1. The Creative Side and Message Strategy Advertising Principles
and Practices
The Creative Side
and Message Strategy

2. Part Four: Effective Advertising Messages
Examines breakthrough advertising, and how creatives are developing messages people want to watch and read.
Advertising creatives must be innovative and use ideational thinking and processes, in spite of constraints and political pressures from clients.

3. Questions We’ll Answer
How do we explain the function and most important parts of a creative brief?
What are some key creative strategy approaches?
Can creative thinking be defined, and how does it lead to a Big Idea?
What characteristics do creative people have in common, and what is their typical creative process?

4. A “Whole Different Animal”
Frontier’s “Flip to Mexico” campaign advertised the route in a fun and attention-getting way.
Used 30 TV spots, fake news stories, staged protests, podcasts, blogs, a Flip anthem, and a Flipmobile in Denver.
Bookings rose 56% and unaided awareness doubled after the campaign ran. \
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5. The Two Sides of Advertising
Media and message strategy work together to create effective advertising.
Creative activities work in parallel with the media strategy.
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6. The Art and Science of Advertising
The advertisement translates the logic of planning decisions into a creative idea that is original, attention getting, and memorable.
Ads must persuade people to take action and make a relevant connection with the audience be presenting a selling idea in an unexpected way.
Principle:
Effective advertising is the product of both science (persuasion) and art (creativity).

7. The Role of Creativity in Advertising
Advertising creativity is a product of teamwork between copywriters, art directors, and even broadcast directors work together to generate concept, word, and picture ideas.
In advertising, creativity if both a job description and a goal.
Creativity is a special form of problem solving.

8. Message Planning
The creative strategy phase brings together the art and science of advertising.
Ad ideas must be creative (original, different, novel, unexpected) and strategic (right for the product and target; meets advertising objectives.
Creative strategy/message strategy
What the ad says
Execution
How it is said

9. Creative Brief
Spells out the creative strategy and key execution details
Prepared by the account planner to summarize the basic marketing and advertising strategy
Provides direction to the creative team to develop a creative concept

10. Key Points in a Creative Brief
Problem that can be solved by communication.
Target audience and key insights into their attitudes and behavior.
Brand position and other branding decisions, such as personality and image.
Communication objectives that specify the desired response to the message by the target audience.
Proposition or selling idea that will motivate the target to respond.
Media considerations about where and when the message should be delivered
Creative direction that provides suggestions on how to stimulate the desired consumer response. These aren’t creative ideas but may touch on such execution or stylistic direction as the ad’s tone of voice.

11. The Road Crew Campaign
Social marketing campaign to get young men in Wisconsin small towns who drink and drive to use a ride service.
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12. The Road Crew Creative Brief
Why are we advertising at all? To create awareness for an evening alternative ride service.
What is the advertising trying to do? Make the new ride service appealing to men in order to reduce the number of alcohol-related crashes.
What are their current attitudes and perceptions? “My car is here right now. Why wait? There are few options available anyway. I want to keep the fun going all night long.”
What is the main promise we need to communicate? It’s more fun when you don’t have to worry about driving.
What is the key moment that we tie to? “Bam! The fun stops when I need to think about getting to the next bar or getting home.”
What tone of voice should we use? The brand character is rugged, cool, and genuine. We need to be a “straight shooter” buddy on the barstool next to the target. They do not want to be preached to or told what to do. We need to communicate in a language they can relate to. (Words like “program” may cause him to tune out.”)

13. Message Objectives Based on Facets Model
See/hear—create attention, awareness, interest, recognition
Feel—touch emotions and create feelings
Think/learn—deliver information, aid understanding, create recall
Believe—change attitudes, create conviction and preference
Connect—establish brand identity and associations, transform a product into a brand with distinctive personality and image
Act—stimulate trial, purchase, repurchase or some other form of action.

14. Goal and Objectives of Road Crew Campaign
Goal—reduce alcohol related crashes by 5%
Objectives
Create awareness of the ride service program and positive attitudes toward it
Establish a cost-efficient level of rides in the first year of operations, which involved fund-raising, soliciting volunteers, and other community support
Address the gap between awareness (don’t drink and drive), attitudes (risky, scary, potentially dangerous), and behavior
Encourage a behavior change consistent with new attitudes and awareness (get

15. Targeting Target decisions are very important to message strategy.
Target audience for Road Crew Campaign
21- to 34-year old single men with a high-school education and a blue-collar jobs
They are responsible for most alcohol-related crashes; most likely to kill or be killed
Consumer insight
Tended to worry about driving home drunk and this worry took the edge off an otherwise delightful evening

16. Aflac’s agency reveals how they came up with the duck as an icon.
Branding
Brand positions and brand images are built through message strategies and brought to life through advertising executions.
Advertising creates brand salience.
The brand is visible, has a presence in the marketplace, consumers are aware of it, and the brand is important to its target market,
Brand icons reinforce lend personality, emotion, and stories to their brands.
Burger King’s “creepy” BK King
GEICO Gecko
Frontier’s animals
Video Snippet
Aflac’s agency reveals how they came up with the duck as an icon.

