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Creativity Awards: Great Expectations?

30th

March 2012

Contact: First Author Second Author Third Author

Dr Mark Kilgour Dr. Sheila Sasser Prof Scott Koslow

Deptartment of Marketing Department of Marketing Depart of Marketing and Management

Waikato Management School College of Business

The University of Waikato Eastern Michigan University Macquarie University

Private Bag 3105 300 West Michigan Avenue

Hamilton 3240 #469 Owen Building

Email: kilgour@waikato.ac.nz ssasser@emich.edu scott.koslow@mq.edu.au

Ph (64) 7 838 4466 ext 7885 (001) 734 487 0362 (61-2) 9850 8459

Mob 021 1177 516 Ypsilanti, MI 48197 North Ryde, NSW 2109,

New Zealand. United States of America Australia

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Abstract

Given the creativity inherent in advertising, one useful measures of creativity may be the

advertising creativity award. While creativity awards have been used by academics, agencies,

and clients, as 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 ads 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.

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After decades of slow and uneven progress, fresh new perspectives for creativity

measurement are emerging (Villalba 2012). This has propelled a wave of scholarly inquiry

into the exploration of how creativity is instigated, measured and rewarded across multiple

interdisciplinary streams of research. This creative fervour has reinvigorated the quest for a

readily available and universally applicable measure of creativity. One measure that has been

used in the academic research has been award winning creative advertisements such as ‘One

Show’, ‘EFFIES’ or ‘Communication Arts’ awards winners, (Kover, Goldberg and James

1995; Till and Baack 2005). This article looks into whether these award winning creative

works truly reflect the highest levels of creativity, or are they merely recognition for doing

something original, unique, and possibly bizarre.

A better understanding of what creativity awards represent can be used to help

compare two common approaches used to measure creativity. The first of these approaches

involves participants, primarily students, who rate the creativity of the advertisements used in

the study. The other approach uses professional ratings, either through direct ratings of the

advertisements used in the studies, or proxy ratings through the use of creative award

winning advertisements (Baack, Wilson and Till 2008; Kaufman, Baer, Cole and Sexton

2008; Kover, Goldberg and James 1995; Till and Baack 2005; Vanden, Reid and Schorin

1983).

Creativity researchers are not the only ones interested in advertising awards. If

awards different things than they purport, this also has implications for professionals. Indeed,

one common industry criticism of creativity awards is that they are too focused on originality

without enough focus given to whether those advertisements are appropriateness to the target

audience. For agencies, the hot pursuit of trophy case awards consumes considerable agency

resources, and when an agency wins, the award is often used as the basis for agency self-

promotion (El-Murad and West 2003; Tippins and Kunkel 2006). Clients consider the

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creative award track record as a criterion item that is also used in the agency selection

process, since it is a tangible indicator of success. Moreover, agencies that place significant

emphasis on winning creativity awards may find they are instilling motivational signals that

reinforce certain components over other components, also required for effective advertising

(Hemlin, Allwood and Martin 2009; Friedman 2009). Since it seems to matter for both

agencies and clients, simply better understanding what these awards actually measure has

significant implications.

Relevance of Creativity Awards for Research

Understanding what awards actually measure is an important question worthy of

scholarly inquiry since award-winning advertisements are often used as proxy measures of

creativity. In order to compare the results from studies that use practitioner based evaluations

of creativity, with those that use alternative measures, a better understanding and vital metrics

of how practitioners rate creativity is needed. This knowledge will also assist in the crucial

quest for a widely accepted, and valid, measure of creativity beyond the definitional debate.

Not surprisingly creativity researchers have made extensive use of the advertising

domain for their research (Bryne, Shipman & Mumford 2010; Ewing, Napoli & West 2001;

Lonergan, Scott & Mumford 2004). The advertising industry has a number of unique

characteristics which makes it a highly relevant and potentially insightful area for creativity

research. First, advertising is often required to be both original, to break through the clutter

and grab the attention of the target audience, and appropriate, or relevant to that audience and

the overall message. Although there is still on-going research in relation to the definition and

measurement of the key components of creativity (Runco and Jaeger 2012), it is widely

accepted that some form of the two components, originality and appropriateness, are central

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dimensions of creativity (Amabile 1996; Ford 1996; Kasof 1995; Kilgour & Koslow 2009;

Mumford and Gustafson, 1988; Mumford and Simonton, 1997; Runco 2004; Runco and

Charles, 1992).

