This post is part of my bachelor paper ‘The Evolving Role of Creativity in Brand Management’. You can read the introduction other posts and the table of contents here.

3.2.1 Creativity as a feature of advertising

There are and always have been different views in academia and practice about what is effective in advertising and why. The question if or how creative advertising is effective has always been at the heart of this debate, which is quickly reviewed in the next paragraphs.

The relationship between creativity and efficiency and effectiveness goes back all the way to the end of the 19^th century, when modern advertising was still new and under pressure of civic society, which didn’t want to see cities or other things considered important being devalued by the presence of advertising. According to Zurstiege (2005, S. 88ff), the emerging advertising industry was involved in two distinctive struggles to justify its existence. These debates might be summarized under the terms “efficient creativity” and “creative efficiency”. “Efficient creativity” means that advertising started to make use of artists and applied art in general to increase the social legitimation, while also for the first time considering that more artistically designed posters would in turn receive more attention. “Creative efficiency” on the other hand points to the fact that advertising started to apply the emerging science of psychology to prove its effectiveness and efficiency and therefore justifies and sells itself as a reliable profession (Zurstiege 2007, S. 26ff, 2005, S. 98ff).

Under this premises of applying art and psychology, advertising grew as an industry and became a force in modern business and emerging consumer culture in the 1950s. The then still ongoing debate between the creative and the scientifically oriented approach to advertising may be illustrated by the relationship between Rosser Reeves – who coined the Unique Selling Proposition – and David Ogilvy, who is usually associated with what is now known as ‘brand image’ advertising (Haygood 2007, S.105).

“It was the battle between Reeves’ “hard sell” versus Ogilvy’s “soft sell.” The value and worth of these two approaches was at the center of an industry-wide debate in the late 1950s and 1960s about advertising creativity and advertising effectiveness.” (Haygood 2007, S. 105)

Ogilvy was, together with Leo Burnett and William Bernbach, one of the protagonists of the creative revolution of American advertising in the late 50s and beginning 60s (Fox 1997, S. 218–271 qtd. in Zurstiege 2005, p. 192)). According to Holt (2002, S. 82), in this time of cultural and social turmoil, advertising’s then modern techniques as developed by Rosser Reeves and Ernest Dichter were publicly scrutinized by bestselling books such as The Hidden Persuaders and a wave of anti-corporatism was swapping over the United States. The advertising produced by the likes of Ogilvy, Burnett and Bernbach – humble, often self ironic, more respectful of the consumers – is seen as a creative response to this. Advertising adopted, according to the historian Stephen Fox (1997, S. 218) “[f]rom bigness and mergers back to smallness and meiosis; from ancillary services to the creative product; from science and research to art, inspiration and intuition.” While it would be wrong to conclude that all advertising produced from the 60s onwards was part of this creative revolution, advertising – at least in the US – changed for good during this decade, as it transformed from being rather out of touch with society (O’Guinn, Allen & Semenik 2008, S. 90) to being self-conscious about its role as an icon of consumer culture (O’Guinn, Allen & Semenik 2008, S. 94).

In addition the creative revolution in the US, the 50s and 60s saw another development taking place at the cross-section of creativity and effectiveness that changed the face of the advertising industry and led to the emerging practice of account planning in the UK. In the 50s, advertising agencies had a far bigger role in the planning and rolling out of marketing, marketing research and marketing thinking in general than nowadays (Baskin & Pickton 2003, S. 417). Then, in the 1960s, clients built up their own marketing departments more systematically and this led, together with a proliferation of a diverse range of specialised agencies to a decline of agencies’ involvement in the strategy process.

Embedded in this ongoing debate about creativity and effectiveness, clients’ restructuring of their marketing organisations, the output produced and the ways of working in general, Stephen King of JWT and Stanley Pollitt of BMB came up with a new approach to creating advertising and in effect to managing and creating brands. In 1964, King merged the media and marketing departments and implemented a more systematic and rigorous process that focused on consumer research and uncovering insights. Pollitt, in 1968, felt that account management had too much leeway in formulating their creative briefs, so he put a trained researcher on his side to be the voice of the consumer (Baskin & Pickton 2003, S. 417). While one focused more on the process and the other more on a person, both were driven by the goal to create “effective, creative advertising” (ibid.) by providing insights into the consumer and market context.

“At the core of the task is the need to understand customers and consumers and the brand to unearth a key insight for the communications solution (create relevance) and in doing so, in a crowded media environment, cut through the cynicism to connect with the audience (create distinctiveness) in an effective and efficient way.” (Baskin & Pickton 2003, S. 416)

In describing this core of planning, Baskin and Pickton again name relevance and distinctiveness in order to create effectiveness and efficiency. While planning has changed over the years of media and agency type proliferation, this core task has kept the same. Therefore, one might say that the tension between creativity, effectiveness and efficiency in brand management has been projected onto the role and function of account planning.

Looming behind this discussion about the role of creativity in the execution of advertising, then, is still the question about how one believes advertising works and which role it is supposed to play (Vakratsas & Ambler 1999; Heath & Feldwick 2008). One hundred years after the professionalisation of advertising began, there are probably more different practitioner views and research traditions than ever, as was also shown by the cursory review of brand management paradigms and brand definitions. The following paragraphs shall therefore outline the major schools of thoughts and findings about the effect and role of creativity in advertising.

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Related posts:

1. 1. The Evolving Role of Creativity in Brand Management
2. “The Evolving Role of Creativity in Brand Management” aka my Bachelor Paper and Planning Barcamp topic
3. 2.3 Brand Management Paradigms
4. 2.4 Challenges For Brand Management

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