Do Marketers Get The Advertising They Need or The Advertising They Deserve? Agency Views of How...

Journal of Advertising, vol. 35, no. 3 (Fall 2006), pp. 85–105.© 2006 American Academy of Advertising. All rights reserved.

ISSN 0091-3367 / 2006 $9.50 + 0.00.

DO MARKETERS GET THE ADVERTISING THEY NEED OR THE ADVERTISING THEY DESERVE?

Agency Views of How Clients Influence Creativity

Scott Koslow, Sheila L. Sasser, and Edward A. Riordan

ABSTRACT: This paper examines the influence of marketers on the creativity of their advertising agency. There are three main ways in which marketers affect the creativity of their agency: (1) setting direction, (2) resource allocation, and (3) evaluation. These ideas were empirically measured in 1,011 advertising campaigns via questionnaires given to agency personnel. Strategy has often been a focal point of advertising studies, but this research finds some sources of strategy are better than others. Merely having strategy in client briefs has little effect on creativity, but the client’s willingness to explore new strategic ideas with the agency does have a substantial impact. In general, better-resourced agencies do better, and a key resource is access to top managers. At times, top-management involvement may lead to counterproductive effects on creativity because of the fear this sometimes induces within agencies. Sophisticated, high-ranking clients appear to send a “chilling” effect throughout the agency, thus dampening creative potential. Although this study is based on advertising agency responses rather than advertising client responses, it provides insight into the complicated notion of agency accountability for campaign creativity. In many cases, marketers seeking accountability for their campaign creativity need look no farther than themselves.

Scott Koslow (Ph.D., University of Southern California) is an as-sociate professor in the Department of Marketing and International Management, Waikato Management School, University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand.

Sheila L. Sasser (Ph.D., Wayne State University) is an assistant professor, Department of Marketing, College of Business, Eastern Michigan University, Ypsilanti, Michigan.

Edward A. Riordan (D.B.A., University of Kentucky) is a profes-sor of marketing, Department of Marketing, School of Business Administration, Wayne State University.

For marketers seeking creative advertising, conventional wis-dom holds that creativity is solely a function of advertising agency expertise (Elliott 2003; White 2003). Many marketers assume that if they do not get highly creative work, then it is clearly the agency’s fault (Cuneo 2003; MacArthur 2003; Sanders 2003). Thus, marketers frequently evaluate, monitor, reward, or review their agency’s creative output to inspire (or coerce) even greater creativity.

Recent creativity research, however, has shifted emphasis away from those doing the creating to situational factors in-fluencing creativity. For example, Amabile’s (1996) seminal work on creativity suggests that the social environment sur-rounding the creating can dampen—often dramatically—the quality of the creative outputs. When applied to advertising, marketers set an overall tone for the creative environment, which impacts creativity dramatically.

Despite organizational mechanisms to buffer creatives from clients, recent studies indicate that client marketers still do have a dramatic impact on creatives, particularly across key

areas that may affect the creative product (Sasser and Koslow 2005). This research proposes that marketers have control over three dimensions of an agency’s social environment that are vital to creativity

First, marketers set direction for advertising campaigns through their initial brief to the agency or as they work through the agency’s planning process. Second, marketers also provide several forms of resources for the agency. The key resource is access to top management, because this provides strategic insights for the campaign and can therefore enhance creativity. Consumer research information also provides similar insights, and can therefore also increase creativity. Two lesser effects may be the time allocated to the project by contractual arrangements and the budgets provided for media, production, and development, which impact the content and nature of the types of tasks performed. Third, marketers can also generate counterproductive effects stemming from the currently popular management trend of holding agencies “accountable” for per-formance. Although marketers see that performance in terms of many factors, including sales, copytest scores, and creativity, agencies view their role as providing creativity that later leads to sales. Unfortunately, Amabile (1997) demonstrates that re-warding—or even merely evaluating—a creative performance decreases it. This occurs because the creatives learn to “play” to the established reward system in order to please the client rather than following pure creative directions.

Formal copytesting of advertisements is still fraught with controversy. There appears to be an age-old advertising debate on whether copytesting reduces creativity, and Amabile’s work (1996) favors the argument that copytesting does decrease

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creativity. Yet agencies frequently expect copytesting and are prepared to deal with it to preserve creative integrity. Mar-keters may have a more potent impact on creativity, however, when they have more power to enforce their evaluative judg-ments. Marketers who are sophisticated about advertising have more meaningful opinions that are more closely watched by the agency. Advertising sophistication also provides the knowledge base to intervene in the agency creative process. Likewise, clients who are higher in their corporate organiza-tional hierarchy have more power to dismiss an agency. This has a chilling effect on creativity, due to the potential threat of losing the account.

This study first reviews the advertising creativity literature with regard to the role of advertising clients and offers several hypotheses. Second, the methods used to test these hypotheses are discussed, and two different measures of creativity, which show the same general results, are used. For each of these mea-sures, creativity is taken to be the interaction of both original and appropriate advertising. That is, to be defined as creative, campaigns need to be both original and appropriate. The data set includes 1,011 campaigns reported by 357 employees of major full-service advertising agencies in New York and De-troit. This sample is broadly representative of large accounts, large agencies, and best-practice advertising in the United States. Finally, how marketers can get the best creative work from their agencies is discussed.

THEORY DEVELOPMENT

Researchers on creativity have long struggled to understand whether the locus of creativity lies in the individual or the situation. During the 1950s and 1960s, Guilford and Torrance dominated creativity research with a primary focus on creative individuals. Guilford (1950, 1957, 1963, 1967a, 1967b), an educational psychologist, sought to identify creative individu-als early and give them special education to provide them the base they need to develop later in life. The identification task fell largely to Torrance (1962) and his Torrance Test of Creative Thinking (TTCT). The test originates in Alfred Binet’s work developing intelligence tests a century ago (Barron and Har-rington 1981; Becker 1995). Though the TTCT stimulated creativity research for nearly two decades, it was perceived to identify only those who could do well on the test. In other more problem-oriented areas, creativity was considered to be a far more complex construct (see Feldhusen and Goh 1995 for a review). On the discrediting of this method in the 1970s, creativity research waned (Feist and Runco 1993; Plucker and Renzulli 1999).

Creativity research revived toward the end of the twentieth century, following the situational perspective. Beginning with Amabile’s (1979) work, experiments showed that, paradoxi-cally, rewarding creativity decreases it. Amabile concluded that

people are creative because they are internally motivated, and anything that interferes with this motivation risks decreas-ing creativity. Amabile (1996) introduced the Componential Model of Creativity, which proposes four key factors that impact the creative process. One of these is called creativity relevant process, or the thinking methods used to generate novel ideas. Another is domain relevant expertise, or the knowledge of the area in which the creative product is supposed to function. The third factor is internal motivation, or the desire to create original solutions to a problem. These three factors have been commonly studied in creativity (or at least in examining deci-sion making) for some time. The fourth factor, however, social environment, is a concept that is new to creativity theory.

