The debatable ‘Creativity’ in Advertising

Hey! This is my first public publication. Being a little student I was heavily bound by a zippy due date, and had to smash this article out. But I hope you can enjoy it for what it’s worth.

The advertising industry is one born from competition, crafted by caffeinated creatives and is directed by suits in hope it’ll generate a business or an entity more profit or favourability. Advertising is an investment, banked on the hope that an agency or creative individual can tap into the brains of enough consumers to make the consciousness or unconscious association with a product or idea that’ll influence a reaction to it. The value of this reaction can vary, and the benefit can be measured objectively and subjectively.

When I first started in advertising I was required to write an essay on the quote “Creative without strategy is called “art”. Creative with strategy is called ‘advertising” — Jef I. Richards. Where I dove into the vicarious wank on the subjective nature of creativity, art and advertising. This subjectiveness comes from value. Value that is narrowed down from an individual’s beliefs and ideology or ‘taste’. However even with the subjective nature of this industry and it’s work. Creative competitions hosted by organisations such as Cannes Lions and D&AD are deemed as the benchmark of creativity in the industry. This benchmark is created by a ‘majority rules’ kind of deal. The judges are industry professionals with years experience, and the winners are often chosen by the success of the idea. Which also brings the subjective ‘value of success’ into play as well. In this lil write up I’m going to dig in, and give my two cents on where creativity and innovation lie within advertising, as well as tossing in some obligatory wank because of the nature of this subjective matter.

An advertisers professions can be related to that of an artist, because as advertisers we are bound by people’s opinions perceptions but within constricted context. but with the idea that an artist has something to express. Just like an artist can create a piece with an intention, but it can be interpreted differently depending on the viewer / audience. The creativeness of advertising is judged on variations on the relation of the intention of the project aligned with the outcome. However it’s comparable to the subjectiveness of taste that we see in the fine art world, even though advertising has a more distinct business objective there is still a matter of taste involved. An example of this in the fine art world would be Banksy. An artist conflicted between the world of graffiti/vandalism but is selling his art at astronomical ‘Fine Art’ prices. In the case of Banksy, it’s hard to dismiss him purely as a vandal even though by law his work is a fineable offence. But given the price his art goes for it’s hard to deny that Banksy is an established artist. It’s a similar principle you can apply to advertising. The way it’s designed to manipulate human behaviour can see seen as innovative idea that can change a perspective or inspire us to do something, or in other ways it can be seen as a cheap tactic.

‘Bird with Grenade‘ closed at £145,250 ($228,043). The piece serves as an interesting example of Banksy’s “defaced” work, in which stenciled imagery is sprayed upon a found canvas perhaps purchased from a flea market or salvaged from a dumpster. Talk about value added.

However even with the bolstering established idea of success being the driver of what’s deemed as ‘good’ isn’t exactly a strong argument. Advertisements with the intention to drive sales and successfully do so are easily measurable by looking at the increase of sales, but in this day in age purely pushing for sales with success isn’t necessarily (or what I’d like to believe) considered to be creative.

Are harvey norman ads with typically red and yellow flashing discount signs really creative even if they drive sales and are successful? I’d like the think no. Or perhaps this is related to snobbery, of a taste or higher class of advertising. In the same way masses can enjoy a bad film but know it’s not an artistic masterpiece. Everyone knows Sharknado is going to be a piece of shit, but that’s what we expect of it, and we lap it up in droves anyway and it’s still a successful film.

Cannes lions states that “Creative Effectiveness Lions recognise creative work that has produced a measurable and proven impact on a client’s business — creativity that affects consumer behaviour, brand equity, sales, and where identifiable, profit. It will aim to establish a direct correlation between creativity and effectiveness.”

An interesting quote from Rory Sutherland in the copywriting conference 2014 - “Psychology has been frozen out of business decision making, because every human problem has been looked at from a dehumanised perspective — get rid of everything human because it makes the problem messy and complex — solve the dehumanised problem, then impose your solution on people.”

Ludwig von Mises suggests — “all value is subjective, there is no distinction between value of manufacturing and the value created by marketing. One creates the actual primary good, and the other creates the context in which the good can be appreciated valued or bought.” He goes on to say, “you could cook the michelin star food in the world, but if the restaurant smells of sewerage no one would eat there.”

Rory also uses the example of “if you think advertising is abusing a human’s evolutionary senses, you also believe a car is designed to exploit your human design because it’s designed to benefit humans”

It’s ideas like this that create a higher taste for creativity that’s pushed past just looking at success of data analytics. And a standard rinse and repeat harvey norman ad despite is success can’t be considered that creative. — because data analytics can determine all human behaviours (at least not yet)

Things such as brand perception and consumer behaviours or behavioural economics In advertisements are hard to measure. Focus groups are used to research common perceptions in order to help brands grasp a more global perspective. But the accuracy of these have faults. After all we are talking about a human test on human behaviour and we aren’t a perfectly data analytical creature. There certain humans behaviours in advertising that just don’t make sense.

As highlighted by Sutherland’s conference, if you were to propose the idea that we are going to sell you less carbonated drink for a higher price. It logically seems ridiculous. But human tendencies often defy logic. And we if we see a smaller can of soft drink at a higher price we may perceive the drink as being more potent/special/a higher standard than a traditional one. Such is the case with Redbull. — Redbull has arguably some of the best branding in the world despite this conjunction of logic.

Some examples as to why psychology may be frozen is the observer-expectancy effect and Social desirability bias. Observer-expectancy effect is form of reactivity in which a researcher’s cognitive bias causes them to subconsciously influence the participants of an experiment.

Social desirability bias describes the tendency of survey respondents to answer questions in a manner that will be viewed favourably by others. These are examples of how we use in an ineffective way to approach new and creative ideas in the industry.

This is where the Innovative nature of advertising begins, Innovation can be viewed as the application of better solutions that meet new requirements, unarticulated needs, or existing market needs. It can be applied to progression in data and technology, but applied to advertising, I’ve found that Innovation is observed/defined by new ways to apply variations of human behaviour put into a product or an idea.

It’s ideas behind human behaviour that create new and exciting advertisements. However contradicting Sutherlands stance there are elements of advertisements they are deem as exploitative despite success. Subliminal advertising is banned in many countries. The term was coined in 1957 by market researcher James Vicary, who claimed that he had induced people to buy more Coke and popcorn by flashing brief messages during a film.

Illusionist Darren Brown used the trick of subliminal advertising on two industry professionals to predict work they produced for a mock brief he had created. Showing the effectiveness but also the borderline between a good successful and innovative idea, and exploitation.

Cannes Lions judges campaigns 25% on idea 25% on strategy and 50% of result and effectiveness. Perhaps in the future the balance of success and good ideas will be rewarded differently but until then, If you want to glaze your opinion over some of the in industries best check out the Cannes Lions Winner here.

Check out some links that inspired this article
Darren Brown “Advertising Agency Task”
Copywriting Conference 2014: Rory Sutherland · Behavioural economics
Praxeology
Cannes Lions Judging
Cannes Innovation

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Innovation definition