Unbundling Creativity

Abstract: In today’s media landscape advertisers find it ever more challenging to break through the clutter of competing ads in order to shape consumers’ attitudes and intentions and move them to purchase. An alternative strategy to greater advertising spending may be more creative advertising, which has been proposed to promote advertising effectiveness. However, researchers have neither agreed on a model of advertising creativity nor conclusively linked ad creativity to key measures of effectiveness. Based on a sample of twenty real-life campaigns from ten different categories, and a panel of 4,398 consumer responses, this thesis provides strong support for a model of ad creativity based on novelty, meaningfulness, humor, positiveness, and well-craftiness. It concludes that creative ads are more effective in promoting ad and brand attitudes, brand interest, purchase intentions, ad and brand WOM intentions, as well as perceived ad expenditure and effort. Results hold even among consumers with a negative general attitude towards advertising. A test of the relative effect of ad creativity and media expenditure on sales value produces inconclusive results, however. Finally, the study shows that creativity award-winning ads are considered more creative among consumers and are more effective than other ads.