MKT 410 CH 9 Notes - MKT 410 ADVERTISING -PROFESSOR WOLF CHAPTER 9 PDF

Preview

Summary

MKT 410 ADVERTISING -PROFESSOR WOLF CHAPTER 9...

Description

MKT 410 CH 9 NOTES CREATIVITY 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. – A special form of problem solving • Creativity requires the ability to think like a problem solver and the courage to take risks and try something new. •

Creativity is a product of teamwork between: – Account planners – Copywriters – Art directors – Social media and content directors – The team works together to generate concept, word, and picture ideas.

•

Creative director: – manages the creative process. – plays an important role in focusing the strategy of ads. – makes sure the creative concept is strategically on target. Creative directors must be familiar with user experience (UX) design: interactive conversation about the brand.

•

The Art and Science of IMC • Creative strategy brings together the art and science of advertising. • A winning marketing communication idea must be: – creative (original, different, novel, unexpected) – strategic (right for the product and target; meets advertising objectives) The message plan is a rational analysis of a problem and what’s needed to solve that problem. • The message translates the planning decisions into a creative idea that is original, attention getting, and memorable. • In the 21st century, brand communication creatives must develop messages that won’t get lost in the media explosion. Creative Thinking: How do you do it? CREATIVE THINKING: • An idea is a thought or concept formed by mentally combining pieces and fragments into something meaningful. • Concepting is the process of coming up with a new idea. • Big Ideas are also called creative concepts. • Clichés are the most obvious examples of generic, nonoriginal, nonnovel ideas •

What’s the Big Idea?

• • •

The Big Idea or 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 should one venture on the edge is a difficult question.

Who could Forget this Classic Big Idea from Coppertone? Big ideas have the power to transform. Consider the Coppertone suntan lotion ads from the 1950s that showed a dog pulling down a little girl’s bathing suit revealing a tan line and (gasp!) her bottom.

The ROI of Creativity According to the DDB agency, an effective ad is: • Relevant: means something to target audience. • Original: novel, fresh, unexpected, unusual. • Has impact: makes an impression.

Got Milk? Visuals and Verbals Expressed as One • Divergent thinking (“right brain”) means exploring multiple possibilities rather than arriving at the “right” or logical conclusion. • Right-brain thinking is intuitive, holistic, artistic, and emotionally expressive thinking. – “Thinking outside the box” – Unusual idea that hasn’t been tried before • Left-brain thinking is logical, linear, and orderly. The Creative Leap How can you become a more creative thinker who uses the right brain for divergent explorations? 1. Think about the problem as something that involves a mind shift. Look at a problem from a different angle. 2. Put the strategy language behind you. The creative leap means jumping from boring business language in a strategy statement to an original idea. Michelin Makes a Creative Leap Michelin’s tire advertising is classic example of out-of-the-box thinking. The creative concept leaps from the idea of a durable tire to the idea of protecting your family by surrounding them with the dependability of a Michelin tire.

Dialing up your Creativity Other characteristics of creative people:

• • • • •

Problem solving Playfulness Ability to visualize Openness to new experiences Conceptual thinking

The Creative Process: How to get an Idea 1. Immersion: read, research, learn about problem. 2. Ideation: look at the problem from every angle; generate as many ideas as possible. 3. Brainfog: don’t give up when you hit a blank wall. 4. Incubation: let your subconscious work on it. 5. Illumination: the idea often comes when you’re relaxed and doing something else. 6. Evaluation: does it work? Is it on strategy?” Brainstorming • Assemble a group of 6–10 people to generate ideas. • People and ideas play off of each other and stimulate more ideas than one could alone. • The group becomes an “idea factory.” • Special processes or locations for brainstorming sessions can stimulate group creativity against a deadline. Techniques to create an original and unexpected idea: • What if? • An unexpected association • Dramatize the obvious • Catchy phrasing • An unexpected twist • • • • • •

Play on words Analogy and metaphor Familiar and strange A twisted cliché Twist the obvious Exaggeration

Additional Techniques and Guidelines: • • • •

Stay positive and defer judgement No distractions or interruptions Write everything down Start picking through and evaluating ideas – Only after all ideas have been expressed and every avenue exhausted

To prevent unoriginal ideas, avoid or work around:

• •

The Look-Alike: Avoid copycat advertising that uses somebody else’s great idea. The Tasteless: Attempted twists on clichés usually don’t work.

What are Some Key Message Strategy Approaches? The Creative Brief • The creative brief is a document summarizing the basic marketing and advertising strategy. • Creative strategy or message strategy is what the advertisement says. • Execution is how it is said. • It is prepared by the account planner to summarize the basic marketing and advertising strategy. • It provides direction to the creative team to develop a creative concept. Key points in a typical brief: • 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. Key points in a typical brief: • 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. • • • •

The Road Crew’s creative brief: Why are we advertising at all? To create awareness for an evening alternative ride service. What is the advertising trying to do? Make the new ride service appealing to men in order to reduce the number of alcohol-related crashes. What are their current attitudes and perceptions? “My car is here right now. Why wait? There are few options available anyway. I want to keep the fun going all night long.”

