Creative Message Strategies

Techniques in Print & Broadcast

Advertising
 Message Strategy

• An idea about how to creatively and

persuasively communicate a brand
message to a target audience
• A message has to have an appeal- an
idea that motivates an audience to
respond
 Advertising Message Strategy

 The advertising message strategy describes

what is to be communicated and how it is to be
communicated. It consists of the:
 Message idea: the main theme, appeal, or
benefit to be communicated in the message.
 Copy platform: a written statement that fully
describes the message idea.
 Message or creative format: a broad creative
approach used to communicate the message
idea to the target audiences.
• To popularize SAB Miller India's new
brand of non-alcoholic beer, Indus
Pride, as a refresher and thirst
quencher, we chose low-cost handles of
airport transit buses as our medium. It
was released in March '10, a peak
vacation season when travel via airports
increases by 50%.
 Categories of Advertising Objectives

1. Reminder advertising
2. Informative advertising.
3. Persuasive advertising.

RIP acronym = Remind - Inform - Persuade

 Advertising Objectives

Reminder advertising:
 To introduce customers of the brand
 To remind customers the positioning of the
brand
 To remind customers of availability- time and
place
 To remind customers of the brand.
 Advertising Objectives

Informative advertising:
 To create awareness of the organization.
 To explain the characteristics of the
organization.
 To correct false impressions about the
organization.
 To reduce peoples’ apprehensions or fears
about visiting the organization.
 To build or enhance the organization’s image or
position.
 Advertising Objectives

Persuasive advertising:
 To increase customer preference for brand
 To increase customer loyalty to the brand.
 To encourage customers to switch from
competitors’ brands
 To change customers’ perceptions
 Creative Brief

• Statements about a brand that

summarizes the research and insights
for the creative team.
• Also known as IMC Message Strategy
Brief, Creative Platform, Creative Plan
or Work plan, Creative Strategy or Copy
Strategy
Three basic Steps in Developing
a Message Strategy Brief
• Step 1: Determining communication
objectives: What type of impact does the
message need to achieve?
– Sample Marketing Communications Objectives:
• Cognitive: awareness, educate, explain, brand
knowledge
• Affective: image or personality, attitudes & brand liking,
desire or need, strike emotional chord
• Behavioral: increase trial, purchase, repurchasing
Three basic Steps in Developing
a Message Strategy Brief…Cont’d
• Step 2: Customer Insight: Finding diamonds
in the data
– Customer insight: below-the-surface attitudes &
beliefs that influence customer’s behavior.
– “Metrosexual” men compared to the conventional
men – Fairness cream for men
– Decreasing gap between genders – TVS Wego
Three basic Steps in Developing
a Message Strategy Brief…Cont’d
• Step 3: Selecting a Selling Strategy
– Benefit: how a product satisfies customers’
needs, wants & desires; promise: what
good things will happen if a person buys
this product; reason why: substantiation,
support or proof that explain why a
product will provide the promised benefit
Three basic Steps in Developing
a Message Strategy Brief…Cont’d
• Step 3: Selecting a Selling Strategy
– Feature: attributes that give a product a
distinctive difference
– Value-pricing: offers the best quality product you
can buy for that price. There may be better-
quality products but it would cost more. Price is
fixed, value is not. Value is a perception of what
something is worth in terms of quality and price.
Three basic Steps in Developing
a Message Strategy Brief…Cont’d
• Step 3: Selecting a Selling Strategy
– Unique-selling proposition: selling strategy based
on a product’s most distinctive difference from
competitive products; provide reason or proof on
which a claim, benefit or proposition rests
– Generic: stresses a basic feature or benefit of a
product that is not brand specific
Three basic Steps in Developing
a Message Strategy Brief…Cont’d
• Step 3: Selecting a Selling Strategy
– Pre-emptive: focuses on an attribute or benefit
that any other product on the category could have
claimed but did not.
– Informational: based on going facts about a brand
& its attributes
– Credibility: heightens conviction & decreases
perception of risk; use of endorsers, PR,
testimonial
Three basic Steps in Developing
a Message Strategy Brief…Cont’d

• Step 3: Selecting a Selling Strategy

– Emotional: connects with customers &
prospects at the affective level & moves
them to respond with feelings
– Association: psychological connection
between a brand & its customers &
prospects
Three basic Steps in Developing
a Message Strategy Brief…Cont’d

• Step 3: Selecting a Selling Strategy

– Lifestyle: Uses situations & symbols of
lifestyles that the target audience can
identify with or aspire to.
– Incentive: Creates a sense of immediacy &
rewards customers for responding quickly
Three basic Steps in Developing
a Message Strategy Brief…Cont’d
• Step 3: Selecting a Selling Strategy
– Reminder: Keeps a brand top-of-mind with the
target. Used by mature brands with established
brand identity & designed to jog the customer’s
memory at point of purchase.
– Interactive: Creating two-way communication in
order to open up communication with customers
& capture their feedback
 Selling Strategies
Type of Response Message Message
Objective Strategy
Think Awareness,
brand
Info, generic,
pre-emptive,
knowledge, credibility
understanding
, conviction

Feel Brand image

& personality,
Emotion,
association,
liking, desire, lifestyle
self identity

Do Buy, try,
repeat, visit,
Incentive,
reminder,
contact interactive
 The Big Idea

• Simple
• Has legs: can cater to difference
audiences or media or versions
• ROI: relevance, originality & impact
 The Creative Process

• Formal procedure for increasing

productivity & innovative output by an
individual or a group
• Step 1: Exploration
– Brainstorming: gather to generate many new
ideas
– Lateral thinking: bouncing from one thought to
another in free association; look for metaphors
of what the product is like
 The Creative Process…Cont’d

• Step 2: Insight
– Reviewing all info, analyzing the problem,
identifying patterns and searching for a key verbal
or visual concept to communicate what needs to
be said
• Changing patterns
• Looking at things in different ways
• Adaptation- change context
• Imagining- what if?
• Reversal- opposite, negative effect (what would happen
if you did not use the product?)
 The Creative Process…Cont’d

• Step 2: Insight
– Reviewing all info, analyzing the problem,
identifying patterns and searching for a key
verbal or visual concept to communicate
what needs to be said
• Connection- join 2 unrelated ideas
• Comparison- metaphor
• Elimination- subtract or break rules
• parody- make fun of something
 The Creative Process…Cont’d

• Step 3: Execution
• Step 4: Evaluation & Copy testing
– Copy testing: testing the effectiveness of a
brand message, a creative concept, or
elements such as a headline, slogan, or
visual for creative impact and
understandability
 Creative Brief (Mccann-
Ericson 7-question format)
1. Who is our audience?
2. Where are we now in the minds of our target
audience?
3. Where are our competitors in the minds of our
target audience?
4. Where do we want to be in the minds of our
target audience?
5. What is the consumer promise or the big idea?
6. What is the supporting evidence?
7. What is the tone of voice of the ad?
 Difference between Consumer and
Trade Advertising

 Consumer advertising: aimed at the customers

who will actually use the product/ service
promoted.

 Trade advertising: aimed at the trade

intermediaries who will influence customers’
buying decisions.
 Message or Creative Formats

 Testimonial.
 Slice of life.
 Analogy, association and symbolism.
 Trick photography or exaggerated situations.
 Word plays or made-up phrases.
 Honest Twist.
 Fear.
 Comparisons.