I. What is the Role of Creativity in IMC?

- Creativity
- can be defined as the generation of fresh ideas and solutions to current problems
or challenges
- Complex and multifaceted, particularly the digital age
- All around us: music, art, literature, theatre
- The ability to think like a problem solver and the courage to take risks and try
something new are requisite skills for creativity
- “Great creative must communicate a truth about the brand that moves the organization
toward a key goal.” – Meg Lauerman
- The creative director manages the creative process and plays an important role in
focusing the strategy of ads and making sure the creative concept is strategically on
target
- The role of the creative director is evolving rapidly as these team leaders need to be
familiar with user experience (UX) design, which involves the interactive conversation
about the brand, such as how to engage viewers of ads with social media across
platforms, ultimately integrating the marketing and creative direction
- Creativity isn’t just about “ads” anymore. As the REI case demonstrates, no one in the
IMC environment owns “creativity” exclusively
- Anyone in the IMC process can generate fresh ideas and solutions. Those designing
multiplatform campaigns also demonstrate creative ways to connect content with
audiences
- Principle
- Creative strategy solves problems, and problem solving demands creative
thinking. Both Big Ideas and Big Plans call for creative thinking
The Art and Science of IMC
- Creative Strategy
- The art and science of marketing communication come together in the phrase
creative strategy
- A winning marketing communication idea must be both creative (original,
different, novel, and unexpected)
- strategic (right for the product and target and meeting the objectives)
- Professor Mark Stuhlfaut identified significant elements of creativity in advertising, which
begin with novelty but include appropriateness as well as authenticity and relevance
- if it’s creative, it is also often generative; in other words, it leads to other new
ways of thinking
- Creative strategy goes beyond coming up with a novel idea; rather, it is about
generating an idea that solves a communication problem in an original way
- Stuhlfaut and Professor Margo Berman remind us that creativity is directed at
achieving objectives. Creative strategy solves problems, and problem solving
demands creative thinking—the mental tool used in figuring things out
- The twenty-first century has created a huge challenge for brand communication
creatives who have to develop breakthrough messages that will not get lost in today’s
media explosion
 -
Professor Karen Mallia explains, in the Matter of Practice feature, we’re in a second
creative revolution that challenges creative thinkers to reimagine the way they work
- Principle
- Effective advertising is a product of both science (persuasion and logic) and art
(creativity)
THE INSIDE STORY: A Passion for the Business
- Wende Zomnir, Urban Decay
- Seven Principles about how to run a business creatively
1. Feel a passion for your brand
- Everyone at Urban Decay loves our makeup and deeply connects to our
position as the counterculture icon in the realm of luxury makeup
2. Spot emerging trends
- Our best ideas don’t start from analysts telling us what the trends are
- Our job at Urban Decay is to lead graphically with our product design and
formulation
3. Cultivate your inner voice
- You also need to develop a gut instinct for what will work
4. Check your ego
- Listening to that inner voice is something you can cultivate, but you’ve got
to check your ego at the door to do it
- You’ve got confidence in your concepts and your ability to deliver, but you
have to be able to admit others have great ideas, too
5. Cherry-pick the best ideas
- Gut instinct is important, but—and this is big—even more crucial is being
able to listen to all the ideas and sort out the junk
- After you sort through everything, pick the very best concept, even if it’s
not your idea
6. Little ideas are important, too
- You’ve got to rally everyone behind your Big Idea, but realize that all
those little ideas that prop up the big one are great, too
7. Be flexible
- Knowing when to be flexible has resulted in some of the best work we’ve
created here

II. Creative Thinking: How do you Do It?

- All the aspects of IMC—advertising, public relations, direct response and promotions—
are creative idea businesses
- Idea
- a thought or a concept in the mind
- formed by mentally combining pieces and fragments of thoughts into something
that conveys a nugget of meaning
- concepting to refer to the process of coming up with a new idea
- Big Ideas are also called creative concepts
 - In advertising, clichés are the most obvious examples of generic, nonoriginal, nonnovel
ideas
- Principle
- When advertising gives consumers permission to believe in a product, it
establishes the platform for conviction
What’s the Big Idea
- What we call a Big Idea, or a creative concept, becomes a point of focus for
communicating the message strategy
- Big Ideas can be risky because they are different and, by definition, untested
- risky is good for edgy Big Ideas, but how far one should venture on the edge is a difficult
question. Testing ideas is a good idea to reduce the chances of taking unnecessary risks
- Where do Big Ideas come from? As advertising legend James Webb Young, a founder
of the Young & Rubicam agency, explained in his classic book on creative thinking, A
Technique for Producing Ideas, an idea is a new or unexpected combination of thoughts
- “The ability to make new combinations is heightened by an ability to see
relationships.”
