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CHAPTER 8
Messaging and Media Strategies
PPT 8-1
KEY TERMS
creativity creative brief interpersonal abrasion
account executive cognitive style brainstorming
account team creative abrasion
SUMMARY
PPT 8-2
LO1 Describe the characteristics of great creative minds.
How we recognize and define creativity in marketing rests on our understanding of the
achievements of acknowledged creative geniuses from the worlds of art, literature, music,
science, and politics. A look at great creative minds—such as Picasso, Gandhi, Freud,
LO2 Contrast the roles of an agency’s creative department and its business
managers/account executives.
The significant effort required to get the right idea, coupled with the client's apparent ease
in dismissing that idea, underlies the contentiousness between an agency’s creative staff
LO3 Discuss how teams manage tensions and promote creativity in integrated
marketing communication.
There are many sources of conflict and tension in the creation of a promotional mix.
Chapter 8: Messaging and Media Strategies ❖ 2
Many organizations attempt to address this challenging issue through systematic
LO4 Evaluate your own passion for creativity.
Self-assessment is an important part of learning and growing. Now is the perfect time to
be thinking about yourself and your passion for creativity. If marketing, especially brand
CHAPTER OUTLINE
INTRODUCTORY SCENARIO: Creativity Begets a Creepy King
This is an outstanding scenario in that it demonstrates for students that high creativity can
have huge impact, but also that high creativity is squarely founded in the fundamentals of
market analysis and market segmentation. The focus is definitely on creativity fueled by
hardcore analytical preparation.
1. Ad agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky (CP+B) was a small, high-buzz agency
that did niche campaigns for brands like Mini, Ikea and Molson but never a
big mass-market campaign. It was regarded as the prototype of the ad agency
fused with a PR firm.
2. Burger King was a fast-food chain in trouble in 2004. Traffic was declining,
the brand had no image or position in the market, and management had burned
through four ad agencies in four years.
3. CP+B dove right in. The agency started with clear focus on the most
significant fast-food segment—18- to 35-year-old males, who are among the
heaviest users of fast foods.
4. The agency then introduced a series of offbeat characters to attract attention
and engage the segment:
a. Subservient Chicken was featured in a viral online campaign.
b. Blingo was an over-the-top rapper who mocked diet-crazed
consumers.
c. Then came the “King,” a new and very strange oversized character
who would become the ongoing icon of the brand. He had an odd but
appealing creepy aura.
5. Three years into the campaign, Burger King was celebrating 12 consecutive
quarters of revenue growth.
Chapter 8: Messaging and Media Strategies ❖ 3
played, they experienced a stealth ad for Burger King, enabling the brand to
reach a segment notorious for not watching TV ads.
7. The final point of the scenario is key: creative people and creative
organizations take risks, they shake things up. That risk taking results in huge
successes and huge failures; the King is a huge success story, for now.
I. Why Promotion Needs Creativity
PPT 8-3, 8-4
• Brand promotion is plagued by ad clutter, and the resulting ineffectiveness
begets more ads, which begets more clutter.
• Brands, especially mature brands like Burger King, become boring to
A. Creative Minds
• One way to try to understand creativity is to appreciate that it bridges all sorts of
domains—music, poetry, art, physics, crafts, dance, film, building design, and
advertising.
• Creativity is the ability to consider and hold together seemingly inconsistent
elements and forces, making new connections.
• Creativity is a gift, a special way of seeing the world. Creativity reflects early-
childhood experiences, social circumstances, and mental styles.
B. Extraordinary Examples
Great creatives of this world include Freud, Einstein, Picasso, Stravinsky, Eliot,
Martha Graham, and Mahatma Gandhi. These were great creative minds and had
many similarities. They were:
• Obsessively committed to their work (Their social life and hobbies
were almost immaterial.)
• It appears that total commitment to the craft is critical. Creatives are
usually good self-promoters.