The Road Crew’s creative brief: • What is the main promise we need to communicate? It’s more fun when you don’t have to worry about driving. • What is the key moment to which we tie this message? “Bam! The fun stops when I need to think about getting to the next bar or getting home.” • What tone of voice should we use? The brand character is rugged, cool, and genuine. We need to be a “straight shooter” buddy on the barstool next to the target. The Facets Model of Effects

Think of these six effects as facets that come together to make up a unique consumer response to a brand message. The effects are holistic in the sense that they lead to an impression, or “integrated perception.”

Message objectives Consider the Facets Model of Effects: • See/hear: Create attention, awareness, interest, recognition. • Feel: Touch emotions and create feelings. • Think/understand: Deliver information, aid understanding, and create recall. The Facets Model of Effects: • Connect: Establish brand identity/associations; transform a product into a brand with distinctive personality and image. • Believe: Change attitudes, create conviction, and preference. • Act/do: Stimulate trial, purchase, repurchase or some other form of action. Targeting • The target decision is key to planning a message strategy. • Target audience for Road Crew campaign: – 21- to 34-year old single men with a high-school education and a blue-collar jobs. – They are responsible for most alcohol-related crashes; most likely to kill or be killed. Branding and positioning

• • •

Brand positions and brand images are built through message strategies, brought to life through advertising executions. Salience means the brand is visible, has a marketplace presence, and the brand is important to its target market. Brand salience is measured as top-of-mind awareness.

The Pillsbury Doughboy: Still Going Strong Brand communication creates symbols and cues that make brands distinctive. These include characters such as the Pillsbury Doughboy. Translating Messages into Strategies • Planners search for the best message design. • They consider the brand’s marketing situation and the target audience’s needs and interests. • Message design is not graphics; rather, it is problem solving. Ben & Jerry’s Listens to its Audiences Unilever, the brand parent of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream, 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. This insight helped Unilever design its messages. Choosing the Strategic Approach that Fits Some ways to express a strategic approach: • Head and Heart – Head: uses more rational, cognitive (thinking) objectives. – Heart: uses more emotional, affective (feeling) objectives. Ways to express a strategic approach….. • Hard sell: Uses an informational message that touches the mind and creates a response based on logic. • Soft sell: Uses emotional appeals or images to create a response based on attitudes, moods, and feelings. Systems of strategies Frazer’s Six Creative Strategies address various situations, and identify common approaches to message strategy: 1. Preemptive 2. Unique selling proposition 3. Brand image 4. Positioning 5. Resonance 6. Affective/anomalous (or ambiguous)

Taylor’s Six-Segment Strategy Wheel

• Designed primarily to generate strategies. • Each view is divided into three segments. Transmission View (“head strategies”) – Rational – Acute Need – Routine Ritual View (“heart strategies”) – Ego – Social – Sensory Strategic Formats • Lectures – A series of instructions is given verbally.  Demonstrations may be used. – Speaker presents evidence to persuade the audience. – A “talking head” delivers a lecture about a product. • Dramas

– Funny or serious stories about how the world works. – Characters speak to each other and audience infers lessons from them. – Relies on the viewer to make inferences about the brand. Psychological appeals • An appeal connects with some emotion that makes the product attractive or interesting. • Appeals might include: – Security – Esteem – Fear – Sex – Sensory pleasure Selling premises • These strategies speak to the head with a sales message. • A selling premise uses a rational (head) approach that states the logic behind the sales offer. • The most important features or attributes must be identified. • A claim is a product-based strategy based on how well the product will perform. Rational customer-focused strategies: • Benefit: what the product does for the user. • Promise: benefit the user will get by using the product. • Reason why: the logic behind why you should buy. • Unique selling proposition (USP): a benefit unique to the product and important to the user. Other message formulas • Straightforward message • Demonstration • Comparison • Problem solution /product as hero • Humor • Slice-of-life • Spokesperson • Teasers Matching Messages to Objectives The Facets Model helps us to identify messages that: • • • •

get attention create interest resonate create believability

•

are remembered

• • • • • •

touch emotions inform teach persuade create brand associations drive action

What Issues Affect the Management of Creative Strategy and its Implementation? Extension: An Idea with Legs • A strong Big Idea gives legs to a campaign. • It can serve as an umbrella concept for a variety of executions in different media talking to different audiences. • Extendability is a strength of the Chick-fil-A, Geico’s gecko, and Frontier’s talking animals campaigns. Adaptation: Taking an Idea Global • Standardizing the campaign across multiple markets works only if the objectives and strategic position are the same. • Otherwise, a creative strategy may call for a little tweaking of the message for a local market or even major revision. • If the core targeting, positioning strategies are the same in different markets, the central creative idea may be used. Evaluation: The Go/No-Go Decision Structural analysis This method relies on these three steps: 1. Evaluate the power of the narrative 2. Evaluate the strength of the product claim 3. Consider how well the two are integrated Avoid vampire creativity. Here, the ad is so creative that the ad is remembered but not the brand....