- An idea, then, is a thought that comes from placing two previously unrelated
concepts together
A MATTER OF PRACTICE: The Second Creative Revolution: Magical Thinking Meets Bits
and Bytes
- Karen L. Mallia
- Now brand communication can be anything from sponsored tweets to a charmingly retro
30-second television spot
- campaigns consist of media channels that are layered and interwoven in clever and
complex ways
- Coming up with radical brand ideas still calls for strategic and creative thinking, talent in
art direction and writing, and the same passion and fearlessness and resilience
- Enduring Creative Truths
- Great creative work starts with fresh insight, which comes from research
- Great creative work is built on a tight creative strategy, brilliantly executed
- Great work is relevant—to its audience (not the whole world) and to the brand
- Great ideas are critical to great executions. In old tech parlance, GIGO: garbage-
in-garbage-out. Or, more explicitly, “you can’t polish a turd.”
- One execution is not an idea. Ideas are big, inspiring, and exciting and can have
many iterations and live long lives
- Every communication is a building block of brand image. The look and the voice
convey as much as the concept
- Great ideas often look obvious after they’re conceived because they are the most
perfect solution to the problem, but that doesn’t make them easy to come by
- The creative process doesn’t flow like a waterfall, from step to step. It’s agile
- In a 24/7 contact world, work is never done. Creative people live in constant beta
- Scattershot brand communication is more dangerous than ever
- New Creative Truths
- Great work now takes a village, not just one or two geniuses. Collaboration is key
PRACTICAL TIPS: Checklist for Killer Ads
- Tom Groth
1. A safe ad is a bad ad
- Your goal isn’t to blend in like elevator music
2. Make mistakes!
- Don’t be tempted to just repeat what worked before
- Trial and error brings new answers
3. What’s your brand’s “hook”?
- Decide exactly one thing in your ad that you want to stick in your prospect’s mind
- Many prospects buy what they know and it is just one thing—the hook! They
remember the hook and buy the hook
4. Leave something out
- Let the prospect “fill in the blanks.”
5. It’s all about problem solving
- It’s all about problem solving—client’s problems and prospect problems.
6. Think “viewers” not “readers”
- Is your promise visual?
- Visuals offer instant gratification
- Become visually literate!
7. Everything communicates
- Does everything in your advertisement support your message?
- Choose wisely
- You cannot not communicate
8. You’re really different
- There is only one of you
9. “Good enough isn’t good enough” – Jay Chiat
10. The media is the message
- Does everything in your advertisement support your message?
11. Your prospect doesn’t want your product, service or brand
12. Ignorance is not bliss
- Don’t play dumb
The ROI of Creativity
- A Big Idea is more than just a new thought because in advertising it also has to
accomplish something: it has a functional dimension
- an effective ad is relevant and original and has impact, which is referred to as ROI of
creativity
- ideas have to be relevant and mean something to the target audience. Original means
one of a kind; an advertising idea is creative when it is novel, fresh, unexpected, and
unusual
- the essence of a creative idea is that no one else has thought of it either
- copycat advertising—that is, using an idea that someone else has originated—is a
concern
- A breakthrough ad has stopping power and that comes from an intriguing idea, a Big
Idea that is important, interesting, and relevant to consumers
 - Principle
- An idea can be creative for you if you have never thought of it before, but to be
truly creative, it has to be one that no one else has thought of before
The Creative Leap
- divergent thinking is used to describe a style of thinking that jumps around exploring
multiple possibilities rather than using rational thinking to arrive at the “right” or logical
conclusion
- right-brain thinking, which is intuitive, holistic, artistic, and emotionally expressive
thinking, in contrast to left-brain thinking, which is logical, linear (inductive or
deductive), and orderly
- First, think about the problem as something that involves a mind shift. Instead of seeing
the obvious, a creative idea looks at a problem in a different way, from a different angle.
