Directing Advertising Copy Creativity through Benefit Segmentation

While much attention has been paid in the marketing and advertising literature to the more quantitative aspects of advertising such as the setting of advertising budgets, media selection, advertising scheduling and effectiveness measurement, relatively little attention has been paid to the generation of effective advertising copy and messages. This area of advertising decision-making, in many ways the most crucial element of any advertising campaign, is an essentially creative element. It is an area, however, where effective marketing research can guide the creative process more efficiently. This article describes the use of conjoint measurement techniques to conduct benefit segmentation which can, in turn, be used to direct advertising copy thinking. The approach is illustrated with reference to a small-scale study of the United Kingdom king-size cigarette market.     

Internet advertising effectiveness

Online advertising has experienced phenomenal growth since its inception in 1994. This empirical study investigates the impact of seven creative characteristics of banner ads on the effectiveness of online advertising using a multiple regression model. A random sample of 209 banner ads was drawn from a sampling frame of advertisers, provided by an advertising agency specialising in internet advertising for the gaming industry. The findings of this study are broadly consistent with past research into online advertising efficiency, indicating that the creative characteristics of effective banner ads in the online gaming arena include: a larger size, absence of promotional incentives and the presence of information about casino games. In contrast, banner features such as animation, action phrase and presence of company brand or logo were ineffective in generating clickthroughs. Contrary to expectations, long messages on banners were associated with higher click-through rates.     

Advertising strategy and effective advertising: comparing the USA and Australia

A considerable body of research makes cross-cultural comparisons of advertising content and executional factors. Much of this work compares very different cultures. This study compared the strategic elements found in television commercials that have received industry recognition for effectiveness in two similar cultures, the USA and Australia. The study found that effective messages were similar in terms of selling propositions, tone and positive versus negative appeals. Specifically, the messages were similar in terms of their emphasis on product attributes and performance and a heavy reliance on humour. Effective campaigns differed in their creative strategy, rational versus emotional appeals and the presence of a brand-differentiating message. It is suggested that the differences in advertising arose from differences in the marketplace and cultural environment.     

Should sequels differ from original movies in pre-launch advertising schedule? Lessons from consumers' online search activity

Sequels have become a profitable strategy in the U.S. motion picture industry because of their strong name recognition. However, while the established positioning of a sequel may help insulate it from competing firms' advertising messages, its familiarity may cause moviegoers to be more easily satiated with advertising from the sequel. Therefore, this study examines how sequels differ from original concept movies in terms of their ad effectiveness. We focus our analysis on pre-launch periods, given these periods' importance in shaping the financial outcomes of motion pictures. We consider the weekly online search volume of a movie as a measure of consumer interest in it, and thus as an intermediate response to pre-launch advertising. We then develop a model that assumes ad effectiveness can decline, due to copy and repetition wearout, and increase, due to forgetting, over time. We find that copy wearout is greater for original movies, while repetition wearout and forgetting are greater for sequels. These findings suggest that sequels should allocate more in early pre-launch periods and less immediately before release, relative to originals, to maximize pre-launch consumer interest.     

Children and the Changing World of Advertising

Concerns about children's ability to fully comprehend and evaluate advertising messages has stimulated substantial research and heated debate among scholars, business leaders, consumer advocates, and public policy makers for more than three decades. During that time, some very fundamental questions about the fairness of marketing to children have been raised, yet many remain unresolved today. With the emergence of increasingly sophisticated advertising media, promotional offers and creative appeals in recent years, new issues have also developed. This paper provides a basis for further examination of some the key questions in this area, and suggests how children's advertising research can be employed to illuminate them.     

The Risk of Collateral Damage in Advertising Campaigns

It is argued, on the basis of first principles and a case example, that 'leakage' of advertising messages beyond the target audience can generate negative reactions when 'activists' in an accidentally addressed 'meta-audience' exert 'social pressure' on the advertiser's 'micro and macro-audiences', inflicting 'collateral damage' on the advertiser in various ways. Examination of published data from industry sources shows that activists are a small sub-set of the meta-audience, but it is argued that their potential to reduce the long-term advertising effectiveness of some advertising campaigns is an issue for advertising managers and planners. Analysis of hitherto unpublished data yields a profile of one type of activist: those who complained about television advertising between 1996 and 1998. They belong to homogeneous social sub-groups that are geographically and demographically distinct from the general population, not least in conforming to the notorious north-south divide in Britain. It is proposed that this first-ever research-based profile of complainants offers a factual basis on which prudent advertising planners can predict the risk of collateral damage, and plan to minimise it by avoiding pre-disposing creative tactics or media schedules.     

