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Int. J. , Vol. x, No. x, xxxx
1
Neo-Creative Advertising: from emotive narrative to
electronic entertainment
Paloma García
Department of Advertising,
CEADE / Prifysgol Cymru University of Wales
Avda. Leonardo Da Vinci s/n, Seville, Spain
E-mail: [email protected]
Abstract: The modern mind needs to be fascinated. This simple and
conclusive statement made by Edgard M. Hallowell (Hallowell, 2006) as
part of his research on cognitive and emotional health would lead us to
think, by antithesis, about another reality that would be rather more
disturbing: the current constant desire in individuals to alter the mental
state. Nowadays, possibly more than ever before, we could talk about a
social state created by intolerance to boredom, which undoubtedly opens
up new and interesting research studies for psychology, communication
and advertising.
The objective of this study is to reflect upon how advertising is
operating in this scenario and delve into the relationships between creative
advertising, entertainment and emotion.
Keywords: Entertainment, new technologies, information society,
emotion, attention, insight, advertainment, neo-creative advertising.
Reference to this paper should be made as follows: García Candón, P.
(2009) ‘Neo-Creative Advertising: from emotive narrative to electronic
entertainment, Int. J. Arts and Technology, Vol. X, No. X, pp.XX–XX.
Biographical note: Paloma García is a practicing creative and advertising
copywriter, with expertise in strategic communication. She has worked for
ten years in advertising and marketing communications agencies in Spain,
including McCann Erickson as creative director, also winning several
creative awards. She is a certified member of the Creative Club in Spain
(CdeC) and last two year, has been in academic research as professor of
advertising and creativity at university, publishing in area of brand
identity, creativity and technological convergence. She is also interested in
scientific research for creativity.
Copyright © 200x Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.
P. García
1
Introduction
Creative advertising is linked to the consumer society in that it represents
the way of forming the messages that the producers of goods and services
want to reach their consumers. That’s why, if the behavioural norms of
consumers change and new social factors come into play or change within
the wheel of consumption, creative advertising feeds off all of them to
continue creating contents that catch the consumer and do not leave
him/her indifferent.
Therefore, to approach the new creative advertising, it is necessary
to attend to the most significant and profound phenomena occurring in
society, making it almost imperative to reflect on the new culture of
entertainment. We shall begin with the hypothesis that the current
entertainment consumption could be dealt with in the same way as any
commercial product, in that it is orientated towards individual
consumption by means of technological objects.
2
A new culture of entertainment
In the last few years, a series of sociological, psychological and
technological factors have been coming together is such a way that they
have profiled a consumer as needing a great amount of stimulation. A
person who intensely seeks discourses that contribute new emotions and
help him/her maintain the levels of activation that today have become
necessary to maintain themselves as competitive individuals.
2.1 Psychosocial factors
Historically, the media have filled three social functions: offering
information, entertaining, and forming. In the work Sociology by Anthony
Giddens we find an identification of the media as a means of access to the
consciousness (Giddens, 1994), but in the last decade there have been
many indicators which establish that the media have evolved in their
contents, since the interest in personal entertainment of their audiences has
surpassed the interest in information. In other words, the access to today’s
media appears to no longer satisfy a need for information, since we can,
for example, subscribe by sms to current affairs, but rather a prevailing
need for distraction. Proof of this is the growing controversy over the
media and the quantity and quality of the contents of entertainment offered
by televisions whose object is to broadcast to majority audiences.
The factors associated with this growing need of entertainment
could revolve around several realities, such as the deterioration of the
Neo-Creative Advertising: from emotive narrative to electronic entertainment
conditions of existence typical of the feeling of well-being and the
diffusion of a new mode of development that configures the entire
productive model based on information and knowledge.
