The Importance of Creative
Agencies have long debated what matters most – media buy or creative. Generally, the 80:20 rule has applied to creative vs media spend. However, clients are often reluctant to invest even 20% of their budgets into developing creative. Instead, they favour investing most, or all, of the budget into media. It may be time to rethink that approach…
A good core idea.
Advertising pioneer David Ogilvy championed the “big idea” methodology – creating an unforgettable creative concept that captures your audience’s imagination and puts your product on the map. Think of recent campaigns like ‘Share a Coke’ or Coles’ ‘Little Shop’ which started with simple ideas but delivered ground-breaking success. While much has changed in the advertising landscape since Ogilvy’s time, a clever idea is timeless.
Creative is a reflection of your brand.
Your brand professionalism is judged on how it’s presented. Even clever media plans can fall victim to poor creative but it goes further than that. Consumers make purchasing decisions based on emotions and with low-quality creative you may struggle to build credibility and shape positive perceptions among new prospects.
Channels are fragmented and noisy.
Customers consume media across multiple platforms, often simultaneously. Marketers need to be clever about customer engagement. Being strategic with your media plan and ensuring your presence where your prospects are consuming media doesn’t automatically mean they will notice you. Creative delivers cut-through in a noisy and fragmented market and you need to be specific about each creative element across each channel. Use rich media in display advertising, invest in valuable content on promotional landing pages and don’t always play it safe with your messaging. Dare to be different.
What the research says.
In 2010, comScore research found the creative quality was four times more important than media planning in boosting sales.