Designing the content of advertising in a differentiated market

In many markets, consumers use attribute information to assess the value they expect from purchasing a product or service. This includes many low involvement experience goods including take-out food, many packaged good categories and restaurants. In these markets, quality differences exist but many differences are horizontal in nature: the consumer is interested in finding a product that meets her unique tastes. Beyond ensuring that consumers know the brand, the category and the price; it seems advertising should provide consumers with attribute information. However, a significant proportion of advertising does not provide it. In fact, within the same category, competitors respond to messages that emphasize detailed attribute information with messages that are devoid of attribute information. These messages are uninformative about product attributes. We explore how competition in a differentiated market is affected by the ability of a firm has to choose uninformative messages. We construct a model to investigate the factors that affect a firm’s decision to use advertising with detailed attribute information or advertising that does not provide it. The model demonstrates that content decisions about advertising are affected by the differences between products, the range of heterogeneity in consumer tastes and the degree to which costs increase as a function of the quantity of information in advertising. Surprisingly, even when the cost to increase the quantity of information in advertising is low, uninformative campaigns can be more profitable than campaigns with attribute information. The analysis also demonstrates that firms can be more likely to provide attribute information when there are less consumers that are attribute-sensitive. Finally, the model shows that uninformative messages can create “artificial differentiation” in some situations.     

A comparative analysis of advertising characteristics,strategy, style and form in global and national brand advertising

This paper considers the differences and similarities between national brand and global brand advertising through the use of three analytical frameworks – creative strategies, advertising styles and advertising form. It seeks to identify any differences between national and global brand advertising in terms of creative strategy, advertising style and advertising form. The structural elements of advertisements, such as the length of a commercial, number of camera shots and number or type of characters present, are also examined for a total of 551 television advertisements. A number of significant differences between the advertising of global and national brands have been recorded. In addition, the study identifies a discriminant function, which successfully predicts the advertising strategies, styles and formats for global brands.     

The Third-Person Effect in Advertising: A Meta-Analysis

Prior meta-analyses have found evidence for differences in the third-person effect across message types, indicating that the third-person effect is a communication context-specific phenomenon. These meta-analyses do not explain why effects of the perceptual hypothesis in advertising are smaller when compared to communication in general; they do not address the broad range of consumer behavior variables that are affected by third-person perceptions; and they have not investigated whether the perceived effects on the self or on others are better predictors for behavioral responses than third-person perceptions in advertising. This meta-analysis addresses these issues and investigates the perceptual and behavioral hypotheses of the third-person effect in an advertising context. Findings indicate that third-person perceptions in product advertising are weaker when compared to other communication messages due to developments over time and the mixed gratifications provided by product advertising messages. Third-person perceptions in advertising can increase or decrease consumer behavior depending on whether the behavior is self related (e.g., body-related responses) or other related (e.g., support for regulation). Furthermore, perceived effects on self or on others are better behavioral predictors than third-person perceptions, providing managerial implications for advertising campaign pretesting.     

The creative code

A study investigated the phenomenon, called the creative code, which is a collection of implicit theories about an advertising agency’s creative product that are held by people within a creative department. A foundation was built upon organisation-culture theory. Evidence in literature supported the conceptualisation of the construct. Personal interviews with creative personnel at a midwestern US advertising agency found evidence for a creative code and its components, sources, conditionality and consequences. The study implies that a creative code should be considered as an independent or dependent variable in research about advertising creativity. Client and agency managers and creative employees also may benefit from being more cognisant of the creative code that exists within agency organisations.     

An Analysis of Consumer Complaints about Social Marketing Advertisements in Australia and New Zealand

While social marketers are rarely targeted in discussions of the ethics of advertising, we are increasingly becoming aware of the importance of ensuring that social marketing messages are developed and conveyed in an ethical fashion. The article reviews complaints made by members of the general public in Australia and New Zealand to the advertising regulatory bodies in those two countries for the five years 2000–2004; examining the number, type, and nature of these complaints – including the categories of advertising, and the types of appeals, which generate complaints from the general public in both countries. We find that, as for commercial advertising, there is a need for further research to explore “community standards” in relation to social marketing messages; and that there is a clear need for social marketers to consider consumer attitudes towards advertising when developing communication strategies and messages.     

Advertising Repetition as a Signal of Quality: If It's Advertised So Much,Something Must Be Wrong

Abstract

The author proposes that consumers infer brand quality from the level of advertising repetition for unfamiliar brands. Consumers are posited to associate high product quality with high levels of repetition because they see repetition as costly and think higher costs reflect the manufacturer's commitment to the product. However, at very high levels of repetition, consumers may perceive the expenditures as excessive and begin to doubt the manufacturer's confidence in product quality, which would lead to an inverted-U relationship between advertising repetition and product quality perceptions. The author demonstrates that the relationship between repetition and perceived brand quality is mediated by perceptions of the manufacturer's effort and confidence in quality rather than by irritation or boredom. The hypotheses were tested in an experiment in which the level of repetition and the color of the ad were varied.     

