Is "Creative" Advertising Really More Effective?

As long as I've been in the advertising business there has been a very large question smoldering under the surface of my skin: Does advertising that we deem to be more creative actually produce better business results, or is that just a fond wish that "creatives" and our supporters have invented to justify treating advertising as an art, and not just a blunt instrument?

As a former copywriter and creative director I am a strong believer in the power of creativity in advertising. In fact, every neuron in my tiny little brain is committed to this belief. 

But there is another part of my brain (the part that used to teach science) that tries to remind me about intellectual honesty, and keeps saying to me, "How do you know this?" 

I am not a scholar on this subject. I have not gone through all the literature and all the studies. But I have been exposed to some of the research on the subject and it worries me. 

The studies that I have seen and read generally seem to take the following form. The researcher starts with a group of ads that have been recognized as exceptionally creative by experts or by respected awards organizations and compares their real-world business effectiveness to advertising that has not been recognized as such. The results are often convincing, and the "creative" ads exhibit significantly superior effectiveness.

An argument one could make against this methodology (which I will not make) is that it is dependent on two factors that ought not be taken at face value. First, that the experts and award committees are actually able to accurately discern levels of creativity. Creativity is a notoriously difficult thing to define and the idea that the people who have been tasked with defining it are particularly qualified to do so is a difficult case to prove. 

The second argument against this methodology is about the business results that are used to measure effectiveness. How do we know they are reliable? As someone who has written more than his share of case histories, I am very sensitive to the effect that imaginative writing can play in the description of success.

If the people assessing creativity are not uniquely qualified to do so, and if the measures of effectiveness are not wholly reliable, then the conclusions cannot be taken seriously.

But I am not going to criticize the methodology on this basis. For the sake of argument, let's assume that the experts and awards committees are fully qualified to define and assess creativity and the metrics that are used to define business success are fully accurate.

I still have a problem.

Creative awards are usually presented in the year following the initiation of a campaign. You can't give awards for advertising created in 2020 until the year is over. Consequently, awards committees and experts usually don't get together to make their determinations until "awards season" a few months into the following year.

So there can be a lag time of between 12 and 18 months between the time a campaign launches and the determination of its level of "creativity" by the experts. In this lag period there is every opportunity for the people who are going to be charged with determining creativity at a later date to be exposed to business results of campaigns. Trade publications, advertising insiders, the business section of newspapers, and industry gossip are reporting on winners and losers every day of the year.

It is highly likely that the experts are reading and hearing reports of advertising successes and failures throughout the year. By the time they are tasked with determining levels of creativity, the experts and the awards committees have a very good idea of what campaigns produced highly effective advertising the previous year and what campaigns fell flat. Is it realistic to expect these people to ignore what they know about success and failure when they are assessing levels of creativity?

I find that hard to believe. It seems to me only natural that an individual will give higher grades for creativity to a campaign she knows to have been effective than to one she knows to have bombed. It seems highly unlikely that an awards judge will deem a campaign very creative if he knows the campaign was a disaster, the agency was fired, the marketing director replaced and the campaign pulled off the air. 

I am not implying that experts and awards committees are remiss in their duties or unprincipled in their decision making. I am merely suggesting that they are human. The likelihood that a human will take something he knows to have been a massive failure and compare it favorably to something he knows to have been a massive success is not high.

If this is the case, then the process can be, to a worrying degree, a tautology. Campaigns known to have been effective are presented as being highly creative, and campaigns thusly deemed highly creative are presented as proof of superior effectiveness.

It can be a very simple but obscure example of circular logic.

I still firmly believe that creativity is the single most important determination of advertising effectiveness. But I wish I had a more substantial, scientific basis for that belief.

See Part 2 of this piece here.

No App For Gratitude

 Today I am repeating my annual Thanksgiving post which I have run for many years. And, yes, that crack about Trump was there years before anyone could have imagined...

Thanksgiving is my kind of holiday.

It doesn't require gods or miracles or tragedies or victories or angels or kings or winners or losers or flags or gifts. 

All you need is some pumpkin pie, a big-ass flat screen, and a comfortable sofa to drool on.
Oh, and a little gratitude.


Gratitude, by the way, is a commodity in very short supply. Regrettably, we seem to have mountains of expectation but not much in the way of appreciation. It's a socially transmitted disease.


So this Thanksgiving let's put aside harsh judgments for a day or two. Thank a fireman. Give a bum a buck. Kiss an in-law.


I don't like Puritans of any stripe, but I like the idea of them having the Indians over for dinner. I know the detente didn't last too long, but any day you're eating sweet potatoes instead of shooting off muskets is a good day.


Be grateful that you have shoes. Be thankful that your cat is healthy. Compliment someone's posture. 


If you can't do any of that stuff, then at least give thanks that you won't be dining with Whoopi Goldberg or Donald Trump. That alone should be enough.


Finally, do yourself a favor -- quit whining. That's my job.


And have a Happy Thanksgiving.

The Luxury Of Strategy

Loudmouth ad weasels like me are always going off on the need for advertisers to abandon their addiction to short term-ism and focus their attention on the long term imperative of building their brands. 

There is plenty of evidence (including that of Field and Binet) that in the long run marketers are better served if their ad budgets are more weighted toward brand-building advertising and less weighted toward short-term promotional advertising.

The problem with this is that for a great many marketers surviving this week is a more compelling prospect than the promise of a magnificent brand five years from now. Many businesses simply can't afford to do advertising that doesn't deliver instant returns.

This is not just an unpleasant reality of business, it is a fact of life. Short term and long term objectives are not always aligned. There are many things we do for short term benefits that are harmful in the long term.

The world would be a much simpler, more reasonable place if we could abandon the habits that make life livable in the short run, and precarious in the long run. Sadly, the world doesn't work that way.

Tactics can often be a matter of life and death, while strategy is often a luxury. As Mike Tyson once said, "Everyone has a strategy until they get hit."

Having spent centuries in the ad business, one thing I learned is that the tactical always seems to drive out the strategic. When the rubber meets the road, and decisions about spending money have to be made, if financial resources are scarce, the tactical always wins.

One of the most powerful and unrecognized benefits of a successful brand is the financial wherewithal to support both tactical and strategic advertising. Most businesses don't have the means to do this.

Strategy is the advantage of the wealthy.