Lessons Learned: Advertising Creative and Your Brand

Creative advertising can win big awards and turn copywriters and art directors into stars. But really great advertising gets to the basics of how human beings are wired and how they work emotionally. To deliver the message and the promise of your brand, the creative has to be big and it has to be linked to your brand. John Hallward's book, Gimme! The Human Nature of Successful Marketing, explores the evolutionary traits of human behavior so that marketers can better leverage these primary human drivers of behavior for greater marketing success.

Here are the lessons on creative in advertising from John's book.

Creative is King. Ensure it is Great.

The creative may be the essential ingredient in any ad campaign.

When it comes to the many elements of an ad campaign, often more than 75% of the success of the campaign hinges on the content and style of the ad itself. Ironically, the media buy represents the majority of a campaign budget, but to earn a positive ROI the `creative' must be excellent. Within the decisions about advertising and media planning, creative is king. Advertisers must only air strong adverts to get their money's worth on their expensive media plans. I cannot over-emphasize the importance of this.

In our Ipsos advertising database, we observe a large range of difference in ad recall at the same level of media exposure (1,000 cumulative TRPs of exposure in North America). Some campaigns have improved recall immensely (+30% point gains in ad recall), while others have allowed historic ad recall to decay (ending up with lower recall than at the start of the campaign: -20% points). This illustrates the importance of good creative in driving success.

When the advert is good, it breaks through quickly and is recalled by consumers. On the other hand, if the creative is weak, it will not likely improve with more media exposure. Unfortunately, we have seen in our database many cases of advertising that has not performed well. Rarely does an ad campaign perform better over time (with more media exposure). Even if some could, would an advertiser want to pursue such expensive high-risk inefficiency? In our ad tracking databases, we observe that advertising builds in C-shaped convex-down curves; there is no wear-in (which would look like an S-shaped curve), and each additional exposure is less efficient than the one before. This is consistent with how we are genetically programmed to react to new stimuli and then start to desensitize to the presence of familiar stimuli.

Advertising's key role in brand perception

I recognize that there is a difference between the advertising being recalled quickly versus the impact on the brand business. Although improving brand attitudes, or stimulating brand trial, or launching a new benefit may take time - and it may never happen, the advertising's creative should be working right from the beginning. The advertising should be breaking through, be well branded, deliver its desired message or content, and be well perceived by consumers.

Owing to the importance of creative, to be an efficient advertiser it is prudent to conduct both ad pre-testing to allow only strong creative on-air, and to do in-market ad tracking at an early stage to ensure that the creative is meeting its expectations. In advertising, we need to know which ads to air, and when to pull them off - like investing in shares on the stock market, one has to know both what to select, and when to unload them. It means knowing (quickly) when to withdraw bad advertising, and knowing when good advertising is wearing out.

Often it is a challenge to cut a new ad early because a lot of work has gone into making the ad, getting senior management approval, and paying for the production of the ad. As well, the media plan is often purchased well in advance and cannot be easily cancelled half-way through the campaign.

In this case, I suggest replacing the poor ad with an older proven, successful advert (a good but worn-out ad is often much better than a weak and newer ad). Alternatively, give the media exposure to some other brand in the company portfolio. It is costly and inefficient to continue airing weak creative. Unfortunately, many marketers feel their careers will be weakened by admitting `creative' shortcomings...and thus the tendency is to not measure, not accept findings, or to ignore the right decisions.

The Creative BIG Idea Must Link to the Brand...or Else!

Successful advertising does not need fantastic, award-winning creative to build business. Great creative is infrequent and rarely sustained year after year. However, the good news is that advertisers can learn to make successful ads. It really starts with understanding how the brain works: We have lazy brains that prefer to work with mental `units.' The brain summarizes big ideas, and dislikes cognitive dissonance. It responds to irregular stimuli, and desensitizes to familiar ones. And since we process much advertising peripherally and indirectly, `simplicity' is a real benefit for internalization and memory recall.

With this in mind, I suggest brand managers ask themselves a few key questions that focus on the principal learning when presented with a new idea for an advert:

What is the creative Big Idea? (A two-sentence description you could give to a stranger)

1. Is this a single, unified, simple Big Idea?
2. Is it strategically focused, and does it build emotional associations (pay-offs)?
3. Does it undeniably involve the brand, with strong brand integration, for brand link?
4. Is it original, different, or novel enough to be irregular?
5. Is it campaign-able (to build or leverage ad properties for future advertising)?

When we talk about the creative being so important, we refer to the content, which includes the tone, style, message, production values, brand strategy, and so on. Among all of these characteristics, the most common failure we see in practice is the poor brand linkage of the ad to the brand.

How often do you recall an ad (particularly on TV, but also print ads, billboards, on the radio, etc.), for which you do not remember the brand being advertised? In our Ipsos ASI databases, overall about half of consumers who can recall a TV ad when described to them (without using the brand name) cannot correctly attribute the advertising to the advertiser. Fortunately, advertisers can learn how to make better-branded advertising once they appreciate the nature of the problem, and accept the need to make the brand an undeniable part of the ad memory. The Big Idea must include the brand as a central characteristic, with an undeniable link to only this one brand (and most definitely not the competition).

Advertising campaigns that use icons, mnemonics, and unique ad properties tend to have better ad success. The belief is that using such tools helps consumers to get the brand name as part of the ad memory. For example, when one sees the white tire character in an advertisement for car tires, there is little doubt that it is for Michelin tires. Campaigns that directly leverage unique aspects of the brand name, the package, logo, or product, tend to perform better for brand linkage. For example, Absolut vodka used creative advertising that leveraged the unique shape of the bottle.

Some advertising icons are undeniably linked to the brand (right from their first use) while others have become indirectly associated with the brand over time. Marketing campaigns that follow a similar consistent approach and work to build, and then leverage a campaign-able ad property have an advantage. This is about "campaign-ability." It is often beneficial to leverage past campaign properties in new ads because it builds on what consumers already know. In turn, it reduces the risk of otherwise trying to re-invent success with each new advert.

What we've learned

There is no formula for creating effective advertising, but there are general patterns and observations that can be leveraged to increase the odds.

These patterns are found in the Ipsos databases, and they are a reflection of how humans are wired. Effective ads are characterized by:

1. Interest value (to catch attention)
2. Relevance (to offer a meaningful reason to burn into our memory and consider the brand)
3. Simplicity of execution (so the brain can effectively file the memory and retrieve it later)
4. Branding properties (to ensure the brand is attributed to the memory unit)

Please do not misunderstand me. I believe great creative is about art, but we can learn (along scientific principles and from databases) about how to make better advertising and increase the odds for success.

Before making their masterpieces, most great artists learned from others, while many others ventured without and failed. The same holds true for advertisers.

About the Author

Advertising research expert John Hallward started his career with Procter & Gamble, and Johnson & Johnson. He then co-founded in 1986 the Canadian firm of Tandemar Research Inc., a leader in advertising research for top advertisers. After Tandemar was acquired by Ipsos in 2000, he went on to become Director of Global Product Development for Ipsos ASI, where he is also a member of the board. Gimme! The Human Nature of Successful Marketing is his first book.

Gimme! The Human Nature of Successful Marketing ISBN 0-470-10029-X US $24.95 / CAN $29.99 / UK 16316.99 Available from booksellers everywhere or online at gimmebook.com and amazon.com