Chapter 8: Messaging and Media Strategies ❖ 4
• Highly creative people throughout history had a childlike view of the
1. Creativity in the Ad Business
• Perhaps not as influential as creative geniuses in other domains, ad execs have
2. Creativity in Corporations
3. Inherited or Learned?
• Whether people can learn to be creative is a very big question. It really
depends on what one means by creativity. Is it the way of thinking, or is it
merely a creative result?
• Public acceptance is not always an accurate measuring stick. (Van Gogh did
not sell a single painting while he was alive.)
• The main point is that in the business of brand promotion, we can’t do without
it.
II. Agencies, Clients, and the Creative Process
PPT 8-5
This section opens with a good commentary from a copywriter on the creative process
and how you spend a great deal of time trying to get to an idea.
Creative efforts need to result in “magic” even though the process for doing so does not
promote such a result. There are time pressures and problems, and goals typically are
poorly defined.
A. Conflict between Creatives and Management
• Brand promotion is produced through a social process of struggles for control
and power between agencies and clients.
• Tension and conflict are regular occurrences in the process of creating great
promotional campaigns.
Chapter 8: Messaging and Media Strategies ❖ 6
• Collaboration and coordination are required through teams.
A. What We Know about Teams
Teams have become the primary means of getting things done in many business
situations, including brand promotion.
• Teams rule! Most challenges are beyond the scope of an individual.
• It’s all about performance. Research shows teams are effective when
leaders are clear that the team is accountable for performance results.
• Synergy through teams: Many kinds of expertise are needed to solve
problems and blending talent through teams creates synergies.
• The demise of individualism? Effective teams find ways to let individuals
1. Leadership of Teams
• Leaders’ first job is to build consensus.
• Once goals and purpose are agreed on, the leader ensures that the
work of the team is consistent with the plan.
2. Fostering Collaboration: The Creative Brief
• The creative brief is a little document that sets up the goal for the
3. Teams Liberate Decision Making
• The right combination of talent, with a leader and a creative brief,
can result in breakthrough decisions.
• Teams with members who trust one another are liberated to be more
creative.
B. Igniting Creativity in Teams
• Managed properly, teams come up with better ideas than independently
working individuals.
Chapter 8: Messaging and Media Strategies ❖ 7
• Just the right amount of tension can have a positive effect.
1. Cognitive Styles
• The right brain/left brain metaphor reminds us that people approach
2. Creative Abrasion
Friction on a team can be both good and bad:
3. Brainstorming and Alien Visitors
1. Build off each other.
3. Prime individuals before and after group sessions.
4. Make it happen.
5. It’s a skill.
7. Listen and learn.
8. Follow the rules, or you are not brainstorming.
C. Leadership from the Creative Director
1, Creativity is fostered through trust and open communication in teams.
3. The position of the creative director is critical as well.
• Take great care in assigning individuals to teams.
• Get to know the cognitive style of each individual.
Chapter 8: Messaging and Media Strategies ❖ 8
• Rotate team assignments to foster fresh thinking.
IV. Your Commitment to Creativity
PPT 8-10
To make yourself more creative, decide now to:
• Redefine problems to see them differently from other people;
• Be the first to analyze and critique your own ideas, since we all
have good ones and bad ones;
knowledge;
• Recognize that too much knowledge can stifle creativity;
• Find the standard, safe solution and then decide when you want to
take a risk by defying it;
• Keep growing and experiencing, and challenging your own
comfort zone;
SOLUTIONS TO REVIEW QUESTIONS
1. Over the years, creativity has been associated with various forms of madness and
mental instability. In your opinion, what is it about creative people that prompt this kind
of characterization?
Students will have to think about this for a while. It is a difficult question because
Chapter 8: Messaging and Media Strategies ❖ 11
9. Marketing always has been a team sport, but the use of integrated marketing
communication (IMC) has made effective teamwork more important than ever. It also has
made it more difficult to achieve. Explain how the growing emphasis on IMC makes
effective teamwork more challenging.
