Does Creativity in Advertising Really Drive Sales?

Creative advertising is believed to be more effective, but there has been little empirical evidence linking creativity to actual sales revenues.

Two researchers in Germany developed a survey approach to measure perceived creativity along five dimensions: originality, flexibility, elaboration, synthesis, and artistic value. They studied 437 TV ad campaigns for consumer goods in Germany from 2005 to 2010, assessing creativity and examining its relationship with sales figures.

Originality: This refers to ads that contain elements that are rare, surprising, or unconventional. Original ads move away from the obvious and commonplace, featuring unique visual or verbal solutions. For example, a Coca-Cola commercial showing the inside of a vending machine was considered highly original.

Flexibility: This dimension measures how well an ad links the product to a range of different uses or ideas. A flexible ad can smoothly connect the product to various scenarios or applications. The article mentions a coffee ad showing a man facing various domestic challenges while women enjoy coffee together as an example of flexibility.

Elaboration: This involves ads that contain unexpected details or extend simple ideas into more intricate and complicated ones. The article cites an example of a yogurt ad where a woman's tongue looks like a strawberry after eating the yogurt, deepening the idea of fruitiness.

Synthesis: This dimension is about blending or connecting normally unrelated objects or ideas. The article mentions a Wrigley's gum commercial that featured rabbits being fed fruits to grow gum-like teeth, combining unrelated elements to create a unique story.

Artistic value: This refers to the aesthetic appeal of the ad's verbal, visual, or sound elements. Ads scoring high in this dimension have high production quality, clever dialogue, original color palettes, or memorable music. They often appear more like art pieces than obvious sales pitches. An example given is an animated commercial for yogurt featuring a woman floating on a flower petal through a sea of yogurt.

The study found that more creative campaigns were indeed more effective, with a euro invested in highly creative ads having nearly double the sales impact of a euro spent on non-creative campaigns.

Different dimensions of creativity had varying levels of influence on sales, with elaboration and artistic value being the most effective, while synthesis was the least effective. Combinations of creativity dimensions showed even greater variation in sales impact, with elaboration combined with originality being particularly effective.

Many companies are underinvesting in creativity and could benefit from increased investment in creative advertising. Companies can use similar methods to estimate the financial impact of their creative investments and make more informed decisions about advertising strategies.

While creativity isn't easily engineered, the model presented can help ground the process of creating and assessing advertising ideas.

Here's a link to the original article.