Elasticity in advertising is influenced by creative strategy.
According to the company, Burger King will earn an Effie Award in September of 2021. Every year, this distinguished award recognizes the most efficient advertising campaigns in the world. Despite this, the brand's sales declined throughout the campaign. Its long-time chief marketing officer (CMO) departed after the brand suffered a considerable loss of ground to some of its main rivals. Several opponents have questioned how such a situation is compatible with the honor. Isn't it true that sales are ultimately the standard by which marketing performance is evaluated? Recent research published in the Journal of Marketing demonstrates how marketers may use strategic thinking to produce advertising that improves sales and, as a result, "moves the needle" in terms of influencing consumer perceptions and behaviors.
Instead of being concerned with the specific tactical considerations involved in creative advertising, our framework, Advertising Creative Strategy (or ACS), focuses on the basic features of the medium. It contrasts between the purpose of the advertising ("what" is stated in the ad, or its content) and its form ("how" it is expressed, or how it is carried out) in the marketplace. This framework is broad enough to give a full review of innovative techniques. Meanwhile, it keeps the complexity to a reasonable amount of "moving parts," making it easier to understand. This makes it easier to use and get significant insights from the data.
Conceptually fascinating, this two-component structure is also quite significant in reality. Because of this, ad firms and famed "ad men" like David Ogilvy and William Bernbach have adapted their methods to marketing. What matters more than how you say something, according to Ogilvy, yet what matters more is how you do it, according to Bernbach. There are numerous roles and duties in creating creative advertising, with the content being the primary emphasis of account planning and execution being the primary focus of creative teams.
An advertisement's sensory, emotive, and cognitive content is shown in three dimensions, which we use to analyze the function of the creative advertising strategy (ACS) (EAC representation). Experiential material gives procedural knowledge on how product qualities should (could) be coupled to produce optimal performance. Its primary objective is usually to either reinforce existing behaviors or encourage the development of new ones, as appropriate. Statements that need a subjective judgment and individual interpretation are considered effective substances. In this case, the cognitive content is genuine and contains assertions regarding verifiable product characteristics, traits, and advantages.
Executional components and creative templates are distinguished in the examination of forms. Those who make choices about how the material is delivered are represented by the parts of the execution model. Comparative, endorsement, entertainment, imagery/visual, and mnemonic devices are the five major categories that we consider:
When comparing rivals, the comparative category represents the utilization of comparable information. Using a source (celebrity, expert, or regular customer) to advocate the stated advantages is included in the endorsement area of the marketing mix. In the entertainment area, we group together aspects such as drama, narrative, ingenious plot devices, humor, and humor. We group anything visually appealing and graphical under the imagery/visual area to make things even more organized. The third group of features, known as mnemonic devices, are aspects that assist consumers in making an instant mental link with an advertisement or a brand.
The information-based nature of comparison and endorsement execution is attributed to how they aid in processing information. Because they engage the senses, we regard entertainment and imagery/visual categories as effectively based. Mnemonic devices are classified as "global" because they cover many brand-related executional aspects, either informationally or effectively based.
Additionally, we consider another part of the form: innovative templates. Identifiable and generalizable execution patterns are the building blocks of creativity. These serve the purpose of connecting the qualities and advantages of promoted items.
As a result of the framework's design, we can determine the degree to which an advertisement emphasizes a given content component or the focus of an ad. Additionally, we may record how both the contents and the executional aspects change over time.
We examined 2251 creatives from 91 consumer packaged goods companies over four years. We discovered that function is the most critical driver of marketplace success, with most attention being paid to one specific content component in each creative. Following experiential content, cognitive and emotive content is the most effective in improving performance. Generally speaking, execution contributes to the overall efficacy of the function in a supporting capacity. Marketers may maximize the synergy when the range is paired with congruent executional aspects. It is also discovered that by changing the composition of their advertising creative approach over time, marketers may generate the effect of "creative pulsing."
According to our findings, strategic thinking pays off in advertising. To maximize the synergy between content and execution, marketers should concentrate their content on one particular dimension, complement it with consistent executional aspects, and change the structure of their content over time, according to the Content Marketing Institute.