Applying evolutionary psychology in understanding the representation of women in advertisements

One of the most ubiquitous creative copy decisions in advertising is to use young attractive women in decorative roles. Contrary to the mantra chanted by some staunch feminists, advertisers are not involved in a patriarchal white‐male‐dominated conspiracy to derogate, exploit, subjugate, and dominate women. Advertisers are concerned with providing messages that are maximally effective to their relevant target audience. Accordingly, they are well aware that in certain situations the use of decorative female models will appeal to a particular group of their constituency. Using evolutionary psychology as the explicative framework, it is argued that the greater use of young and attractive women in decorative roles in advertising is steeped in the differential mating strategies of the two sexes. An analysis of several content‐analytic studies demonstrates that the more frequent use of women as young and attractive decorative models is longitudinally stable and culturally invariant further attesting to the Darwinian roots of this phenomenon. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Social Consumer Neuroscience: Neurophysiological Measures of Advertising Effectiveness in a Social Context

The application of neurophysiological methods to study the effects of advertising on consumer purchase behavior has seen an enormous growth in recent years. However, little is known about the role social settings have on shaping the human brain during the processing of advertising stimuli. To address this issue, we first review previous key findings of neuroscience research on advertising effectiveness. Next, we discuss traditional advertising research into the effects social context has on the way consumers experience advertising messages and explain why marketers, who aim to predict advertising effectiveness, should place participants in social settings, in addition to the traditional ways of studying consumer brain responses to advertising in social isolation. This article contributes to the literature by offering advertising researchers a series of research agendas on the key indicators of advertising effectiveness (attention, emotion, memory, and preference). It aims to improve understanding of the impact social context has on consumers' neurophysiological responses to advertising messages.     

Joint Advertising and Brand Congruity: Effects on Memory and Attitudes

This research examined how brand congruity in joint advertising affects individuals’ processing of advertising messages. An experiment was conducted whereby ads promoting two congruent or incongruent brands were presented to subjects under low versus high processing load. Results showed that advertising messages for congruent brands were better remembered under both high and low processing loads. However, ads with congruent brands led to positive attitudes only when subjects’ processing resources were constrained. These findings suggest congruent brands that appear in joint ads have a clear advantage over incongruent brands. The results have both practical and theoretical implications.     

Understanding Programmatic Creative: The Role of AI

In this article, we expand the concept of programmatic advertising to include programmatic creative as a vital component. While artificial intelligence (AI) has already automated the media buying process, the advertising creative process still requires extensive human efforts. Such discrepancy calls for AI to transform the advertising creative process. We provide a framework for understanding and investigating programmatic creative by drawing evidence from the advertising industry in China. We specifically discuss how big data and machine learning algorithms underpin programmatic advertising. We argue that AI will integrate programmatic buying and programmatic creative in the future. We also discuss the technological, regulatory, and legal challenges faced by programmatic creative. We argue that new theories and methods are needed to conduct research in this area and provide guidance for the advertising industry.     

The advertising creative process: A study of UK agencies

Advertising agencies are hired to develop creative advertising for their clients. This paper explores the advertising creative process used by agencies when developing new creative work. Using in-depth interviews with 21 agency practitioners in the UK this study examines the stages that take place within the advertising creative process. Findings suggest the process is made up of a series of sequentially linked stages and illustrate how agencies validate advertising creative during development. The study provides insight into how agencies customise the process and identifies that agencies have different approaches to the level of client involvement. Implications for practitioners are discussed and areas for future research identified.     

The impact of bias and unexpectedness on message response

Behavioural research has produced mixed results as to the various effects perceived bias can produce on message response. Though bias and unexpectedly unbiased messages have not been much researched in an advertising framework, perceived bias in advertising messages is an inherent problem. This study presents the results of an experiment designed to test the effect of bias and unexpectedness on message response in an advertising context. The results suggest bias may be more of a problem with advertisements using a comparative format. Unexpectedness, while less effective in comparative approaches, performed well in a non-comparative format. Unexpected messages appeared to produce greater attention to message content, suggesting that this tactic may result in lower advertising exposure levels producing response.     

The impact of creative media advertising on consumer responses: two field experiments

Abstract

Creative media (CM) advertising is an advertising strategy wherein a non-traditional medium is creatively used for advertising purposes. This novel advertising strategy is gaining marketers’ interest; however, little is known about its persuasive effects on consumers’ cognitive, affective and behavioural responses and the processes that underlie them. Therefore, to convey a genuine experience to consumers, two field experiments with a one-factor (advertising type: creative vs. traditional) between-subjects design were conducted within a supermarket context. Results showed that creative (vs. traditional) media ads not only improve consumers’ affective and behavioural responses but also consumers’ cognitive responses. Even though no mediations were found through perceived surprise or perceived persuasive intent, results do provide evidence for the notion that perceived humor and perceived value are the underlying mechanisms through which affective and behavioural responses to creative media advertising can be explained.