Important sociologists such as Barman, Luham and Beck have
been advancing a new conscience in individual contemporaries of
insecurity about the future; that is, insecurity as a vital experience in the
postmodern present. The syndrome of loss of control that leads to worry
(Beck, 1992; 1996; Luhmann, 1996) tells of the loss of confidence in
science and progress and in the utopia of the economic well-being with no
limits. Looking at it this way, the term Risk Society is coined to define the
current historical and social moment. What characterizes this so-called
Risk Society is the generalized state of uncertainty and discontent. Its
consequence for individuals, in the words of Buxó (2008), is that “now the
family faces problems with no solutions and this vulnerability produces
among its members an ontological insecurity that makes anxiety a basic
component of lifestyle”.
It would not seem reckless to think, therefore, that if anxiety is a
factor derived from the postmodern lifestyle, the necessity of finding
experiences that manage to calm it or avoid it will be present with the
same force in our society. In relation to this point of view and as a
consequence of this theory, Alonso (2009) tells us about “the increase in
leisure time consumption (trips, entertainment industry, dissipative
shopping) in order to live rapidly in the eternal present created by a culture
of oversized and triumphant enjoyment, product of the substantial
weakening of the possibilities of long-term stability associated with
deregulation” that characterizes the so-called Risk Society.
As for the interrelating theory of Kemper, reinforcing the earlier
theory, it holds that the majority of human emotions is nourished and
makes sense within the framework of our social relations; that is, the
nature of emotions is conditioned by the nature of the social situation in
which people feel. Nowadays we live in vertiginous times, where anxiety,
this generalized discontent, would not seem so painful if we didn’t depend
on waiting to interact with another individual in order to be entertained.
This is where the commodification of moods comes into play: just as we
buy food in a supermarket or shop without depending on others for its
consumption, nowadays we feel a strong need to acquire and possess
“objects” that give us entertainment and emotion in an individual manner.
Therefore, it’s not a matter of a social necessity of affiliation or a phatic
dimension of contact relating to entertainment, but rather a new necessity
of finding experiences that are immediately available in some physical
place, completely prepared and ready at our command, rapidly accessible
without which we would feel a true deficit.
P. García
It is true that in other times there have been greater risks, anxieties
of extreme magnitude related even to mere survival, but never before has
our society had access to so much information, so much communication,
so many objects of entertainment and in such an immediate form, that it
appears to have changed individuals and their human relations several
times. These circumstances raise, without a doubt, a new philosophy of
understanding work, forms of production, sex or social relations and
consequently, creative advertising.
2.2 Technological factors
The different economic agents that operate in our system, amongst them
businesses and their brands, coexist with these phenomena and offer their
products, adopting them to this new voracity of individualism and
immediacy. It’s a part of the entertainment market: the new electronic
entertainment, quite a post-industrial economy sustained by a very potent
technological component set in the production, treatment and circulation
of information and data. Internet, the mobile phone, videogames, consoles,
music and video players and other electronic devices form a part of this.
All are accessible instantly, without waiting, without needing “another” to
interact. All provide emotions that alter our emotional state, like Prozac
pills, which remove us from subjective worries and anxieties that may
arise as postmodern individuals when we are not busy. This progressive
substitution of leisure time, which we designate to entertainment, for
electronic time, which is designated to activities related only to
technology, runs parallel to a profound impact on society and an incipient
destruction of the identity of the individual as social beings of direct
contact.
Following a survey done by the Pfizer Foundation, an article was
recently published in a spanish magazine on the social networks in
internet. Several experts were consulted on the subject, amongst them a
scholar and researcher that claims to have proven that “to the segmental
population of 12- to 20-year-olds, reality seems more boring and less
varied than virtual reality”. 70% of them access the web daily and surf
alone. (Jiménez, 2009)
As for the European Commission, it points out that in the Green
Book: Living and Working in the Information Society: priority for people
(1996) it states:
“In the last twenty years we have seen a revolution in
communication and information technologies whose reach is much
wider than the majority of us could have imagined.(…) This evolution is
transforming work, the structures of grading and organization in
Neo-Creative Advertising: from emotive narrative to electronic entertainment
businesses, which introduces a fundamental change in the job market and
society in general.”