That’s referred to as thinking outside the box
- Second, put the strategy language behind you. We talk a lot about strategy in this book
- Finding the brilliant creative concept entails what advertising giant Otto Kleppner called
the creative leap—a process of jumping from the rather boring business language in a
strategy statement to an original idea
- Principle
- A breakthrough ad has stopping power that comes from an intriguing idea
Dialing Up Your Creativity
- According to Logason, “Inspiration for my ideas can almost always be traced to things I
have done, experienced, seen, heard, or read.” He concludes, “In a creative world it is
important to try new things and live life like a discoverer.”
- Characteristics of creative people
1. Problem Solving
2. Playful
3. Ability to Visualize
4. Open to New Experiences
5. Conceptual Thinking
- Principle
- To get a creative idea, you must leap beyond the mundane, formal business
language of the strategy statement and see the problem in a novel and
unexpected way
- Getting a great advertising idea that is also on strategy is an emotional high.
The Creative Process: How the Get an Idea
- The creative process can be portrayed as a series of steps. English sociologist Graham
Wallas was the first to outline the creative process
- Steps
1. Immersion
2. Ideation
3. Brainfag
4. Incubation
5. Illumination
6. Evaluation
 - Creative Aerobics
1. Facts
2. New Names
3. Similarities
4. New Definitions
- Another specialized approach to creative problem solving involves design thinking,
which stimulates innovation and solves complex problems through collaboration
- This approach takes a broader view of creative problem solving, one that uses
anthropological observation as well as innovation and teamwork environments
- Design thinking can be applied to IMC contexts such as helping marketers understand
how customers behave in their natural habitats, providing valuable insights about
shoppers in a checkout line and stimulating innovation
Brainstorming
- One person’s idea stimulates someone else’s, and the combined power of the group
associations stimulates far more ideas than any one person could think of alone. The
group becomes an idea factory
- The term brainstorming was coined by Alex Osborn, founder of the advertising agency
BBDO and explained in his classic book Applied Imagination
- The secret to brainstorming is to remain positive and defer judgment
- To Create an Original and Unexpected Idea, Use the Following Techniques
- What If?
- An Unexpected Association
- In free association, you think of a word and then describe everything that
comes into your mind when you imagine that word
- Dramatize the Obvious
- Catchy Phrasing
- An Unexpected Twist
- Play on Words
- Analogy and Metaphor
- Familiar and Strange
- A Twisted Cliche
- Twist the Obvious
- Exaggeration
- To Prevent Unoriginal Ideas, Avoid or Work Around the Following
- The Look-Alike
- The Tasteless

III. What are Some Key Message Strategy Approaches/

The Creative Brief
- The creative brief (or creative platform, worksheet, or blueprint) is the document
prepared by an advertising account planner to summarize the basic marketing and
advertising strategy
- Creative strategy, or message strategy, is what the advertisement says; execution is
how it is said
- Key Points
- Problem that can be solved by communication
- Target audience and key insights into their attitudes and behavior
- Brand position and other branding decisions, such as personality and image
- Communication objectives that specify the desired response to the message
by the target audience
- Proposition or selling idea that will motivate the target to respond
- Media considerations about where and when the message should be delivered
- Creative direction that provides suggestions on how to stimulate the desired
consumer response
- Public Relations Plan
- Executive summary
- Communication process
- Background
- Situation analysis
- Message statement
- Audiences
- Key audience messages
- Implementation
- Budget
- Monitoring and evaluation
- They aren’t creative ideas, but they may touch on such execution or stylistic
direction as the ad’s tone of voice
- for example, designs advertising by looking for what it calls “tension points.” Its brief
asks planners to ask themselves, “What is the psychological, social, categorical, or
cultural tension associated with this idea?”
- Road Crew Campaign
- Why are we advertising at all?
- What is the message trying to do?
- What are their current attitudes and perceptions?
- What is the main promise we need to communicate?
- What is the key moment to which we tie this message?
- What tone of voice should we use?
- Message Objectives
- See/Hear
- Feel
- Think/Understand
- Connect
- Believe
- Act/Do
- Targeting
- The target decision is particularly important in planning a message strategy
- Branding and Positioning
 - Brand positions and brand images are created through message strategies and
brought to life through advertising executions.