The Individual Creative Locus for Advertising Creativity

Despite the shift in academic research from the creative person to the creative situation, many in advertising practice and research still focus on individual creativity. For example, Ad-vertising Age tracks creative personnel movements, frequently commenting that the acquiring agency is gaining creative expertise and the other agency is losing it. Creativity awards usually are given to individuals or teams, not just the agencies themselves, although copies are prominently displayed in office showcases. Creativity training is also frequently provided to individuals who work for agencies (e.g., Goldenberg, Mazur-sky, and Solomon 1999).

The celebration of individual creative skill is often extended to advertising agencies and their offices. When an individual wins an award, his or her agency considers it a win for them, too. Some agencies are more “known” for creative skills (Na, Marshall, and Son 1999), and invariably some offices in larger agency networks are likewise “known” as more or less creative. Gross’s (1972) model of creativity can be applied within a single agency by using multiple, independent creative teams, which is a common practice that is perceived to improve greatly the quality of creative work. Different agencies pro-mote various creative philosophies (West and Ford 2001) or advocate alternative creative processes (e.g., Ensor, Cottom, and Band 2001; Ewing, Napoli, and West 2000), but in gen-eral, agencies frequently think of themselves as having more or less creative skill in terms of overall collective individual creative skills.

Marketers also appear to focus solely on individuals and agencies as the source of creativity rather than taking into con-sideration the social environment in which the creativity takes place. Griffin et al. (1998) review past research and empirically replicate the finding that agency creative skill is the most important factor in evaluating an agency. Client support for a creative cultural environment is not even mentioned in these studies. Kulkarni, Vora, and Brown (2003) note how two bad

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financial quarters in a row frequently leads marketers to dismiss their advertising agency. Agencies would generally perceive this as “scapegoating” of the agency for marketing brand problems, which follows an underlying marketer assumption that the per-ceived failure of the agency’s creative product led to the declining sales and/or market share. Even Spake et al. (1999) show how the current focus on advertising agency accountability may extend to the pricing of advertising services. Just as marketers seek to extract the best creative product from their agency, they also seek to negotiate the lowest possible pricing structure, and these two areas may be at odds with each other. Pay-for-performance reward systems assume performance is within the control of the agency and fail to take into account the constraints placed on the agency by the client.

The Case for the Situational Locus of Advertising Creativity

Although client and advertising agency employees tend to focus on the individual skill locus of creativity, the argument can and should be made for a situational approach that is heav-ily impacted by clients. Clients are in control of three areas that determine the tone for a campaign: (1) setting direction, (2) resource allocation, and (3) evaluation.

Setting Direction

Most advertising textbooks stress that the starting point of advertising is the client’s brief (e.g., Duncan 2002; Wells, Burnett, and Moriarty 2003). Called different things by various authors, the brief identifies the target market and the persuasive outcome to be achieved. That is, the brief presents the problem to be solved by advertising, and ideally it should contain enough background or “clues” to find the solution.

The brief’s relevance for advertising creativity is that it should constitute the strategic basis for a campaign and deter-mine what is considered appropriate or inappropriate. Runco and Charles (1993) reference this appropriateness construct as a component of creativity, defining it as something that is both original and appropriate. Koslow, Sasser, and Riordan (2003) extend this to an advertising realm. Creative, account, research, and media executives report that on-strategy campaigns are more creative and form the basis for campaign success.

It is tempting to conclude that clients who come to agencies with strategy in their brief are likely to do better than those who do not. If much of the strategy work is defined and shared with the agencies, focused briefs can set the proper tone and direction for the campaign. Insightful, strong strategic briefs from clients should facilitate the agency creative process.

However, Helgesen (1992) details the low standard of briefs clients typically bring to agencies. Only a minority of market-ing clients had operationally defined marketing objectives to

which the advertising objectives could be tied. The majority of campaigns also had grossly inadequate information about market conditions. Target-market descriptions were too broad, overly vague, or nonexistent. Helgesen concludes that there is little of merit in these briefs.

Ideally, client briefs should be able to provide direction for advertising, but many briefs may not be as high quality as needed. Given that the brief has evolved into a tactical project tool for many clients, it may have lost much of the original strategic intent. Nonetheless, the degree to which a brief contains strategy should enhance the level of creativity applied, but one should not be too surprised if it has no net impact on creativity. Therefore, it is proposed that:

H1: The more strategy contained in the client’s brief, the more creative the advertising.

If, as Helgesen (1992) notes, marketers do not have the required strategic depth in their briefs prior to approaching an agency, then the agency needs to walk clients through the advertising strategy process for mutual understanding. Different agencies have coined acronyms or names for these strategic development models, since they often cue client brand strategy, typically in a stepwise manner. Most processes are proprietary to the agencies, and they claim various points of difference among them. Most are variations on similar themes, however.

One planning system used by Saatchi & Saatchi is based on CEO Kevin Roberts’s “Lovemarks” ideas (Roberts 2004) and Gilson et al.’s (2000) Peak Performing Organization (PPO) theory. The system features an ideas brief in place of a traditional creative brief, a challenge meeting attended by people representing key agency disciplines and frequently the client, too, and usually a research brief written by the account planner (Saatchi & Saatchi 2003).

Historically, planning has played a vital role in most agen-cies ever since Young & Rubicam Advertising Agency hatched the “whole egg theory” of integration planning to help clients achieve total success in the marketplace using a full array of agency services (Clow and Baack 2002). Integration planning continues to be used strategically for diverse clients ranging from automotive to utilities to services throughout worldwide agencies today (Sasser 2002, 2006). A system developed and utilized by Interpublic agencies in New York, Detroit, and international markets was called “Link” (Sasser 1990). This system was designed to “link” brand-image advertising with integrated marketing communications (IMC). This process would then lead to or discover an optimal strategic mix of agency disciplines (independent of turf wars and billing issues) to be used for clients such as IBM and Unilever (Sasser 1991, 1996). Omnicom’s BBDO New York employed dramatic planning systems, often using creative symbolism along with research and other techniques to surface strategic considerations for clients


(Sasser 1995). Integration and extension of such core creative concepts were then developed collaboratively with Omnicom’s DAS (Diversified Agency Services) (Sasser 1995).

The strategic planning systems are intended to foster the development of more systematic, comprehensive, and formal-ized advertising strategy to keep the agency process organized and on target. Marketing research and media issues were dealt with, along with creative and brand-positioning issues. De-pending on the agency approach, IMC topics were also covered. Although planning systems were sometimes followed in only a perfunctory way, when followed passionately, they could maximize the insight provided.