The consequence of all these facts is that nowadays we can have a certain
feeling that sometimes individuals may be more attached to objects
associated with electronic entertainment than to people, not only because
these have become an important part of our well-being, but because they
are understood to be a social symbol, like many of the products and brands
that have been offered throughout our economic history. Simmel has
already established a difference between the use of an object and the
possession of the same as elements that are different but complementary:
“The economic form of worth fluctuates between two limits: on one hand
the desire of the object, which is tied to the feeling of satisfaction,
possession and anticipated enjoyment; and on the other, the same
enjoyment which, in the strict sense of the word, does not constitute any
economic act (…) In this way, every object has two functions: one, to be
used, and the other, to be possessed” (Simmel, 1977). This differentiation
shows that objects have a worth that goes beyond the function for which
they were created, since the possession of these imply a social symbol that
transmits cultural significance. The objects associated with electronic
entertainment transmit the message of “being integrated”, ultimately,
forming a “current and connected” part of what is also called the
Information Society, which makes it practically essential for the
“emotional survival” of the present-day individual. This emotional
survival is conditioned in part by social acceptance which paradoxically
depends on the capacity of the individualism of the individual.
All in all, from the creative advertiser’s point of view, we gather
that entertainment may be consumed in a similar way as any commercial
product in so far as it is orientated towards individual consumption by
means of technological objects. “The new portable and ultra-light objects
(…) lose their fixed or familiar character and become authentic personal
prostheses of a consumer that is more and more independent” (Attali,
1999).
3
The displacement of entertainment and the new consumer:
According to what we have seen in the earlier section, we may ascertain
that there exists a displacement of entertainment from social spaces, with
direct interaction, to individual spaces, with interaction on the web.
Several authors specialized in consumption consider that there formerly
existed within the culture a set of elements of festive-carnival tradition
(Hetherington, 1992) made by adapting a recreational aspect to shopping
places. From this perspective, malls, shopping centres and large
P. García
supermarkets form a part of the recreational-festive component inherent in
the act of shopping. We do not believe that this form of entertainment
associated with shopping has substantially changed, but there may be a
loss of importance for social relations and individual enjoyment, since
electronic entertainment is more comfortable, accessible and on occasion
cheaper. Through internet and its multiple possibilities (mail, chats, social
webs…) and video consoles we can continue to be “connected” to other
users of the web, consuming entertainment, without sharing a physical and
social environment and satisfying the same necessity of leisure time and
on occasion, direct buying.
The development of technology has caused a true change in
consumer patterns and the way the individual faces advertising. In the
same way that entertainment has somewhat displaced public places with
private ones, within the home this has displaced the traditional television
with the new technological screens, originating a whirlwind of uncertainty
for brands and their advertising. The revolution of internet and the web 2.0
has caused the consumer to discover a different access to information and
entertainment where he can “escape” from the impact of advertising and
this has tempted him to leave off watching television as the main form of
domestic entertainment. The rules of the consumption of new technologies
have substantially changed the profile of the consumer regarding
information. From the passive consumer, typical of earlier stages of
interactivity, we have passed to the self-productive consumer, active and
interconnected, the prosumer (Toffler, 1980). “Today, the consumer wants
to be continually connected, has a multitasking behaviour by sharing his
time between different mediums and frequently simultaneously. This same
consumer, on the other hand, tends to personalize his pattern of
consumption, desegregating the contents to select only what interests him,
creating his own programs by eliminating or regrouping contents, and
chooses where and when to consume” (Linares, 2007)
We can imagine the important consequences that this on-demand
consumerism has for brands, which have enjoyed the model of content
interruption for decades. If before, the consumer society was characterized
by a dimension of social integration, the new consumers with much more
individualized patterns blur the homogeneous consumer segments and
force creative advertising to consider our messages in a much more
generic and more complex form, with many more supports, abandoning
old work patterns.
