Creative Strategy: Planning and Development

Advertising creativity is the ability to generate fresh, unique, and appropriate ideas that can be used as solutions to communications problems. It is important for ads to be appropriate and effective. A creative idea must be relevant to the target market. A lot of advertisement agencies understand how important is to develop creative and different ad campaign that communicates relevant information.

The Creative Challenge

The job of the creative team is challenging because each marketing challenge is different and every advertisement campaign may require disparate creative approaches. Numerous guidelines have been suggested for creating effective advertising, yet there is not one great way of doing it. As copywriter Hank Sneiden notes in his book Advertising Pure and Simple: ‘Rules lead to dull stereotyped advertising, and they stifle creativity, inspiration, initiative, and progress. The only hard and fast rule that I know of in advertising is that there are no rules. No formulas. No right way. Given the same problem, a dozen creative talents would solve it a dozen different ways. If there were a sure-fire formula for successful advertising, everyone would use it. Then there’d be no need for creative people. We would simply program robots to create our ads and commercials and they’d sell loads of product—to other robots’

The Creative Process

Young’s model of the creative process contains five steps:

1.       Immersion: Gathering raw material and information through background research and immersing yourself in the problem.

2.       Digestion: Taking the information, working it over, and wrestling with it in the mind.

3.       Incubation:  Putting the problems out of your conscious mind and turning the information over to the subconscious to do the work.

4.       Illumination: The birth of an idea—the “Eureka! I have it!” phenomenon.

5.       Reality or verification:  Studying the idea to see if it still looks good or solves the problem; then shaping the idea to practical usefulness.

Young’s process of creativity is similar to a four-step approach outlined much earlier by English sociologist Graham Wallas:

1.       Preparation:  Gathering background information needed to solve the problem through research and study

2.       Incubation:  Getting away and letting ideas develop

3.       Illumination:  Seeing the light or solution

4.       Verification: Refining and polishing the idea and seeing if it is an appropriate solution.

Account Planning

Most of the agencies now use account planning, which is a process that involves conducting research and gathering all relevant information about a client’s product or service, brand, and consumers in the target audience.

Inputs to the Creative Process: Preparation, Incubation, Illumination

Background Research

The creative specialist should understand and research about about general trends, conditions, and developments in the marketplace, as well as on specific advertising approaches or techniques that might be effective.

Product/Service-Specific Research

This is done using studies conducted on the product or service, the target audience, or a combination of the two. Quantitative and qualitative consumer research such as attitude studies, market structure and positioning studies such as perceptual mapping and lifestyle research, focus group interviews, and demographic and psychographic profiles of users of a particular product, service, or brand are examples of product-specific preplanning input.

Qualitative Research Input

Various quantitative research studies and qualitative research techniques such as in-depth interviews or focus groups can provide the creative team with valuable insight at the early stages of the creative process. Focus groups are a valuable research tool whereby consumers from the target market are led through a discussion. They tell us why and how consumers use a product or service, what is important to them in choosing a particular brand, what they like and don’t like about various products or services.

The California Milk Processor Board has used both quantitative and qualitative research in developing the popular “Got milk?” advertising campaign. Focus groups and survey research studies were conducted to help understand companion foods that are consumed with milk and how consumers react to the effect of “milk deprivation,” which is the key idea behind the humorous ads in the campaign

Research helped in the development of the popular “got milk?” campaign

Inputs to the Creative Process: Verification, Revision

This evaluates ideas generated during the illumination stage, rejects inappropriate ones, refines and polishes those that remain, and gives them final expression. Techniques used at this stage include directed focus groups to evaluate creative concepts, ideas, or themes.

Creative Strategy Development

Advertising Campaigns

Most ads are part of a series of messages that make up advertising campaign, which is a set of interrelated and coordinated marketing communication activities that center on a single theme. Determining the unifying theme around which the campaign will be built is an important part of the creative process, as it sets the tone for the individual ads and other forms of marketing communications that will be used. A campaign theme should be a strong idea, as it is the central message that will be communicated in all the advertising and other promotional activities

Copy Platform

The written copy platform specifies the basic elements of the creative strategy. Different agencies may call this document a creative platform or work plan, creative brief, creative blueprint, or creative contract.

Basic outline could be:

1.             Basic problem or issue the advertising must address

2.             Advertising and communications objectives

3.             Target audience

4.             Major selling idea or key benefits to communicate

5.             Creative strategy statement (campaign theme, appeal, and execution technique to be used)

6.             Supporting information and requirements

The Search for the Major Selling Idea

One of the most important parts of creative strategy is determining the major selling idea of the ad campaign. As A. Jerome Jeweler states in his book Creative Strategy in Advertising: The major selling idea should emerge as the strongest singular thing you can say about your product or service. This should be the claim with the broadest and most meaningful appeal to your target audience. Once you determine this message, be certain you can live with it; be sure it stands strong enough to remain the central issue in every ad and commercial in the campaign.

The major selling idea behind this Polaroid commercial is that the picture is only the beginning of the story

Some of the best-known approaches that can guide the creative team’s search for a major selling idea are:

1.             Using a unique selling proposition

The concept of the unique selling proposition (USP) was developed by Rosser Reeves.Reeves noted three characteristics of unique selling propositions:

•        Each advertisement must make a proposition to the consumer. Not just words, not just product puffery, not just show-window advertising. Each advertisement must say to each reader: “Buy this product and you will get this benefit.”
•        The proposition must be one that the competition either cannot or does not offer. It must be unique either in the brand or in the claim.
•         The proposition must be strong enough to move the mass millions, that is, pull over new customers to your brand

2.             Creating a brand image

In many product and service categories, competing brands are so similar that it is very difficult to find a unique attribute to use as the major selling idea. The creative strategy used to sell these products is based on the development of a strong, memorable identity for the brand through image advertising

3.             Finding the inherent drama

Another approach is finding the inherent drama or characteristic of the product that makes the consumer purchase it. The inherent drama approach expresses the advertising philosophy of Leo Burnett, founder of the Leo Burnett agency in Chicago. Burnett said inherent-drama “is often hard to find but it is always there, and once found it is the most interesting and believable of all advertising appeals.”

4.             Positioning

The basic idea is that advertising is used to establish or “position” the product or service in a particular place in the consumer’s mind. Positioning is done for companies as well as for brands.