Britt,Steuart Henderson. Psychological Principles of Marketing and Consumer Behavior. Lexington,Mass.: Lexington Books, 1978

Abstract

Conventionally, an advertiser's spending on the creative component of an advertising campaign is small in relation to the media budget and is channeled exclusively to a single advertising agency. Gross challenged those conventions more than 20 years ago, using a mathematical model of advertising effectiveness. His model suggested spending more on the creative component and doing so in a competition among several independent sources. The model assumed a normal distribution of effectiveness of advertisements. Data on response to consumer product ads show that the distribution of effectiveness is not normal, but quite skewed. Using Monté Carlo simulations and Gross's framework, the authors find that the skewness strengthens the case for competition. Shifting a sizable percentage of a campaign budget away from media spending and into competitive generation of creative renderings apparently can be very profitable.     

Kennedy,Sherril H., and David R. Corkindale. Managing the Advertising Process. Lexington,Mass.: Lexington,Books, 1976

Abstract

A mail survey was conducted among a sample of account and creative services personnel working in advertising agencies nationwide to determine areas of conflict in working relationships between these two groups. Additionally, respondents were asked to perform the same critical analysis of their colleagues within their own departments. Analysis of responses from 256 agency employees indicate that some disagreement between account management and creative services exists. Creative services personnel tended to be more critical of account management than account managers were of creative people. Results are explained by the differing perspectives of the generalist (i.e., account managers) and specialist (i.e., creative services) that must be brought together in an agency to produce effective advertising.