4
The twilight of the emotive narration
For years, so-called “emotional advertising” has been talked about as a
creative style that has without a doubt reached our day. This tendency
Neo-Creative Advertising: from emotive narrative to electronic entertainment
arose from the basis that it was no longer necessary to give rational
arguments for consumption, because consumption had become part of the
cultural idiosyncrasy; that is, the acceleration of consumption made
rational justification almost useless and emotional differentiation began to
be talked about as a key competitive factor. This creative treatment was
characterized as presenting or suggesting situations or affective behaviours
with those that the receptor tended to identify with or to pull the strings of
diverse emotions (García, M. 2008). Under this light, brands began to go
beyond the goods that they produced and introduced codes that created a
symbolic world, their own mythology around themselves. It was part of
the brand image philosophy pushed by Ogilvy that replaced the unique
selling proposition. Nevertheless, we believe that brand differentiation
through emotive messages as part of a competitive advantage eventually
stopped being a truly strategic factor when the majority of the competitive
brands adopted this form of communication.
With the arrival of the new technologies, virtualization becomes
progressive in the individual sphere, social relations and in entertainment,
eroding as well this type of emotional advertising. This has changed
structurally, as perceptions, attitudes and behaviour have changed in a
consumer who is harder and harder to reach through massive advertising
impacts. It’s true that work is still being done in this way when we find
our target in conventional communication media, especially in advertising
campaigns orientated towards television, but its use in pieces destined for
different technological supports or new targets are undoubtedly infected
by another creative philosophy. The same rules that work in conventional
media do not work where feed-back is possible.
As an example, we shall touch briefly on the study published by
the investigative unit of McCann Ericsson (MERIC, 1995) which
presented a new consumer profile that had grown in a digital world. The
characteristics of this new profile present, from a pragmatic perspective,
two new precedents when it comes to working in creative advertising. On
the one hand, according to the published work, these new consumers
possessed an extremely high level of advertising and marketing languages
and techniques, which requires a change in the way advertising contents
have traditionally been generated to make them continue to be attractive.
On the other hand, a great need of individuality became obvious, that is,
the creation of messages directed to a large public began, therefore, to give
way to others much more individualized.
For creative advertising, the news this type of investigation
brought at the end of the nineties was that emotive advertising was no
longer effective in the new media. This was already well-known, much
imitated and not very personalizable. The good news, nonetheless, was
that in order to interest the target in our ideas, it was no longer necessary
P. García
to create emotions where none existed. In this sense, I agree with the
opinion that in communication, we tend to over-use any concept or idea
that has emotional force. In the words of the Heath brothers (Heath, 2007):
“The use of emotional associations is an arms race; if our adversary
manufactures a missile, we have to manufacture two. If he is unique, I
have to be super-unique.” From the creative profession’s point of view,
this represents in itself a bother and sometimes unjustified limitation.
We can gather, from this, that neo-creative advertising will
originate when we give up working exclusively from the point of view of
emotivity and embrace the terms of utility and experience that emerge
from the new media. In fact, the basic principle of the so-called “new
advertising” (García C., 2007) is defined as that which quits pursuing the
consumer, making him be the one to come to the brand; that is, to the
exciting experiences created in that same universe. On this point we
believe it is important to clarify that the twilight of emotive advertising
does not imply that creativity no longer continues to work with emotions,
but rather in a much wider, freer and above all useful sense for the
consumer. The fundamental difference is that one no longer seeks to create
emotions that simply move us, but rather ones that stimulate us; that is,
those that affect us in a much wider sense: entertaining us, increasing our
reality, feeling close, not merely aspirational… Ultimately, contributing
something valuable so we wish to invest our time no longer in “messages”
but in “contents” contributed by brands. Contents contributed by brands
for the entertainment of their consumers. This focus has generated a new
discipline in which some agencies try to specialize: the advertaitment, a
hybrid concept between the term advertisement and entertainment.
