Communication agencies: Creatives, creativity

 

Developed in the 1950s, the 'predictable ends, certain means' model of creating advertising has remained much the same since. The cost-heavy production spine has calcified the business. By contrast, '

Six months into developing a campaign, the last thing an agency wants to hear is that the marketing director now needs to consult all the stakeholders before proceeding. The most creatively engaging a

The article discusses creative management, particularly creative briefing, and how it is changing under pressure. Traditional creative briefing institutionalises the idea of a division of labour betwe

Successful advertising does not always need a new strategy: sometimes it is only necessary to express an existing strategy in a creatively new way. Agency structure, the three-fold balance of power be

Matthias Kurwig draws the analogy between digital marketing campaigns and Formula 1 racing. While F1 teams are constantly being provided with reams of data during a race, digital marketers are also pr

Marketing has long been subject to a debate surrounding the relative importance of logic, induction and intuition. This is the difference between order and organisation on the one hand, and disorder a ...

This article, by Geoffrey Precourt - US Editor of WARC Online - discusses the approach to planning advocated by Jeff Goodby, of Omnicom's Goodby, Silverstein & Partners. He argues that planners spend ...

This article discusses how to manage creativity for building brands. Brands are patterns of behaviour, co-created by all those who experience them. They must therefore be a process of internal cultiva ...

This article argues that the creative industries (advertising and marketing) must, like any other business, keep innovating to survive. Being creative does not make you inherently innovative. One mus ...

Anne Benvenuto, executive vice president of strategic services at R/GA, argues that planners need to change the way they and their agencies work. Firstly they need to look at more than merely creating ...

Advertising creatives are often characterised in terms of stereotypes such as genius or maverick. Relatively few studies have focused on the complexities and contradictions that face creatives in thei ...

The founder of the Dallas agency Slingshot, Owen Hannay, sees advertising's future belonging to a new breed of multidextrous, multi-channel, multi-marketing agencies - whose creative teams can turn th ...

Procurement departments are playing an increasingly important role in the selection of advertising agencies, as well as in influencing media planning and buying - meaning that agencies now have to dis ...

While the majority of media attention is directed at client/agency breakups, in most cases these relationships are regarded by both sides as working smoothly and fruitfully - a not inconsiderable achi ...

Using vernacular films that have become global successes as her examples, Hamsini Shivkumar, a planner at JWT, develops a theory for creating advertising for global brands. She argues that universal t ...

Charles Young, founder and CEO of Ameritest, tackles the knotty problem of the advertising research debrief meeting with the creative team who developed the ad. He postulates that the successful meeti ...

This paper concerns itself with market research used in the development of mainstream advertising. It takes as its specific remit that part of the process called ‘creative development research’, an ar ...

Argues that the best relationship between a client and an advertising agency is one of constructive conflict, based on a strong foundation of mutual respect and trust. Creative tension between them br ...

John Kastenholz, from Unilever (USA), and Charles Young, Ameritest, contend that there are ways of managing creativity and producing TV advertisements that are superior to the competitors (and beat th ...

In this edition of ‘Best Practice’, Roderick White discusses what advertising ‘creativity’ is and how to recognise and manage it. Although central to client and agency needs, creativity is an elusive ...

Anthony Tasgal looks at the cultural and scientific heritage of insight, in an attempt to gain a deeper understanding of the meaning of the term. He then outlines some principles and guidelines for cr ...

Are advertising agencies getting the credit they deserve? Gordon Torr takes an oblique look at the creative process and makes the case for agencies owning their creative ideas.

The nature of advertising creativity is explored as a professional, applied creative service product, within a business-to-business context. Findings are reported from a series of extensive in-depth i ...

Marketers are losing faith in advertising agencies’ ability to control production costs of traditional advertising (TV commercials), and are tending to move towards alternatives (rich media, etc.), ta ...

Creativity is arguably the most important element in advertising success. This article reviews the trends in creativity research and asks (1) what do we know about advertising creativity, (2) how can ...

Mark Goldstein, ceo, Fallon Worldwide, offers what he terms a "failsafe" way for agencies to generate new business in this 2004 4A's speech. They are advised to stop hiring or accepting busi ...

Chris McDonald, planning director at BDH/TBWA, believes that a surfeit of research and market analysis can get in the way of the two core skills that make marketing valuable: intuition and creativity. ...

An exploratory, qualitative study of leading London and New York advertising agencies suggested that the differing disciplinary perspectives account team professionals bring to the advertising develop ...

This best practice piece on briefing agencies covers the rise in importance of the account planner and the belief that agencies do not trust clients to provide a fully crafted creative brief. It cover ...

This 2003 4A's speech from Bob Schmetterer (president/coo of Havas, chairman/ceo of Euro RSCG Worldwide) argues for the ad industry to "redefine" and "reimagine" itself in the wake of the digital revo