Second, the advertising industry is one of the few industries with personnel that

specialize primarily in creative idea generation processes, what are referred to by advertising

managers as ‘creatives’. Finally, significant time and resources in the industry are focused on

winning awards, and hence there are numerous industry based proxy measures of creativity,

as well as significant research into advertising effects; two obviously crucial areas for

understanding causation.

Practitioners, particularly advertising creative personnel, have emphasized the

importance of creativity for advertising effectiveness for a long time (Buzzell 1964; El-

Murad and West 2003; Goldenberg, Mazursky and Solomon 1999; Kover 1995). It is widely

assumed that creative advertising has a greater impact than mere exposure, due to creativity’s

effects on attention, familiarity, and comprehension. However, research into the effects of

creativity in advertising has been comprised of a variety of often very different measures, and

subsequently results are limited and often appear inconsistent (Ang and Low 2000, Ang, Lee

and Leong 2007; Kover, Goldberg and James 1995, Pieters, Warlop and Wedel 2002; Smith

et al. 2007; Stone, Besser and Lewis 2000; Till and Baack 2005). Early research, from the

limited body of advertising creativity effects, by Bogard, Tolley and Orenstein (1970), Jones

(1995) and that of Gibson (1996), found higher order consumer effects of ‘quality’

advertising. However, more recent results appear to conflict with these early findings.

Till and Baack (2005) found that creative advertising, as measured by award-winning

commercials (Communication Arts), improved unaided recall, but had no significant effect

on either aided recall, attitudes toward the advertisements, nor higher order effects like

purchase intent or attitudes toward the brand. Lee and Mason (1999) showed that unexpected

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information leads to higher recall but results in less positive attitudes toward the brand.

Moreover, research by Kover, Goldberg and James (1995) found that consumers did not

show a strong preference for either creative or effectiveness award winning campaigns, but

responded to advertisements that were personally relevant. Such limited effects and sparse

findings are quite worrisome given the relative weight given to achieving and rewarding

creativity in the industry (El-Murad and West 2003; Tippins and Kunkel 2006).

However, other studies have been conducted that show varied, but higher order effects

of creativity on measures including likeability and brand memory, as well as brand attitude

and purchase intent. Pieters, Warlop and Wedel. (2002) found that more original

advertisements increased attention and if ads were both original and familiar this resulted in

the largest amount of attention, and directly promoted brand memory. Smith, Yang,

Buchholz and Darley (2007) showed that perceptions of advertising creativity, as determined

by the divergence and relevance interaction, influenced consumer processes and responses to

ads. Additionally, while Ang and Low (2000) did not find that creative ads always resulted

in higher brand attitude or purchase intent, they did find that unexpected relevant positive

feeling campaigns resulted in more favourable attitudes toward the ad than the other

conditions they measured. However, purchase intent and attitude toward the brand were only

significantly more positive in four of the seven conditions analysed by the researchers.

Recently Ang, Lee and Leong (2007) looked at three dimensions of creativity;

novelty, meaningfulness and connectedness, and found that novel and meaningful ads

generated higher ad recall, more positive attitudes, and more positive feelings than non-novel

but meaningful ads. Also, ads that connected to the audience had higher recall and more

positive ad attitudes toward the claim, if they were meaningful. Finally, Smith, Chen and

Yang (2008) used a hierarchy of effects framework and found connections between campaign

creativity and brand awareness. They also found that while originality influences advertising

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likeability there is a need to examine emotional affect to better understand creativity effects.

More critically, they suggest that while divergence exerts a direct influence on brand

awareness and liking, it is the significant interaction effects between divergence and

relevance that need to be taken into account when measuring creative advertisements.

In the studies mentioned above, it is important to look at the difference in the

measures of creativity used. Using professional based creativity awards has been preferred

by a number of researchers based upon the premise that it results in less variance than student

ratings, and is more externally valid (Baack, Wilson and Till 2008). Additionally,

Czikszentmihalyi (1999) argued the importance of creativity being judged by experts in the

domain, as unless an idea has value to the domain it has limited value. Using professionally

evaluated standards of creativity, such as award-winning ads, is therefore seen by these

researchers as a more realistic measure.

