Three ingredients of creativity in advertising:

A characteristic of the creative personality is an ability to appeal to consumers, and to catch their attention. This is the conventional belief that most advertising people, both creative side and account side, are suppose to know. Nevertheless it is not as easy as to say to execute real advertising plan since continuous conflicts exist between the advertising executives responsible for sales effectiveness and the creative people viewing the effectiveness as the outcome of creativity. There is no clear distinction between creativity and effectiveness. Some creative commercials are effective, some effective ads are creative, other ads are neither creative nor effective.

Those difficulties existing in almost all advertising agencies suggests a series of questions: "Can, infact, the different language of creativity or effectiveness be joined by a new language that transcends both? How do consumers react to different kinds of advertising exectutions? Do they respond as those in the advertising business believe they will? Or is there another dimension of response that transcends and might include creativity and effectiveness as defined by advertising people?" Before answering these question, there is one thing that advertising people should keep in mind: Creativity and effectiveness join in consumer's minds rather than remain separate, and consumer's responses always seem to be the same regardless of the kind advertising executed.

Commonly, successful campaigns result from pipointing an idea, a nuance, an insight, or a nugget of information gleaned from research or sometimes from an intuitive understanding or quickness of human nature. Successful creative strategies are based on such gems.

Unlike other businesses, advertising is ultimately a people's business. Thus creative advertising that sells is the results of three ingredients: people, information, and environment. If you create the appropriate environment for creative people with right information, they can create greate advertising. To make the right environment, ad people must bond together as a 'team' not as individual. Therefore, creative advertising that actually sells is the result of 'team work.' This is one single most important characteristic of creativity in advertising business.

Three key factors in successful advertising

Creativity resulting from 'team work', effectiveness, and communication are the key factors in successful advertising campaigns, and the agencies must strive for balance between them. Among the three factors, 'communication' could be a measurer of the others, and most important factor from the consumers' point of view. For advertising to be useful, communication between the company that originates the advertisement and the potential customer must take place. The real communication is a two-way process requiring active participation by both the sender and the receiver of the message to facilitate the transfer of meaning.

When the real communication occurs, the other two factors, creativity and effectiveness, could be worth it. Otherwise, no matter how great the creativity or effectiveness is it won't be useful at least in advertising business. This suggest several important characteristics of creativity in advertising. Most of all it should be different from the creativity of universial meaning. Here are four unbreakable rules of creativity:

  1. Make it relevant to the customer
  2. It should be promise to the customer
  3. Don't let it stand alone
  4. Always put the product in the center of the commercial

Difficulty of Creative Advertising

One article indicates a notable opinion about advertising strategy and integrity. 43 percent of Americans agree that advertising insults the intelligence of the average consumer. This figure reflects that a large segment of Americans do not trust advertisements. This lack of trust could affect consumers' responses to advertising and the total creative environment.

Of course there is no evidence that the insulting advertisements are results of high creativity. However, when creativity exists without regard for the consumer, the creative ad might insult the consumer more easily than the ad using uncreative ideas. To some extent, creative advertising can be more dangerous than demonstration or testimonial advertisement. Therefore, advertising people must consider the intelligence of the consumer or suffer the consequence of building a less than desirable brand image.

What if creativity goes too far

People say it is easier to create a memorable advertisement than it is to create an advertisement that makes the product memorable. A number of tests have proved that people often remember a commercial, but not a product. This problem is called vampire creativity. It occurs primarily with advertisements that are too entertaining, too original, too involving, or too provocative. The selling story of the advertisement can be so mesmerizing that obscures the product. Using humor or celebrity in advertisement can cause this problem. Under the one condition, vampire creativity could be effective. When people are exposed that kind of commercials not just once but several times, namely higher frequency is promised, the effectiveness could be relatively higher than the commonplace advertisements. However it is crucial that the ads establish a strong link between the message and the product so that remembering the commercial means also remembering the product.