Agencies could produce these strategic advertising plans without direct client involvement or oversight, but clients are typically required to provide critical inputs, facilitate feedback, and build consensus. Clients ultimately must sign off on final approvals for the campaign, time lines, and budgets. When client relationships are established, updated information may be all that is needed. New business clients may be far more involved at the early stages of transitioning the business, par-ticularly from a strategic perspective, after the agency review process. There is a broad range of acceptable client interaction, ranging from information sharing and remote communication through to ongoing presence and active involvement. Before any creative production work may proceed, the critical element is that the client must agree with creative content and must typically approve or give the “go-ahead,” which is no small hurdle. The agency planning systems frequently produced strategies that were considerably different than initial client submissions. Thus, a more open-minded client may be more willing to work interactively with the agency. This ideal client situation may enable the exploration of new strategic territory as noted in the planning instruments. Most agency executives considered such an open client to be an asset that can enhance creativity. Thus, it may be proffered that:

H2: The more open the client is to exploring new strategic ideas, the more creative the advertising.

Resourcing

Clients do more than work toward setting the direction of the campaign—they also help drive resources for agencies in terms of agency time allocations, consumer research, media budgets, production specifications, and access to top management. The proper alignment of these situational elements can provide more scope and facilitate support for creativity.

Time

Several authors have suggested that time allocated to a project can enhance its creativity. For example, Kanter (1988) suggests

that setting aside time to a project signals that the organiza-tion is committed to an innovative endeavor. Csikszentmihalyi (1996) notes that having enough time to be idle is vital to creativity because it stimulates idea incubation. In an adver-tising creative context, having ample time is expected to be associated with more creativity:

H3: The more time spent on advertising development, the more creative the campaign.

Consumer Research

Another resource clients provide is either giving the agency research they had performed or paying for the agency to under-take additional research. As Kanter (1988) writes concerning the importance of organizational signaling, the money and effort applied to advertising consumer research indicates the importance of the creative process.

Lovemarks-PPO, Link, and other planning systems also require decisions about whom to target, what to tell them, what to do about competitive actions, what media to use, and so forth. Creatives also instinctually make many decisions regarding the final appearance of an advertisement as they identify advertising themes, tonality, and executional factors. Although some planning systems posit that research is op-tional, Deshpande (1982) writes that the single best indicator of marketing research use is whether someone makes a deci-sion. Because decisions are made in the planning and creating processes, access to consumer research should be vital.

H4: The more access to consumer research, the more creative the advertising.

Budgets

If one continues to apply Kanter’s (1988) signaling perspective, few management processes can signal more effectively than the application of budgets. Budgets are needed in advertis-ing to set media and production priorities because they are expensive propositions with an identifiable cost dimension. The production value and/or quality of the commercial are primary justifications for a larger budget. A “healthy” budget allocation may also prompt a broader scope for the ultimate campaign design. If the campaign is to undergo formal testing, the allocation for finished production on the test advertise-ment is critical. As Stewart and Furse (1986) and Stewart and Koslow (1989) have noted, animatics test worse than finished advertisements, so poor production quality can sometimes compromise a highly creative idea.

H5: The larger the budgets provided to the agency, the more creative the advertising.

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Access to Client’s Top Management

Gronstedt and Thorson (1996) discussed how the agency strategy formation process is much more defused throughout the advertising agency than it is for the marketing client. As Corner, Kinicki, and Keats (1994) write, strategic decision making in most firms is limited to a small set of top manag-ers. There may be many managers involved with executing strategy, but only a few at the top actually guide, explore, and define it (Corner, Kinicki, and Keats 1994). Given this concentration of activity, access to top management is impor-tant because it gives an undiluted expression of the client’s strategy. This access is more important if Helgesen’s (1992) findings about poor-quality briefs are possibly the product of poor articulation and communication by client contacts. Thus, it is proposed that:

H6: The more the agency has access to the client’s top managers, the more creative the advertising.

While top-management access alone may remedy the problem of poor strategy articulation, even more frightening is the case of clients who either don’t understand advertising strategy or simply don’t have one. Across several agency case studies, planning systems like Lovemarks-PPO and Link cre-ate new advertising strategy, given the right scenarios. Thus, rather than just formalizing or expressing an existing strategy, access to top management may be critical for new strategy development. Otherwise, agencies risk the problem of lower-level managers informing, developing, and agreeing to one strategy, only to be overruled by top managers steering the organization in another direction. When managers are actively exploring new strategic ideas—as they do when actively ap-plying agency planning systems—then there is expected to be a synergy between client openness to such exploration and access to top managers:

H7: The more open clients are to exploring new strategy development and the more they provide access to top managers, the more creative the advertising, and this effect is enhanced when clients provide access to top managers.

Evaluating Advertising

The most direct application of Amabile’s (1979) evaluation hypothesis should be the use of copytesting and other formal tests of advertisements because such tests are direct assess-ments of advertising creativity. Brown (1999) shows that when advertising executives are being held accountable, their decisions are based more on the ways in which they are being held accountable. For example, if account executives are held accountable to marketing research outcomes, their decisions change to reflect more weight on the attributes associated

with that evaluation, and the overall quality of those decisions declines. Rather than encouraging creativity, evaluation brings on gaming behavior in those evaluated.

Formal Testing

Not all advertising researchers agree that formal testing of ad-vertising has negative effects on creativity. Some see Amabile’s negative evaluation effects as inevitable (e.g., Wells 1983), but others disagree (e.g., Vaughn 1982/1983). Passions run deep on both sides of the issue, with market researchers usually favoring copytesting and creatives opposing it. Both posi-tions could be argued because many of the techniques used to evaluate advertising and deal with agencies were intended to improve advertising quality, not to decrease it.

Stewart and his colleagues (Stewart and Furse 1986; Stewart and Koslow 1989) never intended for copytesting to eliminate or curtail creativity, nor would they have wanted it to result in the regimentation of formulaic applications. High-scoring executional factors may often be manipulated in the creation of television advertising, simply to “work the numbers” for accountability and measurability, but this was not the goal of these researchers. Rather, these authors have written passionately in support of creativity elsewhere (e.g., Koslow, Sasser, and Riordan 2003; Stewart 1992). When appropriately used, copytesting could be expected to liber-ate creative thinking, not hinder it. The executional factor with the largest effect, brand-differentiating message, was provided as a focus, not as an absolute formula. For these researchers, copytesting concentrates on consumer needs in a competitive environment, yet still leaves great latitude for creative expression.

When creatives and account executives absorb evaluations as constructive feedback, formal testing such as focus groups, consumer panels, and in-theater tests may suggest a diagnosis of how and why certain advertisements persuade consumers, thus supporting the creative process. It may be that those be-ing evaluated cannot or will not respond to the evaluation to game it. When testing is used inappropriately, however, it can decrease creativity by prompting formulaic campaigns that lack freshness. If these two effects compensate for one another, copytesting and formal testing probably have little net effect, especially given that many creatives and account executives now routinely anticipate some type of testing:

H8: Formal advertising testing has little or no net effect on creativity.