However, the difficulty with measures of creativity is that a definition is highly

dependent upon whom one asks (Devinney, Dowling and Collins 2005; Kilgour 2008; Kover,

Goldberg, and James 1995; Michell 1984; Young 2000). In research that shows higher order

effects on consumer processes, the creativity measures used were participant based rather

than awards-based. In these measures some form of both originality and appropriateness was

incorporated into the research instrument’s design. In studies showing only attention effects,

creativity award-based measures have generally been employed.

As noted by Ang and Low (2000) originality alone is not enough to elicit higher order

effects such as brand liking, positive attitude, and purchase intent. For this to occur an

advertisement must not only be original, it must also contain appropriateness elements for the

target audience, such as personal relevance, specific engagement and/or elicitation of a

positive emotional reaction. This would explain the higher order results of the Ang and Low

studies along with others such as Pieters, Warlop and Wedel (2002), who employed a

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consumer’s consensual view of originality by using trained student judges. Likewise Ang,

Lee and Leong’s (2007) research looked at three dimensions, novelty, meaningfulness and

connectedness, conducting an experimental design on 201 undergraduate students and

respondent judgements of the three dimensions.

Additionally, earlier findings by Kover, Goldenberg and James (1995) showed that a

strong emotional connection was a better signifier of positive consumer evaluative responses

to advertisements than either ‘One Show’ or ‘Effie’ award winning campaigns. This seems

to indicate that the use of more target market appropriateness criteria is more crucial to

determining the true effect of creative advertising. The emotional response measures that

scored highly in their study (Not bored/attentive, Active/aroused, benefited/enlightening,

wishful/desirous, confused/uniformed) could be viewed as the result of appropriate elements

of the advertising. Indeed, if advertising is highly engaging and appropriate, it would be

expected to engender greater levels of involvement and elicit positive emotive responses.

So while the arguments relating to the use of student versus professional judges of

creativity have been based on validity, consensual definition, and convenience, an even more

central issue may be the relative ability of such research to capture the two key underlying

constructs that comprise creativity; originality and appropriateness. While creativity by its

definition is both original and appropriate, the use of creativity awards as a proxy for

creativity may not be adequate, as it does not capture both constructs.

It may be a reasonable proposition to suggest that given creative awards are juried

panels of creative directors, there may be an inherent bias based upon their industry view.

Indeed many practitioners criticise these awards as “eye candy” and Kover et al. (Kover,

Goldberg, and James 1995; Koslow, Sasser and Riordan 2003; Sasser, Koslow, and Riordan

2007) have noted that advertising creatives appear to have a bias towards originality, This

bias is hardly surprising when you look at how creatives view their audience.

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As noted by Kover (1995) many advertising creative personnel view the consumer as

an overworked, depleted and often exhausted person who arrives home at the end of the day

and wants merely to sit in front of the television and relax while being entertained. These

creative personnel often have the view that the consumer does not want to be advertised to

and resists solicitous advertising. Many advertising creative personnel view their job as to

reach past the mental blocks of aversion and disinterest, coupled with a tired individual’s

limited mental capacity caused by an environment where they are over-worked and over-

stimulated (Reid, King and DeLorme 1998). Only once interest and attention has been

achieved can campaigns create a meaningful and engaging dialogue with the consumer.

Nyilasy and Reid (2009), through in-depth interviews with creative personnel show

the weight given to novel, unexpected elements, in order to break through the clutter. Given

advertising creatives jaded and cynical view of the consumer it is hardly surprising that they

focus mostly on originality as central to advertising effectiveness (Haberland and Dacin

1992). Without attention-grabbing originality, an ad will only ever achieve peripheral

processing and mere exposure effects. Heath et al (2009) have criticized this type of forced

advertising exposure effects that rely on originality, as it may result in consumers filtering out

the message (Heath, Nairn and Bottomley 2009).

Relevance of Effectiveness Awards for Research

While most academic researchers use creativity awards such as the One Show,

Communication Arts or Clio Awards, a range of effectiveness awards such as the Effies, IPA,

or Echo Awards are also available. In competitive mature market situations, clients are

increasingly looking beyond advertising originality toward ensuring their advertising spend

results in the attainment of quantifiable objectives.

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Many practitioners advocate creative advertisements because they are more effective.

To this end effectiveness award panel members typically focus their attention on output

measures in their evaluation processes. It could be posited that to achieve these outputs,

advertisements must be both original and on-strategy. To test this, advertising professionals’

views of effectiveness awards were also measured.