- Finding the right position is difficult enough, but figuring out how to communicate
that position in an attention-getting message that is consistent across multiple
executions and various media is difficult
- Brand communication creates symbols and cues that make brands distinctive,
such as characters, colors, slogans, and taglines as well as brand personality
cues
- Advertising and other forms of marketing communication are critical to create
what brand guru Kevin Keller calls salience; that is, the brand is visible and has a
presence in the marketplace, consumers are aware of it, and the brand is
important to its target market
Translating Communication Objectives into Message Strategies
- Remember that there is no one right way to do brand communication; in most cases,
there are a number of ways to achieve a communication objective
- The idea of design—as in message design—is not graphics; rather, it is problem solving.
An interesting example of message design
- The brand parent, Unilever, assumed that people ate more ice cream when it was sunny
until it discovered social chatter that indicated otherwise. It found that people mentioned
staying home and watching movies and eating Ben & Jerry’s on rainy weekends
Choosing the Strategic Approach that Fits
- Head and Heart
- In the Facets Model of Effects, the cognitive objectives generally speak to the
head, and the affective objectives are more likely to speak to the heart.
Sometimes, however, a strategy is designed to inform the mind as it touches the
emotions.
- A hard sell is an informational message that is designed to touch the mind and
create a response based on logic
- The success of this approach is based on the assumption that the target
audience wants information and will make a rational product decision
- A soft sell uses emotional appeals or images to create a response based on
attitudes, moods, and feelings
- The assumption with soft-sell strategies is that the target audience has little
interest in an information search and will respond more favorably to a message
that touches their emotions or presents an attractive brand image
- System of Strategies
- Head and heart and hard sell or soft sell: all these terms refer to some basic,
simple concepts. Creative strategy often is more complex, however
- Frazer’s six creative strategies and Taylor’s strategy wheel
 -
- A contemporary twist on the concept of the unique selling proposition for a
product is the idea that brand communicators could identify a unique story
proposition that communicates what the brand is—in other words, its brand story
- University of Tennessee professor Ron Taylor developed a process of analysis
that offers a different framework for thinking about strategies. It divides strategies
into the transmission view, which is similar to the more rational “head” strategies,
and the ritual view, which is similar to the more feeling-based “heart” strategies.
He then divides each into three segments: ration (rational), acute need, and
routine on the transmission side and ego, social, and sensory on the ritual side.
- Strategic Formats
-
- Principle
- Hard-sell informational messages lead to rational decisions; soft-sell emotional
strategies cre ate responses based on attitudes, moods, and feelings
Strategic Formats
- Lectures and Dramas
- A lecture is an instruction usually given verbally. or it could be a demonstration
using visuals. The speaker presents evidence (broadly speaking) and uses a
technique such as an argument to persuade the audience
- Psychological Appeals
- The psychological appeal of the product to the consumer is also used to describe
a message that speaks to attitudes as well as the heart. An appeal connects with
some emotion that makes the product particularly attractive or interesting, such
as security, esteem, fear, sex, and sensory pleasure
 - Selling Premises
- A selling premise states the logic behind the sales offer.
- A premise is a proposition on which an argument is based or a conclusion is
drawn. To have a practical effect on customers, managers must identify the
product’s features (also called attributes) in terms of those that are most
important to the target audience.
- A claim is a product-focused strategy based on a prediction about how the
product will perform.
- Types
- Benefit
- Promise
- Reason why
- USP
- Other Message Approaches
- Straightforward message
- Demonstration
- Comparison
- Problem solution message
- Humor
- Slice-of-life message
- Spokesperson
- An E score is a system of ratings that measures the appeal of celebrities,
athletes, and other newsmakers. A Q score is a measure of the familiarity
of a celebrity as well as a company or brand
- Teasers
- Principle
- In the comparison approach, as with a demonstration, seeing is believing, so the
objective is to build conviction
A MATTER OF PRINCIPLE: Six Message Strategies in Six Minutes
- Ronald E. Taylor
1. Ration Segment
- They represent the classic reason-why, product-focused message
2. Acute Need Segment
- based on consumers’ unanticipated need for the product or service
3. Routine Segment
- attempt to routinize everyday behavior.
