Creativity - Great Advertising's Forgotten Component

Ah, the good old days of advertising

Years ago advertising giants like Claude Hopkins wrote books entitled My Life in Advertising and Scientific Advertising. David Ogilvy made pronouncements on the correct placement of coupons in direct response advertising.

Everyone proceeded as if advertising was more science than art. Media fell victim to the same thought process and concrete rules began to emerge. Reach and frequency were the science of the day. As the world of market research evolved, we began to find improved ways to reach the target audience with our advertising and advanced ways to measure it.

Terms like GRP began to sneak into our vocabulary only to be replaced by the supposedly more significant TRP. We spoke in terms of "points" and built media strategies around the number of times a likely consumer would be exposed to the message. In time, we walked away from points and into the realm of "impressions". It is blasphemy today to ask our media director how many points we expect to have and are quickly corrected that we now measure our reach in terms of impressions.

Is It A Science?

All of these mathematical formulas were based on the assumption that we needed to reach a minimum of 50 percent of our target audience a minimum of three times. The assumption was that if our customer sees a commercial or reads an ad less than three times they will be hesitant to act because top-of-mind awareness will not have been gained. All of these strategies are based on flawed thinking. They assume a science rather than an art. Advertising, at least great advertising is as much inspiration as perspiration. Who can afford these old models?

Well, Pepsi, Coke, Procter & Gamble, Unilever, Budweiser, and General Motors, to name a few. "Share of Voice" still has meaning to these bastions of consumer products. They have the dollars to insist that they have an 80lk reach and a frequency of at least ten. They spend dollars measured in the hundreds of millions, as opposed to the more modest budgets with which the rest of the world operates. How do advertisers compete against such insurmountable dollars?

What Is Most Important

Some would have us believe that being first to the market is most important, that positioning is the key. I wouldn't disagree, at least not in whole. Having a compelling position and a powerful brand is how I earn my bread and butter, but the world is full of exceptions. As a student of the ad industry, I find it prudent to study these exceptions because it is in those very contradictions to conventional wisdom that real knowledge lies.

To my thinking, dollars spent on reach and frequency are a poor substitute for a stunning creative product. Let's face' it, Procter & Gamble would have to make a tremendous blunder in product performance to go wrong with their advertising.

A simple message, highlighting a strong product benefit that is seen over and over again is a first-class way of delivering an urge to buy. Up the media weights if the market share begins to slip. Deliver a new product upgrade or innovation. Nothing sells more than "new and improved," unless you add the word "free."

Enter: BRAND

Procter & Gamble invented the concept of brand, but have not had to rely on the concept to sell. The old school thought that brand was managed by brand managers who kept in close touch with consumer needs and tweaked the marketing strategy via usage and attitude research or the product mix through research and development never look into account the fact that brand is not a product or service.

It is in fact the value the customer brings to the purchase. It belongs to the customer and not the company. It more closely defines who the customer is or hopes to be than any consumer benefit could. It is the customer's answer to the ever-present question of "Who am IT' It is how customers define and redefine themselves through their purchase choices. If you have the luxury of unlimited budgets, then this old model of "safe keeping" will certainly work for you. But, if you value return on the dollar and need to make every cent spent on advertising count, there is another, more prudent way.

The Creative Revolution

We found the beginnings of this phenomenon not with the old giants, but with the young Turks who ignited the creative revolution in the 60s and 70s. Bill Bernbach, Mary Wells and the like. These superstars understood the advertising world outside of science. They passed the torch to Jay Chiat, Cliff Freeman, Lee Clow and others. If advertising was a matter of numbers, why do we remember an Apple Computer Commercial in 1984 that ran once? How did Little Caesar's come to compete with the already well-established Pizza Hut? The answer is creative innovation.

Rules To Create By

A memorable ad is as attributable to the creative execution and strategy as it is to frequency. If advertisers want to make their dollars work hard for them, then we must find a means to make our message unforgettable. You don't find these answers in old school Media Planning guides.

You find them in the minds of creative mavericks. Everyone has an opinion on what constitutes successful advertising. Here's mine: 1 If the competition is doing it. Don't copy them. 2 You never find your solutions in "what worked for them." 3 If you've seen it before, it's been done already. 4 The word creative can best be defined as doing something new. 5 Always ask yourself, "Is it great?" The enemy of great creative is not bad creative - it's good creative. 6 Don't be afraid to spend money on production. If you need to make an impact with limited media dollars, it is important to make sure your production is up to the goal. This is no place to skimp. 7 Execute a strategy and own a position. Don't be afraid of positioning yourself against the competition. 8 Throw out all the rules.

The root of conventional is convention. Judge creative on the basis of the work and not on the old rules concerning negative advertising, humor, or any of the old, tired adages. Challenge your agency to create work that needs only one viewing. Demand that the message be fresh and relevant. Encourage the creative team to take a chance, to look at "risky" and "fresh" ideas. The greatest risk of all is parochial executions that seem safe by convention. Unless you have a few hundred million dollars to spend. Pizza, Pizza anyone? By Tom Dougherty

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