The Creative Process: Learning Objectives

Advertising & Integrated Brand Promotion 8e (O’Guinn, Allen, Close Scheinbaum & Semenik, 2019)
Chapter 5: Advertising, Integrated Brand Promotion, and Consumer Behavior
PART 3
The Creative Process
Teaching Note- It is necessary to alert students that their study of Advertising and IBP is making
a major transition with social media, digital media, and content delivery of creative content.
Having finished the Planning Phase, which included developing a managerial orientation-
segmentation/positioning/value proposition, research, and planning, it is time to move on to the
creative aspect. The Creative Process involves the preparation of messages and campaigns for
advertising and IBP. The basis for the creative effort includes, message strategy, copywriting,
and art direction and production and are covered in detail in the chapters in this section.
Students will likely come to this situation without much formal exposure to these topics. The
main goal here is to engender in them a healthy appreciation and respect for the creative effort—
and the complexity that the structure of the industry creates in managing the creative effort. In
addition the main objective is for students to appreciate that overcoming the challenges in
creative development and execution is the way in which all the elements of planning and the
value of the brand are communicated to the audience.
CHAPTER 9
Managing Creativity in Advertising and IBP
IBP in Action: Hotels.com
Learning Objectives
1 Describe the core characteristics of great creative minds.

A look at the shared sensibilities of great creative minds provides a constructive starting point for
assessing the role of creativity in the production of great advertising. What Picasso had in
common with Gandhi, Freud, Eliot, Stravinsky, Graham, and Einstein— including a strikingly
exuberant self-confidence, (childlike) alertness, unconventionality, and an obsessive
commitment to the work—both charms and alarms us. Self-confidence, at some point, becomes
crass self-promotion; an unconstrained childlike ability to see the world as forever new devolves,
somewhere along the line, into childish self-indulgence. Without creativity, there can be no
advertising. How we recognize and define creativity in advertising rests on our understanding of
the achievements of acknowledged creative geniuses from the worlds of art, literature, music,
science, and politics.
2 Contrast the role of an agency’s creative department with that of business
managers/account executives and explain the tensions between them.
What it takes to get the right idea (a lot of hard work), and the ease with which a client may
dismiss that idea, underlies the contentiousness between an agency’s creative staff and its AEs
and clients. Creatives provoke. Managers restrain. Ads that win awards for creative excellence
don’t necessarily fulfill a client’s business goals. All organizations deal with the competing
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agendas of one department versus another, but in advertising agencies, this competition plays out
at an amplified level. The difficulty of assessing the effectiveness of any form of advertisement
only adds to the problem. Advertising researchers are put in the unenviable position of judging
the creatives, pitting “science” against “art.” None of these tensions changes the fact that
creativity is essential to the vitality of brands. Creativity makes a brand, and it is creativity that
reinvents established brands in new and desired ways.
3 Assess the role of teams in managing tensions and promoting creativity in advertising
and IBP applications.
There are many sources of conflict and tension in the business of creating great advertising. It’s
the nature of the beast. One way that many organizations attempt to address this challenging
issue is through systematic utilization of teams. Teams, when effectively managed, will produce
outputs that are greater than the sum of their individual parts. Teams need to be managed
proactively to promote creative abrasion but limit interpersonal abrasion if they are to produce
“beautiful music together.” Guidance from a maestro (like a Lee Clow or an Alex Bogusky) will
be required. Another important tool to get teams headed in the right direction and to preempt
many forms of conflict in the advertising arena is the creative brief. It’s a little document with a
very big function.
4 Examine yourself and your own passion for creativity.
Self-assessment is an important part of learning and growing, and now is the perfect time to be
thinking about yourself and your passion for creativity. If advertising is a profession that
interests you, then improving your own creative abilities should be a lifelong quest. Now is the
time to decide to become more creative.
KEY TERMS
consumer-based strategy cognitive style
creativity creative abrasion
account executive (AE) interpersonal abrasion
account team brainstorming
creative brief 3P’s creativity framework
Chapter 9 Outline
PPT 9-1–9-5
Introduction
Framework
Learning Objectives
IBP in Action: Hotels.com
I. Why Does Advertising Thrive on Creativity?

