5.2. The Production Of The Effective Ads

What makes a good advertising message? What is the process that leads to the creation of advertising messages? What are the different types of creative strategies, and when and why are they used? What is the role of corporate advertising?

The present chapter examines the message aspect of advertising, the matter of what makes effective advertising and the related subject of creative advertising and formulation of advertising strategy. It introduces the concept of the mechanism to bridge the advertiser's creative process with the values that drive consumers' product and brand choices. A following section describes seven creative strategies most often used by advertising practitioners. Finally, the discussion moves away from product- and brand-oriented advertising to corporate image and issue advertising.

It is easy, in one sense, to define effective advertising: Advertising is effective if it accomplishes the advertiser's objectives. This perspective defines effectiveness from the output side, or in terms of what it accomplishes. It is much more difficult to define effective advertising from an input perspective, or in terms of the composition of the advertisement itself.

There are many perspectives regarding what makes for good advertising, and practitioners are broadly split on the issue. This is because practitioners have a variety of experiential bases from which they have drawn their philosophies. For example, a practitioner of direct-mail advertising probably has a different opinion about what constitutes effective advertising than does Shirley Polykoff, the creator of the Miss Clairol campaign, or Steve Hayden, the inspirational source behind the "1984" Macintosh commercial.

Simple definitions of what constitutes good advertising are often little more than misleading attempts to generalize from a base of limited experiences. For example, the following definition offered by one well-known advertising practitioner is meaningless in its generality: "A good advertisement is one which sells the product without drawing attention to itself". This is equivalent to saying that a newscaster is good only if he or she does not attract attention to him- or herself or that a good professor goes unnoticed by his or her students. Of course, this is unrealistic.

Although it is impractical to provide a singular, all-purpose definition of what constitutes effective advertising, it is meaningful to talk about general characteristics. At a minimum, good (or effective) advertising satisfies the following considerations:

1. It must extend from sound marketing strategy. Advertising can be effective only if it is compatible with other elements of an integrated and well-orchestrated marketing communications strategy.

2. Effective advertising must take the consumer's view. Consumers buy product benefits, not attributes. Therefore, advertising must be stated in a way that relates to the consumer's – rather than the marketer's needs, wants, and values.

3. Effective advertising is persuasive. Persuasion usually occurs when there is a benefit for the consumer in addition to the marketer.

4. Advertising must find a unique way to break through the clutter. Advertisers continuously compete with competitors for the consumer's attention. This is no small task considering the massive number of print advertisements, broadcast commercials, and other sources of information available daily to consumers. Indeed, the situation in television advertising has been characterized as "audiovisual wallpaper" – a sarcastic implication that consumers pay just about as much attention to commercials as they do to the detail in their own wallpaper after seeing it for years.

5. Good advertising should never promise more than it can deliver. This point speaks for itself, both in terms of ethics and in terms of smart business sense. Consumers learn quickly when they have been deceived and will resent the advertiser.

6. Good advertising prevents the creative idea from overwhelming the strategy. The purpose of advertising is to persuade and influence; the purpose is not to be cute for cutes’ sake or humorous for humor's sake. The ineffective use of humor results in people remembering the humor but forgetting the selling message.

Effective advertising is usually creative. That is, it differentiates itself from the mass of mediocre advertisements; it is somehow different and out of the ordinary. Advertising that is the same as most other advertising is unable to break through the competitive clutter and fails to grab the consumer's attention.

It is easier to give examples of creative advertising than to exactly define it. Many advertising practitioners would consider the following four examples to be effective, creative advertising:

• The pink bunny campaign for Energizer batteries. This is the campaign where a pink drum-beating bunny is shown in a variety of situations all of which portray the bunny's endurance as exceeding the other commercial protagonists'. This ongoing campaign has employed a variety of executions of the same underlying theme: Energizer batteries, like the drum-beating bunny that concretizes the argument, are still going, and going, and going...

• The Sega! Sega! campaign for Sega Genesis. Not many years ago Sega was on the verge of going belly-up. But a brilliant ad campaign initiated in 1992 has dramatically reversed the pecking order in the 16-bit video game category. This campaign has positioned Sega as the "cool" brand for teenagers. In one well-known execution, a nerdish youngster is taunted by bullying classmates until he buys a new Genesis system. Thereafter, it is he who bosses the bullies around. This commercial ends, as do all others, with the signature scream, Sega! Sega! In the year following the debut of this campaign. Genesis game sales soared 196 percent, and Sega's market share increased to 60 percent of a $6 billion video game market.

• Since 1988, the Little Caesar's pizza chain has been recognized for its campaign with the toga-clad "Pizza, Pizza" man. In 1994 Little Caesar's advertising was judged by one testing system as the second-best television campaign of 1994. This appealingly zany campaign captures and holds the viewer's attention and provides Little Caesar's with a unique image vis-a-vis its more laid-back competitors.

• Consider, finally, the advertising for Bud Light. This brand of beer in 1992 commanded a 6.9 percent share of market compared to category leader Miller Lite, which had a 9.1 percent share. These shares may seem small, but every share point in the $45 billion domestic beer category amounts to sales of $450 million! But by 1994 Bud Light had surpassed Miller Lite as the leading brand and had increased its market share to 8.6 percent. Much of this rapid growth is attributable to Bud Light's effective advertising. Some readers may remember the Spuds MacKenzie campaign: Lasting from 1986 to 1989, it always presented a hip dog in the company of scantily clad women who fawned over Spuds (and who appealed to the young males Budweiser was aimed at attracting). After several years of advertising neglect. Bud Light again enjoyed the fruits of clever advertising when it developed a campaign to show the great lengths to which consumers would go to get Bud Light. Executions in this campaign included

1) a "Ladies Night" commercial in which four burly guys dress in drag to get the ladies' discount on Bud Light;

2) a con artist ("Yes I am") who claims he is someone else so he can avail himself of free Bud Light; and

3) a pathetic character ("I love you, man!") who ingratiates himself to others to get their BudLight.

Most readers probably vividly remember some or even all of these commercials. They appealed to you because they offered solid reasons for wanting to watch them, and they made their selling points in an entertaining, creative fashion.

But what is creativity? Unfortunately, there are no simple answers to this elusive aspect of advertising. It is beyond the purpose of this text to attempt a thorough explanation of the creative process. Let the following three accounts suffice. First, Jack Smith, vice chairman and creative director of the Leo Burnett advertising agency in Chicago, describes creativity as "a sensitivity" to human nature and the ability to communicate it. The best creative advertising comes from an understanding of what people are thinking and feeling". John O'Toole, former president of the American Association of Advertising Agencies, describes advertising creativity as "a new combination of familiar elements that forces involvement and memorability". Perhaps jazz musician Charlie Mingus said it best: "Creativity is more than just being different. Anybody can play weird, that's easy. What's hard is to be simple as Bach. Making the simple complicated is commonplace, making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity".

In sum, effective, creative advertising must make a relatively lasting impact on consumers. This means getting past the clutter from other advertisements, activating attention, and giving consumers something to remember about the advertised product. In other words, advertising must make an impression. Based on the above perspectives on creativity, this means developing ads that are empathetic (i.e., that understand what people are thinking and feeling), that are involving and memorable, and that are "awesomely simple" The following Focus on Marketing Communications describes a brilliant creative advertising campaign for Absolut Vodka.