5
Attention as a scarce commodity
We all know that attention is a necessary condition for the process of
communication to take place. On the other hand, one must also take into
account “the purposeful character of all communication; that is, the
acceptance or rejection on the part of the receptor of the specific sense of
the communication, which might or might not constitute a premise for his
conduct” (Luhmann, 1995). Translated into terms of creative advertising,
in order for this process of communication to take place effectively, the
creator must on one hand capture the attention and on the other
communicate or offer a content relevant to the consumer.
Until now, in the traditional media, we gather that attention may
“be bought”. The central offices and the media planners offer brands
GRPs (Gross Rating Points), which seem to assure not only coverage but
also frequency of advertising impacts. However, the Information Society,
characterized by the existence of a very ample communicative offer,
Neo-Creative Advertising: from emotive narrative to electronic entertainment
converts attention into a very scarce commodity, vied for from advertising
to the powers that be. For the advertising market, this also implies a totally
new perspective, and for creative advertising, an added difficulty to a
complex profession.
The capacity of capturing attention has become one of the most
required possessions for marketing, which makes it not surprising that
brands invest thousands of millions in learning to capture it, for as the
habits of consumers have changed, so too has attention changed place. If
we maintain the hypothesis that the spectator has transferred to the new
technological screens, we must realize that with these, especially in
internet, the consumer is not passively exposed to them, but looks
specifically for the contents that interest him.
Media planners have been working for some time with
segmentation techniques of behavioural targeting, capable of creating adhoc populations for brands. This would also affect the creative profession.
Numerous authors coincide in pointing out that currently capturing
attention in on-line media is by one-to-one communication; that is, with
the implantation of electronic supports, creative strategy must generate
messages that are much more individualized and personalizable.
To a certain extent, these facts imply that the creative must yield
the protagonism of the product to the user, especially keeping in mind his
behaviour in internet, what he enjoys doing, what he enjoys watching. If
not, attention in an on-demand medium would be very difficult to achieve
and the brand would be far from emitting contents that may “affect” web
users. Using this approach, concentrating on the user, we can glimpse the
key points to capturing the attention of new consumers. On one hand, as
we have seen earlier, concentrating on the entertainment of the new
consumers, being providers of leisure time under the strategies of
recreational marketing that reinforce the symbolic universe and the brand
values. On the other hand, continuing with the formats of interactive
publicity spots, but using a different methodology. In this sense, a recent
european study (EIAA, European Association of Interactive Publicity,
2009) published that 54% of those surveyed were in favour of or neutral to
only regarding on-line advertising based on their own buying habits on
internet. In Spain, internet users appraised online advertising according to
the following features:





being entertaining
being good, that is, creatively interesting
relating to their own interests
being able to click on the spot
not interrupting their surfing
P. García
All in all, capturing attention nowadays with on-line advertising requires
an effort to learn the new languages of a much more specific target that
behaves very differently than the traditional one, where interruptions or
impersonal contents are more bothersome than ever, which greatly affects
the effectiveness of the message.
If we manage to capture the attention in a significant manner, the
reward is great. Aside from the advantages of reporting and the direct sale,
the spontaneous broadcasting of advertising implies really surprising
advantages over off-line advertising. It has never been so easy to convert a
user into a prescriber. The enormous potential of the multiplying effect
that internet offers us is well worth a change in creative planning.
6
Final conclusions on neo-creative advertising
All the above-mentioned factors have either directly or indirectly affected
the creative profession. The rules have changed so much that nowadays
we can talk about new advertising or neo-creative as disciplines that are
substantially different from their predecessors.