17. Frontier’s “Flip” Campaign
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18. Message Strategies
Based on objectives, the goals are translated into strategies
A creative strategy is an approach that makes the most sense given the brand’s marketing situation and the target audience’s needs and interests.

19. Creative Strategy Approaches
Head and Heart
Head: uses more rational, cognitive (thinking) objectives
Heart: uses more emotional, affective (feeling) objectives
Hard Sell and Soft Sell
Hard sell: uses an informational message that touches the mind and creates a response
Soft sell: uses emotional appeals or images to create a response based on attitudes, moods, and feelings

20. Creative Strategy Approaches
Frazer’s Six Creative Strategies
Six creative strategies that address various types of advertising situations; identify common approaches to advertising strategy.
Taylor’s Six-Segment Strategy Wheel
Divides strategies into the Transmission view (“head” strategies and the Ritual view (“heart” strategies).
Each view is divided into three segments: Rational, Acute Need, and Routine on the Transmission side; and Ego, Social, and Sensory on the Ritual side.

21. Table 12.1 Frazer’s Six Creative Strategies
Strategy Description Uses
Preemptive Uses a common attribute or benefit Used for categories with little
but brand gets there first–forces differentiation or new product
competition into me-too positions. categories.
Unique Selling Uses a distinct difference in Used for categories with high
Proposition attributes that creates a meaningful levels of technological consumer benefit. improvement and innovations.
Brand Image Uses a claim of superiority Used with homogeneous low-
distinction based on extrinsic factors tech goods with little such as psychological differences in differentiation.
the minds of consumers.
Positioning Establishes a place in the consumer’s Used by new entries or small mind relative to the competition. brands that want to challenge
the market leader.
Resonance Uses situations, lifestyles, and Used in highly competitive, emotions with which the target undifferentiated product audience can identify. categories.
Affective/ Uses an emotional, sometimes even Used where competitors are
Anomalous ambiguous message, to break playing it straight and
through indifference. informative.

22. Table 12.3 Taylor’s Six-Segment Strategy Wheel
The wheel divides message strategy into two general views—the Transmission view and the Ritual view. These are roughly equivalent to our “head” and “heart” strategies.

23. Strategic Formats and Formulas
Lectures
A series of instructions given verbally
Speaker presents evidence to persuade the audience
Lectures are inexpensive, compact, and efficient
A “talking head” delivers a lecture about a product
Dramas
Funny or serious stories about how the world works
Characters speak to each other and audience infers lessons

24. Strategic Formats and Formulas
Selling Strategies
A selling premise uses a rational (head) approach that states the logic behind the sales offer.
An appeal uses an emotional (heart) approach to make the product attractive or interesting.
A feature or attribute has a practical effect on customers.
A claim is a product-based strategy based on how will the product will perform.
Support is the proof or substantiation needed to make a claim believable.

25. Strategic Formats and Formulas
Rational Customer-focused Strategies
Benefit—what the product does for the user; benefit
Promise—what benefit the user will get in the future
Reason—why you should buy this “because”
Unique selling proposition—a benefit unique to the product and important to the user

26. Strategic Formats and Formulas
Message Formulas
Straightforward
Demonstration
Comparison
Problem solution /problem avoidance
Humor
Slice of life
Spokesperson
Teasers

27. Strategic Formats and Formulas
Matching Messages to Objectives
Get attention
Create interest
Resonate
Create believability
Are remembered
Slogans
Taglines
Key visual
Principle:
To get attention, ad ad must have stopping power, which comes from originality, relevance or intrusiveness—an idea that is novel or surprising.

28. Strategic Formats and Formulas
Matching Messages to Objectives (cont.)
Touch emotions
Inform
Teach
Persuade
Principle:
When advertising gives consumers permission to believe in a product, it establishes the platform for conviction.
Create brand association
Drive action
Principle:
Not only does advertising have to stop (get attention) and pull (create interest), it also has to stick (in memory).

29. Tangible and Intangible Features
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30. What is a Creative Concept?
It’s an idea—a thought or concept formed by mentally combining pieces and fragments into something meaningful.
Concepting—the process of coming up with a new advertising idea.
James Webb Young defines an idea as a new or unexpected combination of thoughts.

31. Advertising Big Ideas
The point of focus for communicating the message.
A theme or central concept (creative concept).
The “Road Crew” name helped define the campaign’s big idea.
The “Beats driving” slogan supported the Big Idea and communicated a benefit.

32. The ROI of Creativity
According to DDB agency, an effective ad is relevant (means something to target audience), original (novel, fresh, unexpected, unusual), and has impact (makes an impression)
Principle:
An idea can be creative for you if you have never thought of it before, but to be truly creative it has to be one that no one else has thought of before.