Creating effective IMC campaigns requires the efforts of many different individuals,
each with different areas of expertise and talent. The challenge lies in coordinating
10. Choose any ad from this book that represents exemplary creativity to you. Explain
your choice.
This question is designed purely to be a written assignment. Again, this is an exercise
SOLUTIONS TO EXPERIENTIAL EXERCISES
1. Creativity with brands is often directly related to the names marketers choose for
their products and services. Identify and research two brands that you think have
especially creative names. For each, describe tangible ways that the brand’s name
influences the creativity expressed in its promotional themes and campaigns.
This fun exercise helps students see how important a brand name is in determining
the creative possibilities for its advertising and promotion efforts. Examples abound.
The “X-treme marketing” trend has produced brand names from X-treme Jell-O Gel
Chapter 8: Messaging and Media Strategies ❖ 12
2. Write a one-page analysis of a creative song, video, or other work created by an
artist, writer, or musician. In your own words, describe what makes the work uniquely
creative (be sure to use chapter concepts concerning creativity and creative
personalities). Finally, given the contentious conflicts between creativity and
management in the advertising industry, do you think this artist or musician could
succeed in a career in advertising? Explain.
Creativity is a gift, a special way of seeing the world. Creativity reflects early-
childhood experiences, social circumstances, and mental styles. Great creative minds
3. This chapter emphasizes the importance of coordination and collaboration in the
creative process for integrated marketing communication (IMC) campaigns. Break into
small groups to conduct the following creative brainstorming exercises. When you are
done, present your ideas to the class, and explain how the “Eight Rules for Brilliant
Brainstorming” listed in Exhibit 8.4 helped your team’s collaborative effort. How did
your ideas, in number and in substance, compare with those of other groups?
Spend 10 minutes brainstorming each of these topics:
• How many uses can you identify for baking soda?
• Put a ballpoint pen, a baseball cap, and a belt on a desk. How many alternative uses
can you identify for those objects?
• What words do you associate with the following well-known brands? Taco Bell,
Pampers, and John Deere.
This creativity exercise will stretch students’ individual capacity for creative thinking,
and it will underscore the chapter’s lessons about the importance (and even pitfalls)
of teamwork in the creative process. In sharing their ideas with other teams, students
Chapter 8: Messaging and Media Strategies ❖ 14
VIDEOS
To view the two videos for this chapter, go to the PROMO book companion website,
www.cengage.com/login.
(*) Indicates the correct answer in the multiple-choice video questions.
Ford: You’re projecting
1. The book describes elements of the creative brief, a document that guides ad agency
managers and creatives. One of those elements is “tonality.” In the Ford “You’re
Projecting” video, how would you describe the tonality of the spot? Be specific in
providing evidence for the video in your response.
2. The Ford “You’re Projecting” video uses particular creative devices to dramatize the
benefits of the vehicle. Which of the following is seen in the video?
3. What is the tagline spoken at the end of the video?
4. The vehicle shown in the video spot Ford “You’re Projecting” video is:
5. The video For “You’re Projecting” features which of the following activities?
Chapter 8: Messaging and Media Strategies ❖ 15
John Lewis: Always a woman
1. What is the main plot of the video John Lewis “Always a Woman?” What is the
creative strategy?
The good answer will note that the video describes different stages of a woman’s life
2. What is the creative strategy of the video John Lewis “Always a Woman?”
3. The book describes elements of the creative brief, a document that guides ad agency
managers and creatives. Tonality is one aspect of that document. In the video John Lewis
“Always a Woman,” how would you describe the tonality?
4. What is the tagline at the end of the spot?
5. The book describes elements of the creative brief, a document that guides ad agency
managers and creatives. Target audience is a key category in that document. Who is
likely to be the target audience for the John Lewis “Always a Woman” spot?