PPT 9-6
Clutter is the enemy of effective advertising. Great creativity can defeat clutter. But in an attempt
to overcome clutter, advertisers generate more ads that just increase the clutter. A primary
benefit of award-winning, creative ads is that they break through the clutter and get remembered.
Great brands make meaningful, often emotional connections, with consumers.
II. Creativity across Domains

PPT 9-9–9-12
Creativity is the same across domains. Creativity is the ability to consider and hold together
seemingly inconsistent elements and forces, making new connection. Creativity is usually seen
as a gift, a special way of seeing the world. Creativity reflects early childhood experiences, social
circumstances, and cognitive styles. Great creatives often exhibit total commitment to the craft.
They are usually good self-promoters. Highly creative people throughout history had a childlike
view of the world. They were also marginalized outsiders—many suffering major mental
breakdowns.
A. Creative Genius in the Advertising Business
Perhaps not as influential as creative geniuses in other domains, it is common to see

individuals from the ad business praised for remarkable creative careers.
B. Creativity in the Business World
Creativity is viewed in the business world as a positive quality for employees but is often hard
to recognize and difficult to assimilate.
C. Can You Become Creative?
This is a very big question. It really depends on what one means by creativity.
D. Notes of Caution
First, just because someone is in a “creative” position, does not necessarily mean they are
creative. Conversely, those who are not in creative positions, i.e., the “suits,” are not
necessarily uninspired.
III. Agencies, Clients and the Creative Process

PPT 9-13–9-14
A. Oil and Water: Conflicts and Tensions in the Creative/Management Interface
Advertising is produced through a social process of struggles for control and power that
occur within departments, between departments, and between agencies and clients on a daily
basis. Most research concerning the contentious environment in advertising agencies places
the creative department at the center within these conflicts. The tension is not just between
agency and client though it can also be between creative department and account services
within the agency. Regardless of the conflict, the creative department is clearly recognized as
an essential (probably the essential) part of the agency’s success.
The conflict in agencies, however, is not just about creative work. Conflict arises over the
research process as well. The conflict between creatives and the research department centers
about the difficulty of measuring advertising effectiveness—creatives want impact, whereas
research wants to see sales. Clients often do not recognize their role in killing breakthrough
ideas they claim they are looking for from their agencies.
Account executives (AEs) are the liaison between the agency and the client and their prime
responsibility is to ensure that the client is happy. A key challenge is to get creatives to create
award winning ads (for which they receive career-making awards and praise) that also help
sell the client’s brand. What is the solution to conflict and tension? While there may not be an
ultimate” solution, the observations of John Sweeney are notable—bad advertising is more a
matter of structure than talent. The proper structure needs to be in place to allow people to
produce their best work.
The insights of John Sweeney—a true expert on advertising creativity—makes it clear what
not to do of creativity is the goal:
 Treat your target audience like a statistic
 Make your strategy a hodgepodge
 Have no philosophy
 Analyze your creative as you do a research report
 Make the creative process professional
 Say one thing and do another
 Give your client the candy store
 Mix and match your campaigns
 “Fix it” in production
 Blame the creative for bad creative
 Let your people imitate
 Believe post testing when you get a good score
IV. Making Beautiful Music Together: Coordination, Collaboration, and Creativity

PPT 9-17–9-25
Many individuals make unique contributions to the whole. “maestro” brings it all together.
During “warm-up” of a symphony it sounds disjointed and random. Musicians focus on “sheet
music” much like an ad plan. In advertising, the situation is just like a symphony with many
players having distinct jobs. Collaboration and coordination is required through teams.
A. What We Know About Teams
Teams have become the primary means of getting things done in many business situations
including IBP.
Teams Rule!
There can be little doubt that in a variety of organizations, teams have become the primary
means for getting things done. The growing number of performance challenges faced by
most businesses—as a result of factors such as more demanding customers, technological
changes, government regulation, and intensifying competition—demand speed and quality