More Diffuse Evaluation Effects

If formal advertising testing does not appear to have an effect on creativity, could there be other situations where evaluation


constrains creativity? Brown’s (1999) findings were driven more by accountability-focused management systems rather than the availability of market research information. Thus, the manner in which evaluation is conducted may be more important than merely the process of taking scores. Indeed, it is hard to avoid vocal opinions from just about everyone about advertising quality, so it is possible that evaluation alone may not be the critical issue.

If a client doesn’t like a recommended campaign, two things can happen. First, the client might ask for more creative development. Given that many major clients have agency con-tracts written prior to the advent of television and that such contracts allow them to request up to three rounds of creative development, redoing creative work is not that uncommon. This may even provide creatives with more insight into the needs of the client. The other possible scenario is that the cli-ent fires the agency.

Many variables impact the client’s willingness and ability to fire an agency, yet for the agency, the most obvious factor may be the relative rank of the main client contact. Routinely, many agencies work with lower-level client managers (e.g., brand managers, assistant brand managers), and the prob-ability of the agency being dismissed is quite small. When the client’s senior managers (e.g., marketing vice presidents, CEOs) are involved, however, then any perceived blunders are amplified because higher-ranking executives are perceived to have greater authority over agency selection or termination. Most agency selection research finds that clients’ senior man-agers are the most involved in the final decisions (e.g., Cuneo 2003; MacArthur 2003), and similar patterns no doubt exist for agency dismissals.

The organizational rank of the client contact appears to have an impact on client style. Na, Marshall, and Son (2003) note that clients in senior positions are more likely to have fixed opinions of what they want from an agency, and seek a match in goals with an agency. They are not open to agency views, nor do they value their recommendations or objections. Some client firms appoint junior-level employees to work with the agency, and these managers are more focused on compliance, oversight, and consultation. They do value the agency’s rec-ommendations, and often listen to their objections. Another factor allowing clients to enforce their judgments is the level of expert power they have (French and Raven 1959). Because knowledgeable managers are powerful managers, sophisticated clients with high levels of experience, expertise, and under-standing of advertising are expected to be much more effective in impressing their opinions on agencies.

High rank or sophistication in clients may not indepen-dently suppress creativity, but when they happen together, there is both motivation and opportunity to enforce po-tentially threatening evaluations. It might take apparently benign forms like “browbeating,” but the overt exercise of

power need not occur. A plausible perception of threat may be enough. Thus, when senior managers with sophisticated advertising knowledge are involved, there may be a distinct “chilling” effect on the agency, thus reducing the creativity it produces:

H9: If client contacts are both high ranking and sophisticated, creativity decreases.

METHOD

This research was part of a larger study, the Advertising Cre-ativity and Integration Strategy Program (AdCrisp), which investigates a variety of factors affecting creativity. The first reporting of AdCrisp was Koslow, Sasser, and Riordan (2003), which provided a great deal on the development of the method, so for brevity, less detail is offered in this paper. Since the earlier reporting, more respondents were added to the AdCrisp database. Therefore, 357 respondents from 20 different advertising agency offices reported on up to 3 of their most recent campaigns. Views were solicited from creative, media, research, and account executives, predominately by questionnaire.

Given that 1,011 campaigns were studied, one issue was possible duplication by respondents working on the same ac-count. Thus, respondents were asked to identify the client or product category as an option. Duplication was determined if multiple respondents at the same agency noted identical brand names or categories at a contemporaneous time. Two-thirds reported brand and/or category, but only 36 were potentially duplicated. Considering that most of the potential duplicates were for large brands or categories that had many simultaneous campaigns (e.g., automotive) and were therefore unlikely to be actually duplicated, duplication was judged to be a minor problem.

Due to questionnaire length (25 to 30 minutes), they were distributed in person to individuals and groups of agency employees during normal business hours. Depending on timing, food incentives were provided. New York and De-troit, two major advertising agency cities, were chosen for data collection. New York is ranked as the top advertising market, while Detroit is usually the third or fourth largest, based on total billings. The sampling frame targeted the 20 largest Agency of Record (AOR) offices in New York and the 10 largest in Detroit. These agencies comprised three-fourths (75%) of the total billings in their respective cities. Ten New York and 10 Detroit offices agreed to participate. Table 1 presents respondent demographics. The product categories distribution in Table 2 reflects overall U.S. advertising spending reported in 1998 (Advertising Age 1999). Average annual media billings for each client were approximately US$65 million.

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TABLE 1Sample Demographics

Demographic variable Frequency Percent

Sex

Male 188 53.3Female 165 46.7

Age18–24 38 10.725–34 163 45.935–44 93 26.245–54 52 14.655–64 7 2.065+ 1 .3

Highest level of educationHigh school 5 1.5Some college 16 4.7Associate degree 7 2.0Creative design/art program 4 1.2Bachelor degree 258 75.0Graduate degree 54 15.7

Have you ever worked on the client side?No 317 90.1Yes 35 9.9

RankCEO/COO 4 1.1Executive vice president 13 3.6Managing director 5 1.4Senior vice president 33 9.2Vice president 40 11.2Director 57 16.0Manager 81 22.7Executive 80 22.4Specialist 24 6.7Other 20 5.6

Area of current positionAccount/strategy 132 37.0Creative 144 40.3Media/research 41 11.5Other 40 11.2

CityDetroit 164 46.3New York 190 53.7

Number and percent reporting experiencewith three or more campaigns in . . .

Consumer packaged goods 181 50.7Automotive/vehicles 158 44.3Consumer durables (excluding autos) 61 17.1Retail 143 40.1Restaurant/food service 77 21.7Financial services or banking 113 31.7Other services 52 14.6Business-to-business 95 26.6Telecommunications/technology 106 29.7Other 38 10.6

Note: N = 357; frequency differences are attributable to missing-item data.


RESULTS

Measures

To test the hypotheses, eight independent constructs were measured, along with creativity. Based on the qualitative

interviews used in another phase of this research (Kowlow, Sasser, and Riordan 2003), a questionnaire was designed such that each construct had a minimum of three items. Ques-tionnaire development was based on the words and phrases used by advertising agency employees in focus groups and interviews.