If results indicated that creativity award winning ads have a strong bias toward

originality, then while the ads may have a positive effect on awareness, without

appropriateness such ads will not result in higher order effects like changes in purchase intent

and behaviour, as is reflected in the literature. However, the existence of such a bias has yet

to be empirically tested in a rigorous research study.

METHOD

To better understand what creativity awards actually measure this study asks

advertising professionals, an expert group who serves as award judges and who target these

awards with their work, view advertising awards? Rather than just asking advertising

professionals to evaluate the work of others, since they may not have extensive knowledge of

the strategic elements of an ad, this study solicited advertising professional’s evaluations of

their own work and their subjective assessment of whether they truly think it has award-

winning potential.

While most of the research using creativity awards has focused on creativity award

competitions such as the One Show, Communication Arts, or Clio Awards, increasingly

researchers are attempting to use effectiveness as represented by the Effies, IPA, or Echo

Awards. Hence, advertising professionals’ views of both creativity and effectiveness awards

were measured.

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Participants

Participants came from two of the largest American advertising markets, New York

and Detroit. New York is typically ranked as the top advertising market comprising the

majority of advertising produced in the USA. Detroit is usually ranked as the third or fourth

advertising market and focuses on the large automotive advertising category that is typically

not done in New York, so together they are fairly representative of spending (Kover 1995;

Koslow, Sasser and Riordan 2003; 2006).

The sampling frame focused on the largest agencies comprising over three-fourths

(75%) of the total billings in their respective cities. Thus, the focus was on the top 20 agency

offices in New York and the top 10 agency offices in Detroit. Three New York agencies

focused on either health care or direct marketing only, and after discussions with each, it was

jointly decided that they did not fit the profile of a traditional full services agency of record

(AOR) and they were excluded from the sample. Twelve New York agency offices and all

ten Detroit agency offices agreed to participate in the study and those in the sample handle a

broad spectrum of diversified accounts campaigns.

Because this research was to focus only on those who were potential judges for

creativity and effectiveness awards, only those at rank of manager or above constituted from

the creative, account or planning departments, were included.1 Thus, the focus of this

research is based upon 621 creative advertising campaigns reported by 217 respondents. Of

these participants, 99 were from the creative department with the remainder from account

management or planning. Most reported on three campaigns, but a few reported on one or

two campaigns only. The median years in the advertising business for the selected research

subjects was 10 years with a median age of 45. Twenty-nine respondents had experience on

1 Sensitivity analysis was performed restricting these analyses to senior vice president level or higher, vice

president level or higher, and director level and higher, but there was no significant changes in the pattern of

results.

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the client side for a median of 4 years. Over 70% of respondents reported an undergraduate

degree, and approximately 20% had a graduate degree. The product categories of the

reported campaigns were fairly representative of overall US advertising spending. Average

annual media billings for each client studied were approximately US $71 million.

Materials

This research was part of larger advertising industry study from which it drew scales

for originality and strategy (see Koslow, Sasser and Riordan 2003; 2006). It used a

comprehensive questionnaire to understand advertising professionals’ views of their own

work. The full questionnaire took about 20-30 minutes to complete and focused on the last

three campaigns each participant work on.

This questionnaire was based on qualitative exploratory interviews and depth

interviews along with participant observation analysis and attendance at creative portfolio

sessions in New York were first undertaken followed by a questionnaire design. Respondents

from different functional areas were asked about creative campaigns they developed.

Participant views were solicited from creative, media, specialists, planning, research and

account executives, as well as other areas.

Four independent variables measured how “on-strategy” the campaigns were, while

another four independent variables measured how “original” each campaign was based on the

participant’s expert perspective. Respondents commented on the extent to which they agreed

or disagreed with statements about the campaign. A structured series of questions were used.

A seven point Likert scale format ranged from “Strongly Disagree (-3)” to “Strongly Agree

(+3)”. The neutral mid-point was labelled “Neither Agree Nor Disagree (0).” All eight items

consistently began with the same stem: “Compared with other advertisements/campaigns, this

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advertisement/campaign was...” Each item completed this sentence with a different phrase as

indicated in the Figures.