in work products that are simply beyond the scope of what an individual can offer.
It’s All about Performance
Research shows that teams are effective in organizations where the leadership makes it
perfectly clear that teams will be held accountable for performance. Teams are expected to
produce results that satisfy the client and yield financial gains for the organization.
Synergy through Teams
Modern organizations require many kinds of expertise to get the work done. The only
reliable way to mix people with different expertise to generate solutions where the whole is
greater than the sum of the parts is through team discipline.
The Demise of Individualism?
Effective teams find ways to let each individual bring his or her unique contributions to the
forefront. When an individual does not have his or her own contribution to make, then one
can question that person’s value to the team.
Teams Promote Personal Growth
An added benefit of teamwork is that it promotes learning for each individual team
member. In a team, people learn about their own work styles and observe the work styles
of others.
Leadership in Teams
The leader’s first job is to build consensus. Once goals and purpose are agreed on, the
leader ensures the work of the team is consistent with the plan. Leaders must also do real
work with the team and contribute.
Direct Applications to the Account Team
The account team can be envisioned as a bicycle wheel with the leader as the hub. Spokes
come from direct marketing, PR, creative, graphics, digital etc.
Fostering Collaboration through the Creative Brief
The creative brief is a little document that sets up the goal for the advertising IBP effort
and gets everyone moving in the same direction. The creative brief does not mandate a
solution though. It can prevent conflicts.
Teams Liberate Decision Making
The right combination of talent, with a leader and a creative brief can result in
breakthrough decisions. Teams with members that trust one another are liberated to be
more creative.
B. When Sparks Fly: Igniting Creativity through Teams
Managed properly, teams come up with better ideas than independently working individuals.
Just the right amount of “tension” can have a positive effect.
Cognitive Styles
The right brain/left brain metaphor reminds us that people approach problems differently.
Cognitive style is the unique preferences of individuals to approaching problems.
Creative Abrasion
Creative abrasion refers to the clash of ideas from which new ideas and breakthrough
solutions can evolve. Interpersonal abrasion is the clash of people, from which
communication shuts down and new ideas get slaughtered. Leadership is needed to
promote creative abrasion and limit interpersonal abrasion.
Using Brainstorming and Alien Visitors
Brainstorming is an organized approach to idea generation in groups. We lay out eight

