Advertising Creativity and Consumer Response

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

You are defending the creative budget while a colleague calls it a nice-to-have that just helps low-interest products cut through clutter. The evidence gives you a sharper answer: creative works by signaling your brand put in real effort, which people read as quality, and that combines with the positive feeling good creative builds and the deeper processing it prompts to lift how customers see the brand. The effect is strongest for the considered categories your colleague wants to skip.

Creative advertising strengthens consumer response to the brand by working through several routes together, not just by grabbing attention.

Most marketers treat creativity as originality that earns its keep by cutting through clutter in low-interest categories. Across many studies, a creative ad does more than grab attention: it signals the brand put in real effort and stirs positive feeling, and both carry over to the brand. The effect is largest for products people care about, and originality alone leaves value on the table.

Data chart

What makes creative ads work: effort, processing, feeling

Signals Brand Effort0.34Deepens Ad Processing0.34Builds Positive Feeling0.29

Creative advertising works through three routes, and the one it feeds most strongly is signaling that the brand made a real effort — the strongest single route to how people respond to the ad itself.

Action guide

  1. Fund creative as a brand-building investment, not a novelty line item.Because a creative ad signals real brand effort and builds positive feeling, and both lift how customers see the brand.
  2. Brief teams for originality AND fit-to-brand together.Because ads judged only on novelty produce weaker ad and brand response.
  3. Weight bold creative toward high-stakes, considered categories.Because the predicted effect on brand attitude there runs close to double what it is for low-interest products.
  4. Weight TV/film (audiovisual) for creative brand-building where relevant.Because creative work moves brand attitude specifically more via audiovisual (TV/film) than print or outdoor; the study did not cover digital, social, or mobile video.
  5. Judge creative by customer response, not trophy count.Because award-winning ads showed slightly weaker brand effects and consumer-judged creativity tracked the strongest outcomes.
  6. Measure how people feel about the brand and their intent to buy directly, not just ad liking.Because creative reaches the brand through several routes, not only through how much people like the ad.

Evidence

  • Creative advertising lifts almost every consumer response measured, from ad liking to intent to buy.
  • Signaling brand effort is the strongest single route to how people respond to the ad itself: a creative ad tells people the brand invested real effort, so the ad seems higher-quality.
  • Creative also stirs positive feeling and gets people to process the ad more deeply, and the three routes work together.
  • Originality is only half of it: creative also has to fit the brand for the full lift in consumer response.
  • The effect on brand response is larger for products people care about, not smaller.
  • The lift runs through attitudes, not memory: creative barely moves whether people recall the brand.

Key takeaway

Creative advertising builds consumer response through signaling brand effort, positive feeling, and deeper ad processing working together, not just grabbing attention, and the effect is strongest where customers care.

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

Read the paper ↗

Evidence strength: Strong (a synthesis of 67 papers (93 data sets, 878 effect sizes) through 2018, plus a combined statistical model). Findings cover consumer responses only; the research found no sales data, so it does not establish a link between creativity and sales or return on spend.