The two dependent variables were measured with single item scales, using the same

scale and stem, but different phrases to complete each sentence as indicated in Figures 1 and

2. Bergkvist and Rossiter (2007; 2009) showed that the use of multi-item scales is

unnecessary when constructs are considered “doubly concrete,” that is, concrete in both the

objects and attributes of the constructs. For consumers, typical doubly concrete measures

include attitude toward the ad, attitude toward the brand and purchase intention. For the

advertising professionals in this study, it was hypothesized that the perceptions that a

campaign is worthy of winning creativity or effectiveness awards are doubly concrete

measures. Various creativity or effectiveness competitions usually measure winning

campaigns with a single item that asks judges to choose a winner. Other constructs like a

campaign being strategic or original are abstract such that they require multiple item scales,

but the traditions within the advertising industry make this less needed in the case of winning

creativity or effectiveness awards.

Procedure

The surveys were personally administered to agency employees during the normal

business day in lobbies, conference rooms, cafeterias and other gathering places at agencies.

Food incentives were provided during mid-day survey collection, at times provided by the

agency or a third party vendor. Per research protocols, advanced approval and on-site

cooperation were secured from agency management.

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RESULTS

The data was analysed in several steps. First, scales were confirmed via factor

analysis. Second, structural equation models were developed to predict how worthy

campaigns are of winning creativity and effectiveness awards. These models were developed

separately for both advertising creative and account and planning executives. Finally, the

correlations for all the items is presented.

The scales for originality and strategy are confirmed in the factor model of the

presented in Table 1. The left two columns refer to loadings for the 99 advertising creative

while the right two show the loading for the 118 account and planning executives. AMOS

was used to estimate the models and the results confirm the two scales. These results show

that the scales measure what they intend to measure.

<<Insert Table 1 about here>>

For the main model predicting creativity and effectiveness awards, model fit was

moderate, with GFI=.937, AGFI=.892, IFI=.966 and RMSEA=.060.2 There are significant

differences between the two groups, both overall (p=.000) and the four parameters predicting

whether campaigns are worthy of winning awards (p=.028). The parameters separated by

group are shown in Tables 2.

<<Insert Table 2 and Figures 1 and 2 about here>>

To predict whether or not the campaigns are worthy of receiving an award for

effectiveness, creatives placed similar weights on both strategy and originality. These two

factors also affected account executives’ and planners’ perceptions of winning creativity

awards. Account executives and account planners had larger parameters for strategy than

originality and thus put more weight on strategy and less on originality. However,

perceptions of originality had a much greater relative impact on whether or not campaigns

2 If two errors, e1 and e2, are allowed to correlate, GFI=.954, AGFI=.918, IFI=.978, and RMSEA=.049.

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were judged worthy of winning creativity awards. For creatives, there was no significant

effect of strategy on winning creative awards, while for account executives and planners,

there was a small but significant positive effect. To provide additional detail the raw

correlation matrix is listed in Table 3.

<<Insert Table 3 about here>>

DISCUSSION

This study looks at whether creativity awards place too much emphasis on originality,

and too little on strategy. Results support this conclusion by probing senior industry

professionals about their own work in situations where they intimately know the strategy.

Even when professionals know the underlying strategy and acknowledge its role, they agree

that originality has a more powerful impact in relation to winning creativity awards.

Empirically speaking, results indicate that winning creativity awards is primarily a function

of originality.

The findings show that the originality bias contained in award-winning ads 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.

These findings are consistent with other scholarly studies that show ‘creative’ award winning

creative ads result in attention effects such as unaided recall, but not appropriateness effects

like brand attitude changes or purchase intent. Caution is advised for researchers who choose

to use creativity awards as a proxy for genuine creativity because what they actually are

measuring is predominately originality. Instead, researchers should possibly consider using

effectiveness awards to measure creativity because it is seen as a function of both originality

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and strategy, as long as those advertisements are appropriate to the sample participants under

investigation.

Recent research has indicated that originality, although arguably the most essential

element of creativity, is not solely adequate to provide higher order responses from

consumers. The interaction between originality and appropriateness is required to elicit

proper responses from the consumer. If researchers use creativity awards such as Clios or

even One Show awards without also testing the appropriateness of these ads to the research

participants under study, then results may be spurious. Even an award-winning ad is unlikely

to be effective unless it is appropriate to the target audience.

When it comes down to assessing effectiveness awards however, it is an entirely

different matter. Such awards are influenced by originality judgements, as well as strategy

assessments, by their very nature and definition. Although perceptions about the originality

of a campaign played a larger role for creatives than for account executives or planners, both

groups recognized the critical role that strategy plays in effectiveness.