4. Sensory Segment
- strategies are based on one of the five senses: sight, touch, hearing, smell, and
taste
5. Social Segment
- Many social strategies are based on establishing, maintaining, or celebrating
relationships with others
6. Ego Segment
- based on images that consumers have of themselves
Matching Messages to Objectives
- Messages That Get Attention
- To be effective, an advertisement needs to get exposure through the media buy
and get attention through the message. Getting consumers’ attention requires
stopping power. Creative advertising breaks through the old patterns of seeing
and saying things: the unexpectedness of the new idea creates stopping power
- Messages That Create Interest
- Getting attention reflects the stopping power of an advertisement; keeping
attention reflects the ad’s pulling power. An interesting thought keeps readers’ or
viewers’ attention and pulls them through to the end of the message
- Messages That Resonate
- Ads that amplify the emotional impact of a message by engaging a consumer in
a personal connection with a brand are said to resonate with the tar get audience
- Messages That Create Believability
- Advertising sometimes uses a credibility strategy to intensify the believability of a
message. Using data to support or prove a claim is critical
- Messages That Are Remembered
- Not only do messages have to stop (get attention) and pull (create interest), but
they also have to stick (in memory), which is another important part of the
perceptual process
- Ads use catchy headlines, curiosity, and intriguing visuals to make this recall
process as easy as possible and lock the message in memory
- Repetition is used both in media and message strategy to ensure memorability
- Messages That Touch Emotions
- Emotional appeals create feeling-based responses
- Messages That Inform
- Companies often use news announcements to provide information about new
products, to tout reformulated products, or even to let consumers know about
new uses for old products
- Messages That Teach
- People learn through instruction, so some advertisements are designed to teach,
such as demonstrations that show how something works or how to solve a
problem
- Learning also is strengthened through repetition. That’s why repetition is such an
important media objective.
- Messages That Persuade
- Persuasive messages are designed to affect attitudes and create belief.
Strategies that are particularly good are testimonials and messages that
generate word of mouth about the product.
- Celebrities, product placements, and other credibility techniques are used to give
the consumer permission to believe a claim or selling premise
- Messages That Create Brand Associations
- Image advertising, in particular, is used to create a representation of a brand, an
image in a consumer’s mind, through symbolism. Advertising’s role is to provide
 the cues that make these meanings and experiences come together in a
coherent brand image
- Messages That Drive Action
- Most ads end with a signature of some kind that serves to identify the company
or brand, but it also serves as a call to action and gives direction to the
consumer about how to respond
- Reminder advertising, as well as distributing coupons or introducing a
continuity program (such as a frequent-flyer program), is designed to keep the
brand name in front of customers to encourage their repeat business
- Principle
- A message needs to stop (get attention), pull (create interest), and stick (be
memorable)

IV. What Issues Affect the Management of Creative Strategy and Its Implementation?
Extension: An Idea with Legs
- One characteristic of a Big Idea is that it gives legs to a campaign. By that, we mean
that the idea is strong enough to serve as an umbrella concept for a variety of
executions in different media talking to different audiences. It can be endlessly extended
- Extendability is what Stuhlfaut was referring to when he explained that creative thinking
is generative
Adaption: Taking an Idea Global
- The opportunity for standardizing the campaign across multiple markets exists only if the
objectives and strategic position are essentially the same. Otherwise, a creative strategy
may call for a little tweaking of the message for a local market or even major revision if
there are cultural and market differences.
- cultural differences often require nuanced and subtle changes in ads if they are to be
acceptable beyond the country of their origin
Evaluation: The Go/No-Go Decision
 - Structural Analysis
- The Leo Burnett agency has used an approach for analyzing the logic of the
creative strategy that goes beyond just evaluating the strategy
- This method, called structural analysis, relies on these three steps
1. Evaluate the power of the narrative or story line (heart)
2. Evaluate the strength of the product claim (head)
3. Consider how well the two are integrated—that is, how the story line
brings the claim to life
- A particular problem that Big Ideas face is that the message is sometimes so
creative that the ad is remembered but not the brand. That’s called vampire
creativity, and it is one reason some advertisers shy away from really novel or
entertaining strategies
- Principle
- Vampire creativity means the creative storyline overpowers the brand message.
Looking Ahead
IT’S A WRAP: Taking the Outside Chance Pays Off
- As students of IMC, we can learn a lot from REI, namely
- Zig when others zag. Be creative.
- Have courage to execute bold ideas. Take risks.
- Find an authentic voice for your brand. Stay true to the mission.
- Know your customers. Empathize with them.
- Products are more than things to buy. They add meaning to customers’ lives