rules for brilliant brainstorming:
 Build off each other
 Fear drives out creativity
 Prime individuals before and after group sessions
 Make it happen
 It’s a skill
 Embrace creative abrasion
 Listen and learn
 Follow the rules or you are not brainstorming.
C. Final Thoughts on Teams and Creativity
Creativity is fostered through trust and open communication in teams. Both personal and team
creativity are critical. The position of the creative director is critical as well. In orchestrating
creative teams, these are some good principles to follow:
 Take great care in assigning individuals to teams
 Get to know the cognitive style of each individual
 Make teams responsible to the client
 Beware of adversarial and competitive relationships between individuals
 Rotate team assignments to foster fresh thinking
V. Have You Decided to Become More Creative?
PPT 9-26–9-28
A great way to summarize the factors that foster creativity is via the 3Ps creativity framework.
People is the first P. The Process used in developing creative work and the Place or environment
wherein the work is done are also big factors in generating creative outcomes.
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
 Be prepared for opposition whenever you have a really creative idea
 Recognize that it is impossible to be creative without adequate 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
 Believe in yourself, especially when surrounded by doubters
 Learn to cherish ambiguity, because from it comes the new ideas
 Remember that research has shown that people are most likely to be creative when doing
something they love
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 many
students have not had a lot of contact with creative people. And if they have, such as in
high school, many of these creative people were ostracized from the main group because
they were so different. The essential point is that truly creative people see the world quite
differently. As such, they can be seen as strange or even abnormal by the average person.
And, if the creative person does not score “appropriately” (that is, average) on all sorts of
standardized tests, then they may be seen as mentally ill. It is worth being a little more
patient with student responses to this question. They may have a hard time starting to talk
about it. However, once they get going, the discussion should be fruitful.
2. Think about a favorite artist, musician, or writer. What is unique about the way he or she
represents the world? What fascinates you about the vision he or she creates?
This is a written assignment. The thing about “liking” an artist or musician or writer is that
they make you feel a certain way. The mere act of trying to express the “feeling” creativity
gives a person is the real reason behind this question, which will help students appreciate
why it is so hard to get consumers to express themselves about ads.
3. Much credence is given in this chapter to the idea that tension (of various sorts) is part of
creative pursuits. Explain the connection between creativity and tension.
The main source of tension runs from between the client and the agency and within the
agency between account management and the creatives. There are struggles for control and
power between agencies and clients. Research on agency/client conflict places the creative
department at the center of the conflict. The tension is not just between agency and client
though—it can also be between creative department and account services within the
agency.
4. Which side of this debate do you have more affinity for: Are people creative because they
can produce creative results or are they creative because of the way they think? Explain.
This can either be a written assignment that will get students to think in a complex way
about creativity, or the class can be broken into two groups and assigned one position or
the other for debate. One argument says that something is creative only when it is manifest
in something tangible—then it is a “work” that can affect others. On the other hand, it is
argued that creative thinking is the essence of creativity whether it is recognized in the
work or not.
5. Describe the conflict between the creative department and the research department. Do
you think creatives are justified in their hesitancy to subject their work to advertising
researchers? Why? Is science capable of judging art any more than art is capable of
judging science? Explain.
The conflict in agencies arises over the research process. The conflict between creatives
and the research department centers on the difficulty of measuring advertising
effectiveness. The conflict is understandable and is philosophical much like Idealism vs.
Materialism or Rationalism vs. Empiricism. Whether one can judge the other is dependent
on your point of view.
6. Generate a list of ten principles to facilitate creativity in an advertising agency.
A mini-creative test, if you will, this question is designed to get students to turn the
“principles” that lead to bad creative work around and to restate them as principles that
facilitate exemplary creative work. For example:
 Treat your audience like a statistic
 Make your strategy a hodgepodge
 Have no philosophy
 Analyze your creative like you do a research report
 Make the creative process professional
 Say one thing and do another
 Give your client a candy store
 Mix and match your campaigns
 Fix it in production
 Blame the creative for bad creative
 Let your people imitate
 Believe posttesting when you get a good score
7. The creative director in any agency has the daunting task of channeling the creative
energies of dozens of individuals, while demanding team accountability. If the expression
of creativity is personal and highly individualized, how can teamwork possibly foster
creativity? What might a creative director do to “allow creativity to happen” in a team
environment? Explain how the saying, “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts,”
fits into a discussion of creativity and teamwork.
The growing reliance on teamwork does not diminish the importance of individual
creativity. But it does require that care is taken, particularly by creative directors, to ensure
that teams are structured and operate in such a way that unique individual contributions are
supported—not duplicated—by other team members.
An effective team should indeed be greater than the sum of its parts, with individual
members each bringing a distinct talent and creative strength to the table. Or, as the text
notes, when two people on a given team think alike, “one of us is unnecessary.” Creative
directors can promote creativity in a team environment as well by ensuring a diverse mix
of team members, treating them well, and allowing team-based decision making to provide
a safe environment for more daring, more creative outcomes.
8. Advertising always has been a team sport, but the advent of advertising and IBP has made
effective teamwork more important than ever. It also has made it more difficult to achieve.
Explain how the growing emphasis on IBP makes effective teamwork more challenging.
Creating effective IBP campaigns requires the efforts of many different individuals, each
with different areas of expertise and talent. The challenge lies in coordinating these many
varied, sometimes conflicting, roles to reach one smooth, compelling result. Creative
directors must work with account executive, who must work with creatives, who must
work with public relations professionals—and each professional group is likely to bring
their own cognitive style of planning and decision making to the team. That kind of cross-
departmental, cross-functional teamwork can come with both creative abrasion and
interpersonal abrasion. The challenge for team leaders and advertising managers is to
ensure that teams have the right mix of tension to foster creativity and produce the best
ideas.
9. Choose any ad from this book that represents exemplary creativity to you. Explain your
choice.
This is designed purely to be a written assignment. Again, this is an exercise in trying to