From an industry perspective there is limited research into practitioner views of

advertising creativity (West, Kover and Caruana, 2008), and virtually no research on

practitioner evaluations of award-winning advertisements. This lack of research is somewhat

surprising given that creativity awards are an important focus of advertising agencies, with

agencies spending considerable time and resources competing for them (El-Murad and West

2003; Tippins and Kunkel 2006). A key justification for this expenditure is that clients use

these awards as part of the basis for agency selection. A question that is often asked, but

rarely studied, is how these awards relate to the success or performance of those

advertisements (Dahlen, Rosengren and Torn 2008). Indeed, it has been noted that

professional judgments of whether something is creative or not are no guarantee that it is a

good advertisement (Dahlen, Rosengren and Torn 2008).

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A crucial industry benefit from identifying what advertising awards actually measure,

is that this allows such measures to be used as the basis for future advertising development.

As noted by El-Murad and West (2004), unlike other measurements in the social sciences,

advertising measures by practitioners are largely confined to advertising awards, and few

measures are used to assist in advertising development. An objective measure would allow

agencies to use them as a basis for improving their creative processes.

Although creativity awards may primarily reflect the originality component of

creativity, that does not mean they are a poor criterion for agency selection. While highly

creative work is the aim of advertising agencies, creatives are dependent upon clients for

information and direction regarding the strategic objectives. Therefore, as long as creativity

awards are understood to be primarily a gauge of an agency’s ability to develop highly

original work, they can be used as appropriate selection criteria.

Limitations and Areas for Further Research

Although this study used award jury qualified agency respondents, data was not

collected as to when they last served on such a panel. Many indicated that they were often

asked to serve on awards ranging from local Addys to International Cannes judge panels, etc.

In order to protect their anonymity and assure limited interviewer bias, such specific detailed

data were not required. Yet perceptions were uniform enough such that other subgroups did

not vary from the pattern of results.

While this study has highlighted some of the limitations of using creative awards,

additional issues need further research. First, most typical consumer settings involve more

than a single exposure to an advertisement, yet virtually all studies in the consumer behaviour

and social psychological literatures have sampled only the influence of single-message

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exposure. It is widely accepted that the originality element of a creative advertisement aims

to grab the attention of the audience by breaking through the clutter. It is therefore not

surprising to see the significant effects of original ads on unaided recall under conditions of a

single exposure. This is not to say that award-winning ads are not effective; if they contain

both original and appropriate elements for the target audience, then they are likely to achieve

their results.

Moreover advertising objectives may well vary, and an advertisement is often part of

a larger campaign, subsequently, in many cases its objective may be to achieve recall effects.

In such scenarios, creativity award winning ads that achieve high levels of attention may be

effective. However, much more research using embedded advertisements under normal

viewing conditions simulating typical consumer behavior is required to tease out the relative

importance of the originality and appropriateness components of creativity.

Unnatural experimental conditions of forced exposure are typical of most creative

tests. In this case, scholars attempt to stimulate a real world environment, but respondents are

often research biased and likely to be centrally processing, which is far different than a

natural setting full of distractions and multi-tasking. This forced exposure minimizes the

attention effects of original stimuli, decreases its apparent significance, and delivers

potentially biased results. In contrast, if most consumers are exhausted, uninterested, or even

resistant observers, they are likely to be peripherally processing unless prompted to do

otherwise. Hence, originality will be more important under natural, rather than forced

conditions. Likewise, as new social media integrated ad campaigns arise, the conditions of

engagement may again change dramatically.

Another related area of limited research is the effect of prior knowledge, priming, and

motivation on consumer response to advertisements. Prior knowledge and priming makes

processing of related stimuli easier, and presumably therefore there would be less need for

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attention grabbing stimuli. Likewise, higher levels of conditioning and internal motivation to

process will reduce the relative need for original stimuli. Studies that control for and assess

these two variables are needed to better understand when advertisements with relatively

different levels of originality versus appropriateness criteria are most effective.

Judging creativity is a difficult process, even for the most expert judges. Well over

three decades ago Keil (1975) set out a list of rules for creative advertisements. His second

rule is that advertising must be directed to the right audience. However, in the academic

quest for better measures of creativity, this aspect is often overlooked. The problem with

using creativity award-winning advertisements is that there is no assurance that those

advertisements will be appropriate to the target audience, unless the target is specifically

designated and available to the researcher. The most original ad in the world for selling

disposable diapers will probably not elicit much attention from young childless teenagers.