TABLE 2Product Categories of Sample and Total U.S. Ad Spending in 1998

CategoryPercent of total U.S. ad spending

Percent of sample

Automotive 17.7% 19.9%Retail 14.6 10.1Movies and media 5.2 2.7Financial 4.8 6.3Medicines and proprietary remedies 4.5 3.8Food and food products (not confections) 4.2 6.7Telecommunications 4.1 4.1Restaurants and fast food 4.0 2.0Travel, public transportation, hotels, and resorts 3.8 1.6Local services and amusements 3.4 1.5Direct response companies 2.9 0Insurance and real estate 2.6 .8Computers and software 2.6 2.2Government and organizations 1.9 2.7Personal hygiene and health 1.8 2.9Beverages 1.7 4.3Apparel 1.7 1.3Cosmetics and beauty aids 1.6 3.7Confectionery and snacks 1.4 3.8Audio and video equipment and supplies 1.3 .7Games, toys, and hobbycraft 1.2 .5Hair products and accessories 1.1 .8Beer and wine 1.1 1.5Household soaps, cleansers, and polishes 1.0 2.1Household supplies (paper, plastic, foil) .7 1.3Building materials, equipment, and utensils .6 .4Schools, camps, seminars .6 0Household appliances, equipment, and utensils .6 1.3Sporting goods .6 .7Manufacturing: equipment, freight .5 .1Household furnishings and accessories .5 .7Pets, pet foods, and supplies .5 .8Office machines, furniture, and supplies .4 .4Gasoline, lubricants, and fuels .4 .4Jewelry and watches .4 0Liquor .4 .8Toiletries for men .3 .1Horticulture and farming .3 .1Eye glasses, medical equipment, and supplies .3 .7Pharmaceutical companies .2 1.5Fitness and diet programs and spas .2 .1Aviation (not travel) .1 .4Other, or could not be classified 2.5 5.0

Total 100% 100%

Source: Advertising Age (September 27, 1999).

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Independent Variables

To measure the eight independent constructs, 26 items were used. A seven-point Likert scale format extending from “strongly disagree” (−3) to “strongly agree” (+3) was utilized. The neutral midpoint was labeled “neither agree nor disagree” (0). The items are grouped by construct in Table 3, along with factor loadings.

With 69.3% of the variance explained and high loadings, the model fits. All items load on the expected factors, with one exception: “The client’s brand/advertising/marketing man-ager was new to the job.” Although the item was intended to measure the hierarchical level of client contacts, it loaded on the client sophistication factor. Because the item conceptu-ally relates more to client sophistication than to position in the client’s hierarchy, it became the fourth item in the client sophistication scale. To define the eight constructs, the items were summed. Table 4 lists their means and standard devia-tions, along with summaries for the dependent variables.

Dependent Measures

A campaign was judged creative when it was both original and appropriate. Because there are several ways a campaign can be appropriate, two different creativity indices were constructed. This measurement approach was taken because most scholars agree that creativity is multifaceted (Mumford and Gustafson 1988). One cannot use the traditional measurement logic where creativity can be defined as one dimension in a factor model. Measuring the creativity level of an output, such as an advertising campaign, relies on one of two alternative measure-ment approaches called consensus or derived.

Amabile (1996) exemplifies the consensus approach because she asks judges assessing creative work to use their own subjec-tive definition. If expert judges agree a work is creative, then it is deemed to be so. Thus, Amabile’s measure is a one-item scale averaged across several observers. Researchers who iden-tify creative advertising using awards (e.g., Kover, Goldberg, and James 1995) or industry acclaim (e.g., Twitchell 2000) indirectly use this approach. Because response confidentiality was a major condition of agency cooperation, this approach could not be used.

Instead, this research uses the derived approach, which iden-tifies a derived measure using several reliable components called primary scales (Roberts 1979). A simple example of a derived measure is density, which is made up of the primary scales of mass and volume. A more complex derived measure, loudness, is made up of primary scales for decibels of pressure, pitch, and duration. Plucker and Renzulli (1999) elaborate on many primary scales used in creativity research, but note that the true challenge is to combine these into appropriate derived measures.

Koslow, Sasser, and Riordan (2003) show the derived

measurement to be challenging for advertising creativity due to the finding that those research participants from various agency backgrounds combine primary scales differently when defining creativity. Account executives subjectively define creativity as a complex interrelation of strategy, originality, and artistry. Creatives subjectively define creativity in terms of a different, but equally complex, interrelation of the three primary scales.

More problematic is that academic observers frequently define advertising creativity in a normative sense, focusing on originality and strategy. Wells, Burnett, and Moriarty note: “To be creative, an idea must be both original (different, novel, unexpected) and strategic (right for the product and target)” (2003, p. 303). That is, originality or strategy alone is not enough, which suggests some synergy between them. Schultz, Tannenbaum, and Lauterborn (1993) argue that the demand on the creative person is to interpret the strategy with the number-one demand being originality. Once again, the synergy of strategy and originality is the basis of creativity, but they can be combined in different ways.

The current research follows Koslow, Sasser, and Riordan’s (2003) derived measurement approach and produces two dif-ferent derived measures of creativity, one that is subjective to the respondents themselves and another that is normative. The subjective-creativity derived measure is a function of originality, artistry, and strategy, depending on the agency position of the respondent. The normative-creativity derived measure draws on originality and strategy in equal proportions, plus their interaction, irrespective of the respondent’s department.

Primary Scales

Originality, strategy, and artistry were measured similarly to Koslow, Sasser, and Riordan (2003). Each scale used three items, and all items use the same verbal stem: “Compared to other advertisements/campaigns, this advertisement/campaign was . . .” Nine different phrases followed, which are listed in Table 5 along with the factor loadings.

Although the factor model explained 78.3% of the vari-ance, Cronbach’s αs were high (see Table 4), and the intended loadings fit, the pattern of loadings, and eigenvalues in Table 5 signaled correlated factors. The third unrotated eigenvalue was only .793, the artistry items loaded on originality at about .2 to .4, and the originality items loaded on artistry at around .3. A plot of the originality and artistry loadings suggests cor-related factors, and the model was refit using a more general factor analysis routine.

Although there are a number of widely known and well-un-derstood models that allow factors to be correlated, including the direct oblimin rotation in factor analysis and AMOS, the structural equations model, this research chose to illustrate the correlated factors using AMOS. It is important to note


TA

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Fall 2006 95

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.


that nowhere else are structural equations models used, and AMOS is only used to illustrate the correlated factors. Similar results are found if one uses direct oblimin.

With the factor model reestimated in AMOS, the results are presented in Table 6. Although Discrepancy, AMOS’s ver-sion of LISREL’s χ2, was 197.798 and significant, such is not uncommon in large data sets. Other fit indices were good, and most were above .95 (normed fit index [NFI] = .981, relative fit index [RFI] = .965, incremental fit index [IFI] = .984, Tucker-Lewis index = .969, and comparative fit index [CFI] = .984). RMSEA (root mean square error of approxima-tion) was slightly over the .08 benchmark at .085. Overall, the model has acceptable fit.

AMOS estimated that originality and artistry factors were correlated at .735, originality and strategy at .416, and art-istry and strategy at .322. These between-factor correlations are large, but the within-factor correlations are still larger. To demonstrate this, the 90% bootstrap confidence intervals for the factor-factor correlations and the factor-item correla-tions were constructed. The 90% confidence interval for the

correlation between originality and artistry was .695 to .774. The lowest loading item on the artistry factor was “artistically sophisticated,” which had a factor-item correlation ranging from .774 to .830. The lowest loading on the originality factor was “original,” which had a factor-item correlation ranging from .771 to .831. Given the minimal overlap among these 90% confidence intervals, factor-item correlations are larger than between-factor correlations at just above the p = .01 level. All other corresponding factor-item and between-factor correlations are more separated than these. Thus, divergent and convergent validity is established for originality, strategy, and artistry. Al-though a structural equation model was used to demonstrate this validity, the actual scales used to fit later models were developed using the derived measurement approach described next.