From a reflexion on the aspects mentioned in the article, we can
establish four key aspects to define this neo-creativity:
1. Converse vs. announce:
The neo-creative must know that the grammar of the new communication
media is different from the grammar of conventional media. This is
perhaps the most evident consequence of all that we have been dealing
with, and it represents a point of view that affects both the creative
strategy and the message content. If nowadays we wish to achieve the
communication of a message to our target in an effective manner, we must
explore the way of entertainment, feedback and sincere dialogue as a
differentiating strategy within the universe of the new technologies. We
may remember here the famous phrase of the copywriter Neil French,
which reaches a special significance in the present: “People hate
advertising, so I try not to write advertising” (D&AD, 1995a). This
circumstance requires that the creative have wide knowledge of his public,
forgetting purely informative content and concentrating on messages that
generate a mutual benefit, a personal dialogue, since consumer and
publicist meet at the same level of hierarchy. In this sense, the creative
directors Steve Hayden and Peter Hirshberg recently published The
Manifest on Monday Morning to promote the so-called conversational
marketing. Their theory may be summarized in the title at the head of the
study: “Conversations are about talking, not announcing. They’re about
Neo-Creative Advertising: from emotive narrative to electronic entertainment
listening, not surveying. They’re about paying attention, not getting
attention. ‘Driving’ is for cars and cattle, not conversation.”
The question underlying this approach is, logically, the way this
conversation should be held with consumers. To answer this, the abovementioned study establishes the following characteristics that this dialogue
must fulfil so that live brands participate in market conversations:
 Real. Conversational marketing is carried out by human beings,
writing and speaking in their own voices, for themselves—not just
for their employers.
 Constant. Conversational marketing’s heartbeat is the human one,
not some media schedule. Brands need to work incessantly to be
understood within the context of the market conversation and to
earn and keep the respect of their conversational partners.
 Genuinely interested. Intellectual engagement can’t be faked—at
least for long. Current interest is what keeps conversations going,
and it’s the key to sustained brand presence.
 Intent on learning. Every participant who stays with the
conversation learns. Humans are distinguished by their unlimited
capacity to learn. This should be no less true of brands than it is of
individuals.
 Humble. The term "branding" was born in the cattle industry and
borrowed by advertising and mass media at the height of the
Industrial Age. In those days the power to inform was concentrated
in the hands of a few giant companies. Now it's in everybody's
hands.
 Attentive. In the old days, brands wanted everybody else to pay
attention to them. Now brands need to pay attention to everybody
else.
 Personal. No individual outsources their conversation or their
education. This is no less true of brands than of people. Because
brands today are people. Smart brands reward individual
employees for engaging in market conversations.
2. Utility vs. emotivity
P. García
We have seen that in the current technological context, emotive narration
created around brands has lost part of its charm. From one simple
observation of the western advertising market we can observe how current
advertising tends towards being natural. Brands, bit by bit, have moved
away from idealized worlds, in part because consumers identify more with
spots that reflect daily reality. So it comes down to looking for complicity
with the consumer, finding an insight into what connects us with him. But,
what insights are those of the new consumer? This search is not easy, nor
intuitive, and is usually based on projective research techniques, amongst
them, to give us an idea, the family brand and paper doll techniques
(Hernandez, 2003). In the family brand technique, for example, the
existing relationship between brands is looked for by representing them
personified in a family context. As for paper doll, it is a recreation of the
identification techniques that facilitate the job of connection, allowing the
researched individual to physically manipulate a drawing in accordance to
the image the brand consumer has of the prototype.
This way of working is common in the brand creation process and
provides material the creative can work with in advertising in terms of the
brand values. Nevertheless, with all that we have said, we can gather that,
as several experts indicate, the current brand market no longer competes
with other brands, but rather with all the possibilities of leisure time that
exist in the world. The revolutionary part of this approach is that it brings
the consumer closer in a much broader psychosocial view, in which he is
configured as needing stimulation and entertainment where contact is only
possible if we offer something in which he wants to invest his time,
something “useful”. That is, searching for complicity is not based so much
on emotions that provoke thinking “I felt this” as much as “this is fun”.
