Advertising and creativity: when it works and when it fails

Ask an advertising professional what makes an ad successful and the answer will probably remind you of the mantra of Stephan Vogel, chief creative officer of Ogilvy & Mather Germany: “Nothing is more effective than creativity in advertising. It sticks in the memory and its effect lasts. You reach your goal while cutting media spend, and you build a community of fans… faster.”

But do creative ads really do a better job of persuading consumers to buy than those that simply list a product’s features or strengths?

Many laboratory experiments have shown that creative messages hold attention better and foster positive attitudes towards the products advertised, but there is no conclusive proof that they influence buyer behaviour. Surprisingly, there are also very few empirical studies linking creative advertising to actual sales revenue.

Since product managers and brand managers — not to mention the agencies pitching to them — never systematically measure the effectiveness of their ads, creative advertising is more of a roll of the dice.

What is creativity?

To define criteria for assessing creativity, we turned to research in social psychology and educational psychology, which defines creativity as non-conformist thinking — the ability to solve a problem with unconventional, out-of-the-box solutions. American psychologist Ellis Paul Torrance scored answers to his test on several criteria: fluency, originality, elaboration (a concept borrowed from Joy Paul Guilford, another American psychologist), abstraction and what he called resistance to premature closure.

Fluency refers to the number of relevant ideas produced in response to a question such as “list every possible use of a paper clip”. Originality measures how unconventional or unique the answers are. Elaboration refers to the amount of detail in an answer. Abstraction measures how far the power of a slogan or a word goes beyond simply naming something concrete. Resistance to premature closure measures a person’s ability to take different factors into account when processing information.

The criteria of a creative ad

Originality. An original ad contains rare or surprising elements that break with convention. The emphasis is on the uniqueness of its ideas or features. An ad can depart from the norm or from reality through unique visuals or messages. Many campaigns are anything but original: one archetypal commercial praises a detergent by showing a housewife delighted with laundry that washes whiter than white; another promotes a perfume with flawless models; yet another shows cars driving through stunning landscapes without a hint of traffic. One campaign we studied, however, excelled in originality: it surprisingly depicted the inside of a drinks vending machine. It was Coca-Cola’s “Happiness Factory”.

Flexibility. A highly flexible ad subtly links the product to its many possible uses.

Elaboration. Many ads contain unexpected details or turn simple ideas into more complex, even intricate, situations.

Synthesis. This dimension of creativity consists in combining or connecting objects or ideas that are normally unrelated.

Artistic value. Highly artistic ads contain aesthetically appealing verbal, visual or sound elements: they are produced to high standards, their dialogue is witty, their colour palette original, or their music easy to remember.

Consumers often see ads almost as works of art rather than as mere sales pitches.