When Creative Advertising Pays Off

ContentRosengren, S.; Eisend, M.; Koslow, S.; Dahlen, M. · 2020Journal of Marketing
Topicsadvertising creativity·meta-analysis·originality·appropriateness·affect transfer·signaling·involvement

Creative budgets face scrutiny. Creativity combines originality with appropriateness, meaning relevance to brand strategy and consumers' goals. Imagine deciding where to focus your creative budget. Which products and brands come first, and who should judge the work?

Creative advertising has stronger links with ad and brand attitudes than with memory.

Data chart

Creativity is associated more strongly with attitudes than memory

Average correlation between how creative an ad is judged and each consumer response, across studies, from -1 (perfect inverse link) through 0 (no linear link) to +1 (perfect positive link).

Ad attitude.491Ad recall.311Ad recognition.252Brand attitude.317Purchase or behavioral intention.306Brand recall.129 (n.s.)Brand recognition.052 (n.s.)Combined brand memory.140
  • Attitudes have stronger links with creativity than memory does.
  • Brand recall and recognition are not reliably different from zero.

Creativity is associated more strongly with ad and brand attitudes than with memory.

Table 2, p. 48; averages weighted by sample size and corrected for imperfect measurement. Exact correlations: ad attitude .491; ad recall .311; ad recognition .252; brand attitude .317; purchase or behavioral intention .306; brand recall .129 and brand recognition .052, both not significant; combined brand memory .140. Combined brand memory mixes recall and recognition.

Data chart

Creativity's association with brand attitude is stronger for high-involvement products

Predicted correlation between how creative an ad is judged and liking of the brand, estimated by the paper's regression across studies, from -1 (perfect inverse link) through 0 (no linear link) to +1 (perfect positive link).

Low-involvement products.196High-involvement products.420
  • Creativity has stronger links for products consumers are motivated to evaluate.

Creative advertising has a stronger association with brand attitude for high-involvement products than low-involvement products.

Table 3, p. 49; predicted brand-attitude correlations are .196 for low-involvement products and .420 for high-involvement products. Product involvement is measured; media-context involvement is an untested extension.

Action guide

  1. Build the investment case around consumer response.Protect creative funding aimed at ad and brand attitudes or purchase intentions.
  2. Brief for originality and appropriateness together.Require both, because creativity judged on originality alone has weaker links with ad and brand attitudes.
  3. Prioritize high-involvement products for creative development.Consider creativity when launching unfamiliar brands; the familiarity advantage is marginal and limited to ad attitude.
  4. Favor audiovisual media for brand-attitude goals.Weight creative effort toward TV and movies rather than print and outdoor.
  5. Require brand outcomes in creative reporting.Measure brand attitude and purchase intention directly.
  6. Select creative work using consumers' judgments ahead of experts or awards.Pretest advertising with consumers; awards emphasize originality, so they do not validly measure creativity.

Evidence

  • Creative advertising is positively linked to nearly every consumer response measured. Average correlations, adjusted for imperfect measurement, are .491 for ad attitude and .317 for brand attitude. On a scale from -1 to +1, 0 means no linear link. Attitudes show stronger links than memory.
  • For ad attitude, the predicted correlation is .362 when creativity is judged on originality alone, versus .564 for other assessments. Originality works mainly through positive feelings; appropriateness matters more for consumers' sense that the advertiser invested time and money. Both routes and ad processing link directly to brand attitude.
  • For brand attitude, the predicted correlation is .196 for low-involvement products versus .420 for high-involvement products, where consumers are motivated to evaluate the brand.
  • For brand attitude, the predicted correlation is .206 in print and outdoor versus .388 in TV and movies.
  • For ad attitude, the predicted correlation is marginally stronger for unfamiliar brands than familiar ones (.577 versus .435). Brand attitude shows no reliable difference.
  • Across ad attitude, brand attitude and intentions combined, average correlations are .373 when consumers judge creativity, .300 when experts do and .193 for award-show selections. Taken separately, the pattern holds for brand attitude and intentions, not ad attitude.

Key takeaway

Creative advertising is more strongly linked to attitudes than to memory.

Limitations

The studies cover print, outdoor, TV and movie advertising through 2018 and measure attitudes, memory and intentions, not sales or return on spend. They do not cover digital, social or mobile advertising.

Source

Rosengren, S., Eisend, M., Koslow, S., & Dahlen, M. (2020). A meta-analysis of when and how advertising creativity works. Journal of Marketing, 84(6), 39–56. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022242920929288

https://doi.org/10.1177/0022242920929288

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