Yet some academics use creative award-winning ads as overriding measures to assess

creativity and then apply them to student respondents without always determining their

appropriateness as a sample user in the analysis. For creativity research to move forward,

creativity award winning campaigns are not always the “gold standard” and researchers need

to develop measures more geared to the theoretical issues they are investigating. The quest

for the perfect creativity measure is far from over.

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Table 1

Factor Analysis for Strategy and Originality:

Standardized Regression Weights by Agency Area

Compared to others, this

advertisement/campaign was…

Creatives Account and Planning

Strategy Originality Strategy Originality

...on-strategy .669 .735

...a good fit with the client’s strategy .741 .668

...an appropriate strategy for the client .805 .856

...built on good strategy .782 .758

...original .874 .865

...imaginative .920 .900

...novel .824 .837

...different .865 .897

Note: All parameters significant at <.001.

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Table 2

Impact of Strategy and Originality on Being Considered Worthy of Winning Awards for

Creativity and Effectiveness:

Standardized Regression Weights by Agency Area

Creatives Account and Planning

Creativity

Awards

Effectiveness

Awards

Creativity

Awards

Effectiveness

Awards

Strategy .003 .411** .095* .556**

Originality .784** .396** .776** .255**

Squared Multiple Correlations .622 .490 .681 .506

**significant at <.001

*significant at <.05

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Table 3

Correlation Matrix for Variables

Item key words

on-s

trat

egy

good f

it

appro

pri

ate

buil

t on

Ori

gin

al

imag

inat

ive

novel

dif

fere

nt

crea

tivit

y

effe

ctiv

enes

s

on-strategy .5634 .6462 .5194 .3472 .2827 .2327 .2518 .3087 .4371

good fit .6464 .5710 .4661 .2605 .2901 .2026 .1918 .2477 .4321

appropriate .4727 .5915 .6459 .4151 .3664 .2669 .3216 .3669 .5640

built on .4973 .4906 .6864 .4167 .3868 .3241 .3573 .4174 .5907

original .2979 .3403 .3130 .3086 .8004 .6948 .7755 .6874 .4913

imaginative .3721 .4174 .3175 .3770 .8130 .7296 .7962 .7539 .4610

novel .2273 .3036 .3118 .3302 .7247 .7440 .7924 .7057 .3922

different .3131 .3837 .3026 .3640 .7613 .7890 .7206 .7187 .4201

creativity .2635 .2936 .3006 .3396 .6610 .7257 .6628 .6954 .5221

effectiveness .3508 .4455 .4795 .5308 .5057 .5749 .5094 .4814 .5070

Means—creatives 2.260 2.152 1.955 1.593 1.353 1.418 0.666 1.170 0.538 1.521

SDs—creatives 0.937 1.136 1.342 1.543 1.681 1.660 1.671 1.694 1.904 1.429

Means—account and planning 2.303 2.357 2.091 1.912 1.398 1.278 0.615 1.103 0.429 1.347

SDs—account and planning 0.983 .824 1.175 1.329 1.476 1.575 1.565 1.628 1.773 1.499

Note: Correlations for creatives are on the lower diagonal, account and planning on the upper diagonal. There were 290

campaigns evaluated by creatives and 331 by account and planners.

23

Figure 1

Model for Account and Planning

Strategy

built on

good strategye4 .78

an appropriate

strategy for

the cliente3

.85

a good fit

with the

client's strategye2

.67

on-strategye1 .74

Originality

differente8

novele7

imaginativee6

originale5

.83

.85

.90

.86

Worthy of Winning

Awards for Creativity

e9

Worthy of Winning

Awards for Effectiveness

e10

.08

.56

.26

.77

.48

24

Figure 2

Model for Creatives

Strategy

built on

good strategye4 .79

an appropriate

strategy for

the cliente3

.81

a good fit

with the

client's strategye2

.73

on-strategye1 .66

Originality

differente8

novele7

imaginativee6

originale5

.84

.88

.91

.87

Worthy of Winning

Awards for Creativity

e9

Worthy of Winning

Awards for Effectiveness

e10

.02

.42

.40

.79

.49

25

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