Subjective Creativity

Regression identified the equation transforming primary scales of originality, artistry, and strategy (using summed raw items) into the derived measure for subjective creativity. The model

TABLE 4Summaries of Independent Measures and Dependent Primary Scales

Construct Mean SD Minimum Maximum Cronbach’s α

Brief contains strategy 1.95 4.41 −9 9 .722Client willingness to explore new ideas 1.98 5.86 −12 16 .807Time pressure −.13 4.76 −9 9 .799Use of consumer research 1.71 3.98 −9 9 .694Budget tightness −.19 4.48 −9 9 .749Low-level client contacts −1.80 3.15 −6 6 .631*Use of formal testing 2.34 7.17 −15 16 .878Client sophistication 2.84 5.58 −12 16 .763

Originality 3.00 4.50 −9 9 .893Strategy 5.92 2.96 −9 9 .765Artistry .90 4.84 −9 9 .881

*Pearson product moment correlation.

TABLE 5Factor Model of Originality, Artistry, and Strategy

Originality Artistry Strategy

Compared to other advertisements, this advertisement/campaign was . . .original .772 .332 .240unexpected .859 .300 .135different .859 .320 .164“on strategy” .082 .085 .870a good fit with the client’s strategy .116 .083 .867built on good strategy .234 .116 .719able to stand on its own as art .260 .873 .135could be appreciated as a work of art .288 .884 .070artistically sophisticated .449 .719 .143

Eigenvalues before rotation 4.592 1.668 .793Eigenvalues after rotation 2.500 2.383 2.172

Note: Principle-components factor analysis with VARIMAX rotation was used. Boldface indicates significant loadings.

Fall 2006 97

in Koslow, Sasser, and Riordan (2003) is replicated using originality, artistry, and strategy to predict a single subjective creativity item. Following Amabile (1996), the item “Using your own subjective definition of advertising creativity, how creative was this ad/campaign?” was used. The item’s refer-ence point was relative to advertising in similar media. A five-point response scale was provided, ranging from 1 (“far less than average)” to 5 (“far above average”). The midpoint, 3, was labeled “average creativity.”

Respondents were segmented by agency background into four groups: account, creative, media, and other. For each group, a regression model predicting the subjective creativity item was estimated employing several primary scales varia-tions: originality, strategy, artistry, their squared terms, plus their three, two-way interactions, and the three-way interac-tion. To identify the best model for each group, Mallow’s C

p

statistic was used and the models with lowest Cp statistics,

relative to parameters used, were selected. This analysis largely replicates Koslow, Sasser, and Riordan (2003). The subjective creativity index is defined as the predicted values of the subjec-tive creativity model in each of these four groups.

Normative Creativity

Identifying the functional-form equation linking primary scales with a derived measure is harder for normative creativity than it was for subjective creativity because the choice must be based on theoretical and philosophical considerations rather than empirical ones (Roberts 1979). Two common and use-ful forms are the simple addition of primary scales, strategy,

and originality, or their multiplicative interaction, but the latter tends to be favored when primary scales have synergies (Roberts 1979). In most situations, von Winterfelt and Ed-wards (1986) recommend the extended multiplicative model, a general functional form used in subjective expected utility theory, which incorporates both additive and multiplicative terms in equal weights. This approach is applied here. Because Roberts (1979) notes that ratio scales are more meaningful than other scales, the primary scales for originality and strategy are centered and scaled first. Therefore, the normative creativity index is defined as:

To better understand the two creativity indices, Table 7 lists their correlations with other measures. At r = .726, the two indices are highly correlated. The normative creativity index is moderately correlated with originality, strategy, and artistry. The subjective creativity index is also moderately correlated with strategy and artistry, but highly correlated with original-ity at .934. Thus, the subjective creativity index mimics the originality measure, but the normative creativity index reflects more balance between originality and strategy.

Findings

Regression models were developed for both creativity indices. The eight independent variables and the two creativity indi-ces were centered and scaled prior to analysis. Models were selected using Mallow’s C

p statistic. The variables available

for selection were the eight independent constructs from Table 4, a categorical indicator of the respondent’s area within the agency, and demographic variables for the respondent’s age, years in the advertising business, level of education,

TABLE 6AMOS Standard Regression Weights (Factor Loadings)

Item λOriginality λArtistry λStrategy

original .803unexpected .870different .896“on strategy” .793a good fit with the client’s strategy .819built on good strategy .621able to stand on its own as art .855could be appreciated as a work of art .880artistically sophisticated .802

Note: AMOS was used.

if respondent is from account management,

2.849 .06092+ ×× + × + ×

+

strategy .05129 artistry .00346 artistry

.06029

2i i i

×× + × × ×originality .0047 originality -.00598 artistry origin2i i i aality

if respondent is from creative,

2.92089 .0960

i

+ 00 strategy -.01147 strategy .04701 artistry

.0604

2× × + ×

+i i i

66 originality .00235 originality .00776 strategy orig2× + × + × ×i i i iinality

if respondent is from media,

2.8617 .07645 st

i

+ × rrategy .10681 originality

if respondent is from another i i+ ×aarea,

2.6826 .0818 strategy .12096 originality+ × + ×

i i

Subjective

Creativity =

Indexi

= +Strategy - Originality -

_

Strategy

Strategy

_

Originalityi ix

sd

x

ssd

xi

Originality

_

Strategy -

+SStrategy

Strategy

_

Originality

Originalit

Originality -

sd

x

sdi×

yy

NormativeCreativity =

Indexi


TABLE 7Pearson Product Moment Correlations for Primary Scales and Derived Creativity Measures

Originality Strategy Artistry

Normative creativity

index

Subjective creativity

index

Originality 1.000Strategy .392 1.000Artistry .677 .300 1.000Normative creativity index .675 .553 .491 1.000Subjective creativity index .934 .544 .766 .726 1.000

TABLE 8Generalized Linear Model (GLM) Results for Normative Creativity Index and

Subjective Creativity Index (Standardized Coefficients)

Normative creativity index Subjective creativity index

Parameters p value Parameters p value

Intercept .1220 −.0327Client’s brief contains strategy .0185 .5373Client willingness to explore new ideas .4581 .0001 .6620 .0001Time pressure −.0613 .0325 −.0696 .0119Use of consumer research .1765 .0001 .1074 .0003Budget tightness .0485 .0880 .0705 .0108Low-level client contacts −.0009 .9742 .0254 .3658Use of formal testing .0678 .1018Client sophistication −.0944 .0033 −.0538 .2039Area within agency: account .0996