33. The Creative Leap
Divergent, right-brain thinking explores possibilities rather than using rational thinking
“Thinking outside the box”
Taking creative risks
Principle:
To get a creative idea, you must leap beyond the mundane language of the strategy statement and see the problem in a novel and unexpected way.

34. Dialing Up Your Creativity
Characteristics of creative people
Assertive, self-sufficient, persistent, self-disciplined.
High tolerance for ambiguity and powerful egos; risk takers who are internally driven.
Don’t care much about group standards and opinions; typically have inborn skepticism and strong curiosity.
Key characteristics of advertising creatives
Problem solving
The ability to visualize
Openness to new experiences
Conceptual thinking
Principle:
Emphasize concepts. Worry about execution later.

35. The Creative Process: How to Get an Idea
It is hard work; usually involves a series of steps:
Immersion—read, research, learn about problem
Ideation—look at the problem from every angle; generate as many ideas as possible
Brainfog—you may hit a wall and want to quit
Incubation—let your subconscious work on it
Illumination—the idea often comes when you’re relaxed and doing something else
Evaluation—Does it work? Is it on strategy?

36. Brainstorming
Get a group of 6–10 people together to come up with ideas.
People and ideas play off of each other and stimulate more ideas than one could alone.
Stay positive, don’t judge, don’t criticize.
No distractions or interruptions.
Write everything down.
Only after all ideas have been expressed and every avenue exhausted, you start picking through and evaluating the ideas.

37. How to Create Original Ideas
What If?
An unexpected association
free association
Dramatize the obvious
Catchy phrasing
An unexpected twist
A play on words
Analogy and metaphor
Familiar and strange
A twisted cliché
Twist the obvious
To prevent unoriginal ideas, avoid “the look-alike” and the tasteless.

38. Little Guys and Big Ideas
Small, boutique agencies may be more open to risk.
Sources like Zimmerman Advertising sell stock advertising online.
A professional licensing firm, Thought Equity, recycles unused advertisements.
User-generated “citizen ads” like those found on YouTube or contributed through contests can form an entire campaign.

39. Thought Equity Stock Video
Sells royalty-free stock video footage for use in television commercials, client pitch presentations, and corporate videos.
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40. Managing Creative Strategy
Extension: an Idea with Legs
A strong “Big Idea” be an umbrella for a variety of executions
Adaptation: taking an Idea Global
Standardizing the campaign across multiple markets only works if the strategy and objectives are the same
Creative executions may be customized due to cultural differences
Evaluation: the Go/No Go Decision
Is it on strategy?
Structural analysis:
The power of the narrative
The strength of the product claim
How well the two are integrated
Copy Testing
A formal method to evaluate effectiveness
Vampire creativity—so creative the product may not be remembered

41. Discussion Questions

42. Discussion Question 1
Find an ad in this book that you think is the most creative.
What is its Big Idea? How and why does it work?
Analyze the ad in terms of the ROI formula for evaluating effective, creative advertising.
Re-create the creative brief that would summarize the ad’s message strategy.

43. Discussion Question 2
Divide the class into groups of 6 to 10 people and discuss this problem: Your community wants to encourage people to get rid of their cars and use alternative forms of transportation. Brainstorm for 15 minutes as a group, accumulating every possible idea. How many ideas are generated? Here’s how to run this brainstorming group?
Appoint one member to be the recorder who lists ideas as they are mentioned.
Appoint another member to be the moderator and suggest techniques described in this chapter as idea starters.
Identify a cheerleader to keep the discussion positive and find gentle ways to discourage critical or negative comments.

44. Discussion Question 2 (cont.)
Identify a cheerleader to keep the discussion positive and find gentle ways to discourage critical or negative comments.
Work for 15 minutes throwing out as many different creative concepts as your team can come up with, regardless of how crazy or dumb they might initially sound.
Go back through the list as a group and put an asterisk next to the 5 to10 ideas that seem to have the most promise
When all the groups reconvene in class, each recorder should list the groups best ideas on the blackboard. As a class, pick out the three ideas that seem to have the most potential. Analyze the experience of participating in a brainstorming group and compare the experiences of the different teams.

45. Discussion Question 3
Three-minute debate: Here’s the topic: Is entertainment a useful objective for an advertising campaign? This is an issue that advertising experts debate because, although entertainment may get and keep attention, some experts believe the focus should be on selling products not entertaining consumers. Build a case for your side—either pro or con on the effectiveness of entertaining ads.
In class, organize into small teams with pairs of teams taking one side or the other. Set up a series of three-minute debates with each side having half that time to argue its position.
Every team of debaters has to present new points not covered in the previous teams’ presentations until there are not more arguments left to present. Then the class votes on the most compelling argument.

46. Copyright © 2009 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Printed in the United States of America.
Copyright © 2009 Pearson Education, Inc.  
Publishing as Prentice Hall