Scott Koslow

Executional Factors and Advertising Effectiveness: A Replication

Abstract This article reports a replication of the Stewart and Furse (1986) study of the influence of executional factors on advertising performance. Using a new set of 1,017 commercials, coded for content, the replication finds the original results reported by Stewart and Furse are highly robust. The use of a brand-differentiating message and a strong product focus continue to manifest a positive impact on measures of recall, comprehension, and persuasion.

What Is Creative to Whom and Why? Perceptions in Advertising Agencies

The authors apply recent advances in creativity theory to discover perceptual differences in the factors of strategy, originality, and artistry among creatives and noncreatives. It was found that current advertising position influences subjective perceptions of what constitutes creative advertising. Creatives tend to perceive advertisements as more appropriate if they are artistic, but account executives tend to perceive advertisements as more appropriate if they are strategic. The study also indicates that creatives have a distinctive preference for a strong originality component to strategy. To be original within the confines of a tight strategy is perceived as the most creative by advertising creatives. Account executives are so focused on strategy, they will often accept artistic advertisements as a substitute for truly original work. The authors consider future research implications of the study and its limitations.

What is Creative to Whom and Why

ABSTRACT The authors apply recent advances in creativity theory to discover perceptual differences in the factors of strategy, originality, and artistry among creatives and noncreatives. It was found that current advertising position influences subjective perceptions of what constitutes creative advertising. Creatives tend to perceive advertisements as more appropriate if they are artistic, but account executives tend to perceive advertisements as more appropriate if they are strategic. The study also indicates that creatives have a distinctive preference for a strong originality component to strategy. To be original within the confines of a tight strategy is perceived as the most creative by advertising creatives. Account executives are so focused on strategy, they will often accept artistic advertisements as a substitute for truly original work. The authors consider future research implications of the study and its limitations.

Creative and interactive media use by agencies : engaging an IMC media palette for implementing advertising campaigns

ABSTRACT This study examines IMC media use by advertising agencies from a perspective of how creative and media implementation effects impact the scope of media selected for campaigns. The study was based upon a quantitative analysis of 872 advertising campaigns from 309 respondents from the largest advertising agencies in New York and Detroit. Overall, campaigns contain more integrated media when there is solid consumer research, formal advertising testing, diverse media experience, agency industry specialization, and high agency motivation. Creativity is positively correlated with wider IMC media use, showing that integrated interactive media campaigns using a broader media palette can be highly creative. However, neither the presence of strategy in the clients brief nor the perception of the campaign being “on strategy” has any effect on the scope or number of media used.

Creativity awards: Great expectations?

Given the creativity inherent in advertising, one useful measure of creativity may be the advertising creativity award. Although creativity awards have been used by academics, agencies, and clients as indicators of exemplary creative work, there is surprisingly little research as to what creative elements they actually represent. Senior agency executives were selected to assess their own campaigns in terms of originality and strategy, and were also queried about whether those campaigns would win creativity, and effectiveness, awards. Findings show that the campaigns deemed worthy of creativity award recognition are usually highly original. Yet, most award-winning work is rarely regarded as being highly strategic. The results indicate that this originality bias contained in award-winning advertisements may limit their usefulness as proxy measures of creativity. Although the originality aspect of creativity is reflected, strategy and appropriateness are not adequately, nor proportionately considered. Implications for the use of creativity awards by researchers, as well as managerial issues, are discussed.

How consumer heterogeneity muddles the international advertising debate

Standardisation versus localisation is an enduring topic in international advertising. The generalisability of research on the topic is another issue. We address the second issue and in the process shed light on the first. Multifacet analysis on an international advertising data set indicated that individuals within countries accounted for much more variance than countries could account for. This portends that researchers should generalise with caution. It further suggests that some form of standardisation may be appropriate more often than is currently considered. Both between and within-country heterogeneity should influence international advertising strategies.

How Well Do Firms Implement Strategy When They Design Internet Web Pages

Abstract Why do firms design web sites the way that they do? The internet literature has suggested several thing that should affect web site design. Firms may have strategic motivations to use the internet. For example these may include to reduce costs, increase sales, or enhance image. A web page may also have certain functional roles it might play like selling or communicating. All of these should impact web page design and this is tested via an on-line survey and a content analysis of web sites. The authors find no relationship between actual content of web sites and strategic motivations to use the internet or functional roles of internet web sites. Therefore, the authors conclude we have much to learn about effective advertising on the web and we call for more empirical research.

Passion, Expertise, Politics, and Support

Creativity is a trait that is treasured by both advertising agencies and clients. How is greater creativity nurtured and cultivated in such an intense environment? Passion (in the form of intrinsic motivation) as well as industry expertise and knowledge are highly desirable ingredients for driving creativity in an advertising agency (Young 2003). This research proposes a dynamic framework for greater creativity that includes passion (individual intrinsic motivation) as one of the most important factors in predicting creativity, along with industry expertise and knowledge. As a stimulus, management support for creativity serves to enhance passions influence on creativity in this model, while the influence of expertise is suppressed by organizational politics. The study uses a sample of 1,188 advertising campaigns from major U.S. agencies, reported by 413 respondents, to offer an insightful framework for advertising creativity.

When Bad is Good: The Creative Conundrum of Agency- Client Relationships

Some advertising agencies and their marketing clients have traditionally invested in long term relationships that were greatly valued. Recent economic imperatives have prompted many clients to break such long term bonds and re-define relationships. For example, in the auto industry, some client-agency relationships forged over one hundred years ago have recently been terminated during the search for new agency partners and creativity. Consumer packaged goods marketers like Proctor and Gamble and Unilever also tend to remain with their full service agency of record partners, even when switching account teams and resources globally.

Customers Behaving Badly

Purpose – This chapter seeks to understand the concept of consumer misbehavior, especially in the form of consumer deviance and/or dysfunction. Method/approach – We review the marketing literature on consumer misbehavior, organizing the major themes scholars have used. We also differentiate between two perspectives researchers can employ: (1) misbehavior as deviance and (2) misbehavior as a wider construct. Findings – Marketers generally overlook consumer misbehavior and put the cost down as that of running a business. Furthermore, they are burdened by the notion of customer sovereignty which is the dictum that “customers are always right.” But customers also lie, cheat, steal, harass, and abuse. Consumer misbehavior is thus multifaceted which in turn makes the definition difficult to pin down. After reviewing the many definitions of consumer misbehavior, including cyber misbehavior, the authors concluded that the disruption perspective is more managerially useful than the perspective based on violation of norms. This is because disruption of the business is not only harmful or unlawful but can lead to a loss of well-being, material resources, and reputation of individuals and/or organizations. Implications – The chapter proposes a Pre-di-post framework that can be used to deal with customer misbehavior. Originality/value – Most marketing scholars have focused primarily on misbehavior as deviance, yet this limits the kinds of problems one tends to focus on and the range of solutions one normally considers. We offer an alternative perspective where misbehavior may be instead “an unremarkable consequence of normal conditions” which may suggest a wider range of amelioration strategies.