.0362

.1928

.0380Area within agency: creative .1841 .2357Area within agency: media −.0645 .0239Area within agency: other 0 0Client willingness to explore × low-level client contacts −.1000 .0001 −.1054 .0001Client sophistication × low-level client contacts .0430 .0942 .0516 .0407Client willingness to explore × use of consumer research .1045 .0001Client willingness to explore ideas × time pressure −.0594 .0258Client sophistication × client’s brief contains strategy −.0447 .0696Client sophistication × budget tightness −.0831 .0004Client willingness to explore ideas × area: account -.1994

.0067Client willingness to explore ideas × area: creative .0073Client willingness to explore ideas × area: media −.0969Client willingness to explore ideas × area: other 0Use of formal testing × area: account −.0515

.0537Use of formal testing × area: creative −.1185Use of formal testing × area: media .1679Use of formal testing × area: other 0Client sophistication × area: account .0181

.0122Client sophistication × area: creative −.1397Client sophistication × area: media .1316Client sophistication × area: other 0City: Detroit −.1304

.0006−.0673

.0381City: New York .0912 .0760City: other* 0 0Rank of respondent −.0415 .0037Age −.1294 .0044Years in the advertising business .0147 .0046R2 .340 .395p value .0001 .0001

* Several respondents provided details on campaigns they did during prior employment. Usually these were in the same city as their current employment, but for six campaigns it was not. These other cities were London and Toronto.

Fall 2006 99

organizational rank, and city. Also, all two-way interactions were available for selection. When a two-way interaction was used in a model, both lower-order variables were also included. The models with the lowest C

p statistic, relative to

parameters used, were selected. Because this criteria focuses on overall model fit, it occasionally results in including parameters with p > .05. With the models identified using Mallow’s C

p statistic, they are reported in Table 8 using tra-

ditional Generalized Linear Model (GLM) analysis for ease of interpretation. The models fit well, explaining 39.5% of the variance for the subjective creativity index and 34.0% for the normative creativity index.

Hypothesized Effects

Hypothesis 1 suggested that if the client came to the agency with a strategically oriented brief, creativity would increase, but there is little support for this. In the subjective creativity index model, the degree to which the brief contains strat-egy does not even appear, excluded from the model as not significant by Mallow’s selection method. The normative creativity index model also included this variable, but it is not significant. The model also included the variable because it appears in a two-way interaction with client sophistication. Strategy in the client’s brief has minimal impact on average, but this is further qualified by the interaction, which will be discussed later.

Hypothesis 2 proposed that those clients willing to explore new ideas while working with the agency would receive more creative advertising. Not only do the parameters in Table 8 appear to supports this, but by the relative parameter sizes, it is the largest effect in the data set. However, this relationship is further qualified by an interaction because client willingness to explore new ideas was also associated with several interac-tions that will be discussed below.

Hypotheses 3, 4, and 5 suggested that access to time, con-sumer research, and budgets, respectively, increases creativity. For the first two hypotheses, there are significant one-way effects. Time pressure decreases creativity. The availability of consumer research increases creativity. Tighter budgets lead to more—not less—creativity. Yet again, there are interactions associated with these variables that further qualified these interpretations. These will be discussed later.

Hypotheses 6 and 7 proposed mean level and interaction effects between client willingness to explore strategy and ac-cess to top management, but only the latter hypothesis appears supported. These are graphed in Figures 1 and 2. To construct the figures, high client willingness to explore new ideas was defined as one standard deviation above the mean, and low client willingness to explore new ideas was one standard de-viation below the mean. Likewise, high-level client contact was one standard deviation above the mean, while low-level

client contact was one standard deviation below. The levels in the graph presented are the predicted values for each index for one standard deviation above or below the means for each independent variable.

For both creativity indices, high-level client contact am-plifies the effect of client willingness to explore new ideas. That is, access to top management alone does not increase creativity. The value of top-management access is contingent on these managers’ willingness to explore new ideas. When top-management access is provided and these managers are willing to explore ideas, even more creativity can result, supporting H7. Yet, when the same access is provided, but these managers are closed to exploring new ideas, creativity is even lower.

Hypothesis 8 cautiously proposes little or no net effect of formal advertising testing on creativity. The normative creativ-ity index model finds no effect of testing campaigns, but the subjective creativity index model finds a marginally significant positive effect. In the subjective creativity index model, there is an interaction between one’s agency area and formal testing, which is shown in Figure 3. Media and researcher employees find that formal testing increases creativity. However, creatives find that formal testing decreases creativity modestly. Again, this is consistent with the mixed views of creativity underly-ing the hypothesis.

To assess H9, consider the interaction between clients’ rank and sophistication. In both models, the interactions are signifi-cant and are plotted in Figures 4 and 5. In each instance, the more sophisticated the client, the less creativity. Also in each instance, the higher ranking the client contact, the larger the effect of sophistication. Thus, H9 is supported.

FIGURE 1Impact of Client Willingness to Explore New Ideas and Level of Client in Their

Hierarchy on Normative Creativity Index

-0.6

-0.4

-0.2

0

0.2

0.4

0.6

Client not willing toexplore new ideas

Client willing to explorenew ideas

Nor

mat

ive

Cre

ativ

ity In

dex

High-levelclientcontactsLow-levelclientcontacts


Demographic Effects

In both models, creatives rate their campaigns the highest. Media and other employees rate their work the lowest, and account executives are in between. New York respondents judge their work higher than their Detroit counterparts. In the normative creativity index model, the higher the respondent’s rank, the more creative they judge their work (note that rank was reverse coded, with 1 = CEO and 9 = specialist). Age and years in the advertising business inversely affect the subjective creativity index. Perceptions of creativity decrease with age, but increase with years in the advertising business. For most, these two effects offset one another, but those who enter the industry later in their careers rate creativity lower.

Other Normative Creativity Model Effects

There are three other noteworthy interactions in the normative creativity model. Figure 6 shows that when clients are open to exploring new ideas, the availability and use of consumer research enhances creativity. The understanding gleaned from consumer research has its greatest impact when one is open to it. Figure 7 shows a similar pattern as Figure 6. When clients are open to exploring new ideas, sufficient time leads to greater levels of creativity. Finally, Figure 8 shows that when client briefs contain a clear strategy, it strengthens the negative impact of client sophistication on creativity. The incidence of strategy in the brief increases creativity only for less sophisticated clients.

FIGURE 2Impact of Client Willingness to Explore New Ideas and Level of Client in their

Hierarchy on Subjective Creativity Index

FIGURE 3Impact of Use of Formal Testing on Subjective

Creativity Index by Agency Area

-0.6

-0.5

-0.4

-0.3

-0.2

-0.1

0

No use of formal ad testing Use of formal ad testing

Subj

ectiv

e C

reat

ivity

Inde

x

AccountCreativeMediaOther

FIGURE 4Impact of Client Sophistication and

Hierarchical Level of Client Contacts on the Normative Creativity Index

FIGURE 5Impact of Client Sophistication and Hierarchical

Level of Client Contacts on the Subjective Creativity Index

-0.2

-0.15

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0

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Unsophisticated client Sophisticated Client

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ativ

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de x

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Client willing to explore ideas

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Fall 2006 101

Other Subjective Creativity Model Effects

The subjective creativity index model also has several additional significant interactions. Figure 9 shows that when budgets are tight and clients are unsophisticated, the subjective creativity index is higher. For sophisticated clients, or unsophisticated clients with large budgets, the level of creativity is lower.

