Advertising Creativity

June 19, 2017

Nothing is more efficient than creative advertising

NO wonder creative ads are far more appealing to people and undoubtedly they prompt them to buy products. Laboratory experiments have inferred that the creative messages get more attention and influence purchase behaviour but there is little research done on whether creative messages help increase sales revenue. At the same time there is no confusion on the fact that the creativity matters and one can find numerous ads which are creative AND at the same time have motivated consumers to go out and buy the product. Creativity is generally defined as divergent thinking- ability to find the unusual, to tread the path untreated, to find a non obvious solution to a problem. All this applied to advertising would mean moving away from the obvious, focussing on uniqueness of ideas.May be thats why the creative people feel, behave, dream, think and work differentlyAND sometimes also appear a little different than the normal marketing/management guys. Hollywood movies, in their own way, have portrayed the stereotype of professional identity of creative people in ad agencies. Movies like ‘Planes,Trains and Automobile’ and ‘Kramer vs Kramer’ portrayed the creative as insecure and neurotic individuals while in movies like “What Women Want’ they were poised, brilliant and well educated middle class mavericks.

Within the advertising industry the roles of creative and creativity are also often in dispute. The truth is that the tension between the values of art and aesthetics on one hand and commercial reality on the other has become a major resource for negotiation of professional identity in advertising agencies.In most of the places the creative identity remains and enigma. High level artistic creativity sometimes contain aesthetically appealing elements. This must be the reason why many in the audience (and readers) watch/read/pay attention to ads these days unlike earlier times when they used to skip them.May be that’s why my rustic landlord Ramesh Naidu admits that”the ads these days are sometimes better than even the TV programmes”. e.g.- Goibibo Ad with Deepika.

Ad -https://youtu.be/UcnGi8MA4hU

The concept of creativity in advertising- transforming the way the ads are created came about around the sixties. Chief proponent of this ‘Creative Revolution’ was Rosser Reeves of Ted Bates Advertising agency in the New York city.Reeves’s best known commercial on ‘Anacin’ bears the essence of his approach. Ad -https://youtu.be/oeas5jtffpM

Critics did not like the ad.They said the ad lacked finesse but the ad WORKED because it gave its message loud and clear. It was highly communicative and was liked by the consumers. The Creative Revolution changed not only the ground rules for making ads but also the type of talent recruited into the business.The credit for this goes to Bill Bernbach- a copy writer- who placed creativity before research. He believed that advertising needed to respect public’s intelligence and that the ad messages should be communicated via simpler, clear and precise images and words. e.g.-Think-Small ads of Beetle-

David Ogilvy- the Creative ad Guru -does not need any introduction.His ads were highly creative AND effective. This Rolls Royce ad is one of his early ads and one of his most successful one. The creative process itself follows no prescribed formula.Its genius lies in the ability of the writer and the art director.

My journey in to the field of advertising started around the late seventies and it was by the early eighties that i started producing and directing ad films in my own company. I have involved myself in the creative of almost all the ads that I have made. Let me talk here about two of my most talked about TV ads that people still recall- Onida TV and Good Knight mosquito repellent matts. Onida TV ad-right from the beginning -has been linked to a Devil- green and repulsive. Let me tell you the backstory. When I went to the Agency for a preliminary meeting the Creative director told me that they have decided to show God on top of the frame who orders the ordinary mortals to buy Onida TV. The whole frame was to be golden coloured and the voice of God was to have a bit of an echo.I said that the Erasmic shaving Blades had already done this sort ad with all gold so what new are you trying ? Instead of God, I said, you should incorporate in it a Devil ! The idea stuck in the mind of the art director. (I am talking of the ad where the slogan used to be- “Neighbour’s envy, Owner’s pride”). The art director incorporated the Devil in the campaign.The credit for creating the green devil with his tail and long ears etc. goes entirely to the art director of the Agency. The art director actually was really very talented. In the finished ad the TV screen is shown broken. But in reality it was not. He just painted over the screen in a way which gave an impression of having it been broken. After the shooting the sound track was specially worked on . We took a piece of stock music an treated it by passing it through the mixer four to five times to get feel which matched the devil concept. Even for the voice over we took a normal VO artist but treated the voice over and over again to get the devilish/metallic kind of effect in it. The ad thus produced kept intact the product promise enveloped in fun while still catching viewer’s attention. The ad ran for months. AND it worked !

Good Knight Mosquito repellent Matt’s launch ad was the one that I had been creatively involved with right through -in writing, in jingle producing and everything else.It was around the eighties and things in India were still a bit conservative but I tried to experiment in it with the characters, costumes, breaks in the jingle and so on. (I am talking of the ad where the jingle was “ Sweet dreams and Good Night folks”) it was for the first time that any ad showed the effect of the mosquito repellent compelling the mosquitoes getting out of the room. This shot was planned with a special effects expert which were not so easily found in those days.We both had to meet, brainstorm many times and decipher how it could be done! Vanraj Bhatia had produced many jingles for me. So he was chosen to produce this jingle too. Vanraj and I had lovely fight in the studio over how the breaks in the jingle will appear. He had his version and I had mine. Ultimately- as always- the one who pays wins! Idid. In those days the script for an ad had to be gotten approved by the officials of the DD.I also got it approved from them. The DD officer ’s only comment on the script was - “Please do not show the wife and husband sitting on the same bed!” Sarkari babu could not think of any objection !! In the first client viewing the finished ad did not find favour. I must confess I was quite disheartened but I had worked hard on it and still had faith in the ad. Its only upon its release that it got appreciated by the viewers. There were calls from other agencies appreciating the ad. It is then that the client decided to stop all other advertising for the product and increased its telecast from once to three times a week ! The ad created history. The ad was not only creatively satisfying but it also WORKED. It established the brand and made it the market leader. (When the original developer sold the product new client went to other agency and got new ads made. Even the newer ads -for quite sometime-retained my jingle , slogan and specially the shot of mosquitoes being driven out of the room !) Advertising is an extended arm of marketing and it is about selling. One’s creative ideas will have to be tailored to selling the product or service. Aldous Huxley has said that writing an ad is “One of the most interesting and difficult literary forums” and that might, perhaps, be the reason why its not necessary that a literary writer can be a successful ad writer. But howsoever creative an ad might be conceived it still needs support and approval of the managers and planners. They must have enough faith in the creative so as to be able to present it to the client. Even the clients need to have the ability and understanding of going along with the idea and taking the ‘risk’ if its a new/untapped concept. A good creative ad is a team work or should I say ‘ a team-brain-work’ !