to-consumer

8-6

Divergence

 Extent to which an ad contains elements that are

novel, different, or unusual

 Achieved through:

 Originality

 Flexibility

 Elaboration

 Synthesis

 Artistic value

2

8-7

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

8-8

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

8-9

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

8-10

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

8-11

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

8-12

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

3

8-13

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

8-14

General Preplanning Input

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

Analyze the trends, developments, and happenings in the marketplace

8-15

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

8-16

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

8-17

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

8-18

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

4

8-19

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

8-20

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

8-21

Storyboards and Animatics

8-22

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

8-23

An Advertising Campaign

Integrated

Interrelated Coordinated

In Different Media

Over a Time Period

Marketing Communication

Activities

Centered on a Theme or Idea

8-24

“ We Must Protect This House. I will.”

BMW

“ Just Do It”

Miller Lite

“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

5

8-25

Criteria for Effective Slogans

8-26

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

8-27

Developing the Major Selling Idea

Using a unique selling proposition

Creating a brand image

Finding the inherent drama

Positioning

Approaches

8-28

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/serv ice and you get this benefit

Benefit

Promise must be strong enough to move mass millions

Potent

8-29

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

8-30

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

6

8-31

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

8-32

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

8-33

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

1

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Chapter 9 Creative Strategy:

Implementation and Evaluation

9-2

Appeals and Execution Style

 Advertising appeal: Approach used to attract

consumers’ attention and/or to influence their

feelings toward the product, service, or cause

 Creative execution style: Manner in which a

particular appeal is turned into an advertising

message presented to the consumer

9-3

Informational/Rational Appeals

 Focus on the consumer’s practical, functional, or

utilitarian need for the product or service

 Emphasize:

 Features of a product or service and/or the benefits

 Reasons for owning or using a particular brand

 Feature appeal - Focuses on the dominant traits of

the product or service

9-4

Types of Informational/Rational

Appeals

Competitive advantage appeal

• Compares to another brand and claims superiority on one or more attributes

Feature appeal

• Focuses on the dominant traits of the product or service

Favorable price appeal

• Makes product price the dominant point of the message

News appeal

• Involves a type of news about the product, service, or company

Product/service popularity appeal

• Stresses the popularity of a product or service by pointing out the:

•Number of consumers who use the brand or those who have switched to it

•Number of experts who recommend the brand

•Leadership position in the market

9-5

Emotional Appeals

 Relate to the customers’ social and psychological

needs for purchasing a product or service

 Create favorable effect on consumers’ evaluations

of a brand

 Generate large profit gains

9-6

Advantages of Emotional-Only

Campaigns

More effective in relation to campaigns using emotional and rational content

Work well during economic downturns

Influence consumers’ interpretations of product usage experience

2

9-7

Transformational Ads

Richer

More Exciting

Warmer

Feelings

Meanings

Images

Beliefs

More Enjoyable

It makes the product use

experience. . .

The ads create . . .

9-8

Transformational Ad

 Associates the experience of using the advertised

brand with a unique set of psychological

characteristics

 Characteristics

 Makes the experience of using the product richer

and/or more enjoyable

 Connect the experience of the advertisement with

the experience of using the brand

9-9

Additional Types of Appeals

Reminder advertising

• Builds brand awareness and/or helps keep the brand name in front of consumers

Teaser advertising

• Builds curiosity, interest, and/or excitement about a product or brand by talking about it but not actually showing it

User-generated content (UGC)

• Created by consumers rather than by the company and/or its agency

9-10

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

9-11

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

9-12

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

3

9-13

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

9-14

Ad Execution Techniques

Humor

• Used to present other advertising appeals

Combinations

• Using various execution techniques to create a message

9-15

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

9-16

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

9-17

Basic Components of Print Advertising

Layout

How Elements Are Blended Into a Finished Ad

Visual Elements Illustrations Such As Drawings or Photos

Body Copy

The Main Text Portion of a Print Ad

Subheads

Smaller Than the Headline, Larger Than the Copy

Headline

Words in the Leading Position of the Ad

9-18

Ad Layout

Headline

Copy

Visual Element

Identifying mark

Subhead

4

9-19

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

9-20

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

9-21

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

9-22

Production Stages for TV

Commercials

Preproduction All work before actual shooting, recording

Production Period of filming, taping, or recording

Postproduction Work after spot is filmed or recorded

9-23

Preproduction Tasks

Select a director

Cost estimation and timing

Choose production company

Bidding

Preproduction meeting

Production timetable

Preproduction

9-24

Production Tasks

Location Timing Talent

Production

5

9-25

Postproduction Tasks

Editing Processing

Sound effects

Audio/video mixing

OpticalsApprovals

Duplicating

Release/ shipping

Postproduction

9-26

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

9-27

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

9-28

Guidelines for Evaluating Creative

Output

 Creative execution must keep from overwhelming

the message

 Advertisement should be truthful and tasteful