Because the subjective creativity index is the product of a different equation for each area within the agency, it is un-surprising that there are significant interactions with area. In Figure 10, there are significant differences among respondents from different agency areas regarding the impact of one of the key variables—client willingness to explore new ideas. Creatives find that this variable has the largest impact (e.g., largest change between conditions), whereas account executives

find it has the least impact (e.g., least change between condi-tions). Figure 11 shows different perceptions of importance of client sophistication. Media respondents find that client sophistication is net positive, but creative respondents find that it had a negative effect. The other two areas find little difference between the two extremes of clients.

DISCUSSION

Before concluding, there are several possible limitations. A focus on large agencies may have neglected highly-creative boutique shop effects. The two geographic locations may not have been ideal. The methodological format, which was retrospective and involved in-person contact and used questionnaires, may have influenced results. The workplace

FIGURE 6Impact of Client Willingness to Explore and Access to Consumer Research on the Normative Creativity Index

FIGURE 7Impact of Client Willingness to Explore and Time

Pressure on the Normative Creativity Index

FIGURE 8Impact of Client Sophistication and Whether the

Client’s Brief Contains Strategy on the Normative Creativity Index

FIGURE 9Impact of Client Sophistication and Budget Tightness on the Subjective Creativity Index

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data collection may have compromised the perception of confidentiality and anonymity for some respondents. Finally, the reliance on Mallow’s C

p statistic and the large number of

significant effects, some of which do not meet the traditional .05 cutoff, should position this research as more exploratory in style, which introduces both problems and benefits.

Given these caveats, from an advertising agency perspec-tive, marketing clients still strongly impact the creative quality of advertising that their agencies produce. Even with the use of two different creativity measures, a similar story emerges. One would think that agencies would be able to find organizational solutions to protect the creative process from clients’ overbearing senior managers, but this does not appear to be the case.

Though this research focuses on understanding agency cre-ativity perspectives, it would also be valuable to understand client perspectives on creativity. Therefore, research on client interactions and client perceptions of what makes advertising creative may provide additionally needed insights. Other cli-ent-focused issues, such as the relationship between creativity and effectiveness, also need to be explored. This is especially so because client direction strongly influences creativity.

The most creative work goes to those clients open to ex-ploring new ideas. Some observers may consider this to be a truism—how could it have turned out otherwise? This adds credibility to the research in that it proves something we have long suspected. But the findings did not support another pos-sible truism: the value of a strategic brief.

The strategies contained in client briefs have such minimal impact that the value of the client’s brief is called into question. Could it be that strategically oriented briefs increase effective-ness at the expense of creativity? Possibly, but because being on-strategy is a component of creativity, this relation would

need to be complex. More likely is that this study’s findings parallel Helgesen’s (1992) critique of client approaches to advertising strategy. Agencies are just not getting the kind of information needed (Sutherland, Duke, and Abernethy 2004). Thus, if client briefs have become formulaic applications of tactical thinking, full of “MBA-speak,” it is no wonder that agencies find little value in them when trying to produce highly creative work.

Support is given for the advertising agency complaint that the lack of access to top management has been harming creativ-ity. It is not enough if top managers are only involved in the final approval process. Top managers who are open to explor-ing new ideas need to step up to the plate with their agencies early on. When access and openness converge, greater levels of creativity emerge. If top managers become highly involved but they are not open, this creates the worst-case scenario. For example, if such top organizational power is used merely to force agencies to execute tactical “profiling” campaigns with the sort of vague communications objectives that Helgesen (1992) warns about, then their advertising would be better served if they passed this responsibility on to lower-ranking employees and stayed out of the way.

Since access to top managers is positive when clients are open, high levels of client sophistication would be expected to further enhance creativity, yet the opposite is found. When clients are both sophisticated and high ranking, the evalua-tion becomes crucial. Since Amabile’s (1979) research, such counterintuitive effects are common in studying creativity. If one truly seeks creativity, one must appreciate and accom-modate its serendipitous nature. Sophisticated, high-ranking clients are good at evaluating advertising, and their high status gives them power to enforce their judgments. Evaluation is problematic, however; rather than getting great creative, evalu-

FIGURE 10Impact of Client Willingness to Explore on Subjective Creativity Index by Agency Area

FIGURE 11Impact of Client Sophistication on Subjective

Creativity Index by Agency Area

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Other

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Fall 2006 103

ators often receive what they are perceived to want, which is an example of a self-fulfilling prophecy. This differs from the impact of formal testing, because testing can be used wisely. Marketers need to understand that agencies are frequently in precarious and vulnerable positions in suggesting innovative and breakthrough ideas. Even subtle unintentional intimida-tion of an agency can harm creativity.

Access to consumer research appears to provide agencies with insights needed to produce highly creative work. Contrary to popular stereotypes, highly creative campaigns do not ap-pear out of thin air. Planning and insightful research are im-portant for agencies to develop new ideas. Thus, the availability of consumer research can interact with openness to new ideas to make even greater creative strides. Providing agencies sufficient time to develop campaigns also produces more creative work. Marketers may believe their briefs provide sufficient direction, but they may be shocked by their limited value in the agency planning process. If prior media purchases enforce a tight deadline, little time may be left for idea incubation.

Two other areas provide mixed effects. Surprisingly, budgets do not have a great impact on creativity. It is possible that money buys higher production values and improved artistry rather than more originality. Formal advertising testing is positive for some respondents, negative for others, but mostly it has little net effect. Thus, formal testing does not appear to interfere greatly with internal agency creative dynamics and can be used routinely.

Marketers seeking accountability for advertising quality must appreciate the complex dynamics they unintentionally impose on their agencies. The current management fashion holds agencies accountable for “their” work, even though cli-ents influence the final product. If the factor model’s explained variance is assumed to be the maximum R2 in the regression models, then at least half the variability in creativity is at-tributable to the marketer and not the agency. There is still much variance that can be attributed to agencies and other factors, but if marketers want to hold someone accountable, one place to start may be to look at themselves.

Marketers often come to agencies with difficult prob-lems seeking creative solutions. If marketers seek a genuine partnership with a mutual willingness to explore new ideas, great creativity is possible. Marketers can be their own worst enemies, however, especially if they approach the relation-ship with the current management wisdom that advertising agencies function like other vendors. This type of cost-based, commoditized relationship limits creative potential, and thus is not conducive to the advertising creativity needed. Marketers only receive advertising creativity commensurate with their own willingness and ability to partner with their agency. As unpalatable as it may be, this study has dem-onstrated that marketers routinely receive the advertising they deserve.

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