By Joe Smith
Special to the Record
“Nothing is more efficient than creative advertising. Creative advertising is more memorable, longer lasting, works with less media spending, and builds a fan community… faster.” Once said years ago by Stephan Vogel, Ogilvy & Mather Germany’s chief creative officer.
Today’s average consumer is bombarded by thousands of ad messages from a plethora of media. This creates a constant battle for advertisers to break through this clutter to create a message that will be not only memorable but will bring positive results.
In order to achieve this you will need to develop a creative strategy that will involve setting out clear guidelines to help establish a brand identity that will resonate with your customers.
The foundation for a successful creative strategy is to understand your target audience. By identifying their desires, wants and needs you can tailor your messages creatively to address those issues.
The key element to communicating with your audience is to develop a compelling brand identity. This should encompass your mission, values and unique selling proposition by creating an emotional attachment that will leave a lasting impression.
In order to grab their attention you need to develop captivating visuals, memorable slogans and utilize creative storytelling techniques. These not only help cut through the clutter but also make your business more personable and increase customer engagement.
But really how important is creative? In an article put out by the American Marketing Association, researchers found that creative ads that stand out are more liked, more processed and have a greater positive effect. According to Kantar, a data and consulting company, evidence proves that effective and creative ads can generate four times as much profit.
Not all products or services have the flexibility to be wildly creative, especially functional products which need to focus more on the features and actual product usage. But this does not mean the messages cannot be creative. At the other end of the spectrum products or services that are more experiential have a little more latitude in how they present themselves creatively.
Creativity just does not come out of the blue. As an example, when I am contemplating doing a painting, I spend a lot of time thinking about the lighting, time of day, what can be eliminated or what needs to be added and how the viewer might respond emotionally.
Creating effective, captivating and impressionistic ads requires a lot of work. The one thing to remember is that done properly it has been established your messages will be more memorable and persuasive. As Thomas Edison once said “Success is 10 per cent inspiration and 90 per cent perspiration.”
Joe Smith is a communications consultant and an accomplished fine artist. He can be reached via email at joesmith@shaw.ca