get students to think analytically about the creative process and become more comfortable
thinking about creative. Recall that this is a major transition chapter.
Experiential Exercises
1. To be successful in the twenty-first century, advertisers must find creative ways to
transform customers into life-long purchasers and diehard advocates. The lifetime value of
a loyal customer far exceeds any short-term buzz generated by a one-time promotion
gimmick. Form into teams and think up a creative advertising concept that would help a
client initiate and maintain relationships with new customers. Teams should brainstorm
ways in which the client could establish regular, ongoing marketing interactions with
individual customers. After the breakout session, each team should present its campaign
idea to the class for evaluation.
Teams will produce a range of creative ideas and themes. A travel retailer, for example,
could use the following campaign activities to establish and maintain ongoing relationships
with travel-minded customers: Sponsor an travel blog for enthusiasts to share travel
experiences; launch a travel sweepstakes in which the winner's daily travel adventures are
broadcast to other travel enthusiasts in a multi-part podcast; create a smartphone app that
delivers fresh tips for exotic getaways—linked to the client’s travel goods and services, of
course.
2. Since great advertising and teamwork go together, test your teamwork skills with this
gravity-defying teambuilding activity. Divide students into teams of eight and provide each
team with a light wooden dowel rod approximately six to eight feet in length. Each team’s
objective is to lower the long dowel rod to the ground while the rod rests atop members’
outstretched index fingers. To begin, team members should stand and form two lines facing
each other, extending index fingers outward as if pointing to the opposite member. Next,
have a facilitator lay the long dowel rod on top of the group’s outstretched index fingers.
The team must try to lower the rod slowly to the ground—no easy task.
This fun-yet-tricky exercise requires students to use coordination, collaboration, and

communication to accomplish their task. Students will find it perplexing that the rod tends
to rise upward despite their determined attempts to lower it to the ground. This fun
challenge mirrors many aspects of team dynamics. Students will come away from the
activity with a deeper understanding of how teams require creativity, leadership, and
disciplined coordination to accomplish goals.
3. This chapter emphasizes the importance of coordination and collaboration in the creative
process for IBP 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” helped your team’s collaborative effort.
How did your ideas, in number and in substance, compare to others in the class?
 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 both stretch students’ individual capacity for creative thinking,
but it also 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 should
pay attention to team outcomes both in terms of quantity and quality. A team might come
up with 100 uses for baking soda; but are theirs as creative or compelling as a team that
compiled half as many? The brand identification exercise should get students thinking
about the importance of having a unified single message and clear understanding of a
product when developing IBP strategies.
4. Working in the same small teams, develop a creative brief for one of the three brands
listed above. The brief should establish the goal of any future advertising efforts and offer
some basic guidance to the creative division. Your team should use the template from the
book to develop the creative brief, but you may make adjustments as necessary to that
model.
Done correctly, a creative brief should be able to establish basic ground rules and goals for
an IBP campaign without mandating a specific outcome or result. Students can modify the
creative brief template offered in the chapter, but each team’s answers should demonstrate
a clear understanding of the product or service, the competition, consumer attitudes, and
what the IBP campaign should attempt to make consumers believe. Remind students that
the brief should be written plainly, in the kind of language that consumers really use, not
the language of business case studies.

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Advertising & Integrated Brand Promotion 8e (O’Guinn, Allen, Close Scheinbaum & Semenik, 2019)

Chapter 5: Advertising, Integrated Brand Promotion, and Consumer Behavior

IBP in Action: Hotels.com

1 Describe the core characteristics of great creative minds.

I. Why Does Advertising Thrive on Creativity?

Great brands make meaningful, often emotional connections, with consumers.

II. Creativity across Domains

A. Creative Genius in the Advertising Business

Perhaps not as influential as creative geniuses in other domains, it is common to see

B. Creativity in the Business World

C. Can You Become Creative?

III. Agencies, Clients and the Creative Process

A. Oil and Water: Conflicts and Tensions in the Creative/Management Interface

IV. Making Beautiful Music Together: Coordination, Collaboration, and Creativity

A. What We Know About Teams

changes, government regulation, and intensifying competition—demand speed and quality

It’s All about Performance

Synergy through Teams

The Demise of Individualism?

Teams Promote Personal Growth

Direct Applications to the Account Team

Fostering Collaboration through the Creative Brief

Teams Liberate Decision Making

B. When Sparks Fly: Igniting Creativity through Teams

Using Brainstorming and Alien Visitors

Brainstorming is an organized approach to idea generation in groups. We lay out eight

C. Final Thoughts on Teams and Creativity

V. Have You Decided to Become More Creative?

6. Generate a list of ten principles to facilitate creativity in an advertising agency.

This is designed purely to be a written assignment. Again, this is an exercise in trying to

This fun-yet-tricky exercise requires students to use coordination, collaboration, and

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