However, we must not conform ourselves with only this vision of
fun for fun’s sake. Leisure time and the content that brands generate for
entertainment must be integrated into commercial strategies, although
perhaps more in the short run, and respond to brand objectives that are
transferred to the consumer. This is not always easy, for it involves
maintaining a delicate balance between solidity and immutability of brand
values and the agility and rise of what is today considered entertainment,
and tomorrow will not be.
3. Brand vs. trends
Finding coherency between brand values and efficient actions in internet
means the new creative must have very concrete skills. This perhaps has
more to do with experience and intuition than with imagination or creative
talent in order to avoid weakening a brand with a passing trend or
phenomena on internet that we want to join. It also implies greater courage
Neo-Creative Advertising: from emotive narrative to electronic entertainment
on the part of agencies at the moment of saying “no” to certain passing
phenomena that may result in purely pyrotechnic marketing.
Aaker states that “strong brands usually move beyond product
attributes to a brand identity based upon a brand personality and a
relationship with customers”. Thus, if we consider a brand as a person,
with values, a way of understanding life and a way of talking and being in
the world, it would appear logical to think that he would have one
behaviour and not another, he would choose one trend and not another,
and, as with what happens to real individuals, there would be people who
they do not want to talk to because they have nothing to do with them.
This involves a great effort on the part of the announcer and a tremendous
consulting job on the part of the agencies regarding their clients to make
them understand the phenomena, the format and the actions suitable to
each brand. We stand before a profession “in complete metamorphosis,
which is evolving from a vision centred almost exclusively on the
relationship with the media and advertising to another much more
complex, orientated towards the management of the intrinsic value of
companies” (Cervera, 2004).
When the time comes to transfer this intangible value of electronic
entertainment, we consider it important to name the three important
principles of branding on-line mentioned in the book Advertising on-line
now by Lars Hemming Jorgensen (2008):
 Promote frequency (generate traffic): you should start by knowing
who you mean to interact with and control the narrative flow, as
well as create a work capable of encouraging conversational
themes that are susceptible to being spread on the web. Mouth-tomouth is a very strong promotional channel. In this sense, it must
be mentioned that the importance of P2P interchanges is such that
in Spain it involves 80% of total IP traffic (study).
 Promote brand conversation: if we obtain a lot of traffic on a web
page without doing anything else, we will increase the billing but
in no way the conversion to a brand in terms of fidelity. The first
step must be to create certain profiles which may be identified by
surfing behaviour and, in this way, make unique messages reach
him in an updated and original form in order to fortify the
relationship with the brand.
 Promote internal alignment: improve visibility and solidity of the
brand by counting on ideas that we agree on in terms of brand
coherency.
P. García
4. Planning vs. creativity
More than ever nowadays creative advertising has a great ally: planning.
Traditionally, the bigger the media, the more creativity was needed to
attract attention; however, now there are many more specialized media
and a good planning can be used to make our message much more
relevant. However, this is a two-edged sword for the creative profession,
for if our objectives are eminently quantitative and not a strengthening of
the brand, the effectiveness of the message does not depend on the
creativity, but rather on the relevancy of the message within the content. I
believe that is something creatives must be able to assume: creativity, per
se, will not always be the protagonist of the effectiveness if our message is
inserted into a micro-specialized media.
What we creatives can demand is that the strategy be defined by a
correct micro-segmentation that especially includes psychographic, not
demographic variables. Variables whose particularities we can know in
order to establish a communication channel with a code that is close to the
lifestyle and the consuming patterns of our target. We must remember that
we no longer create for a homogenous group, but rather a generation of
individuals. In this sense, planning and creativity must more than ever
work together and the creatives, beyond thinking to converse, must be able
to integrate the strategic part without worrying about doing work not
related to their profession. After all, as the copywriter James Lowther
states, “The best campaign planners almost always belong to the creative
part” (D&AD, 1995b).
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