Creativity is the soul of creative advertising and your brand.
It is what brings to life messages about products and services that might otherwise be boring to the target audience.
People often turn to advertising agencies for campaign design and development, which can lead to difficulties in how to approach the goals you set.
Today, we are bombarded with so many unremarkable announcements that we forget how creative we could ever be.
According to a 2014 report by SJ Insights, people are exposed to an average of 5,000 ads and brands per day.
Of that number, we only see an average of 153 ads, and we only interact with about 12 ads.
Competition for attention is fierce and to be the best, your ads need to stand out from the crowd.
What is creative advertising?
For many people, an ad creative is a clever or funny ad. But that can’t be the only criteria we use to judge.
If the ad does not link to the product or the brand that sells it, it is not effective.
How many times have you heard someone say: “Remember that really funny commercial in the UEFA Champions League final with the boy and the monkey / the talking bird / the grandmother who plays football?… What was the brand that promoted it?
If people remember the ad but not what it was for, then it was probably creative, but not an effective ad.
Why is creative advertising important?
Advertising creative is more important than ever today because we are bombarded daily with mostly bad ads.
When was the last time you didn’t hit “Skip” on a pre-roll video ad? Have you looked at any print ads in a magazine lately?
If it is true that we see thousands of ads per day, we should remember at least a few that we liked.
But chances are you can’t remember even five ads you saw this week. they were especially creative.
And that’s probably the reason so many tune out: people prefer quantity over quality.
In the words of Howard Gossage, “People don’t read ads. They read what interests them, and sometimes it’s an ad.”
What is creativity?
Creativity is the act of turning new and imaginative ideas into reality.
This is characterized by the ability to perceive the world in new ways, find hidden patterns, make connections between seemingly unrelated phenomena, and generate solutions. Creativity involves two processes: think, then produce.
If you have ideas but do not act on them, you are imaginative but not creative.
“Creativity is a combinative force: it is our ability to tap into our ‘inner’ pool of resources—knowledge, insight, information, inspiration, and all the bits and pieces that populate our minds—that we have accumulated over the years simply by being present and alive. Awake to the world and combine them in new and extraordinary ways. “-Maria Popova, Brainpickings
“Creativity is the process of creating something new. Creativity requires passion and commitment. It brings to our awareness what was previously hidden and points to a new life. The experience is one of elevated consciousness: ecstasy. ”- Rollo May, The Courage to Create
Is this possible in business? I think so, but you have to be willing to take risks and progress through discomfort to get to the finish line.
“A product is creative when it is (a) novel and (b) appropriate. A new product is original, not predictable. The bigger the concept, and the more it stimulates, the more creative the product.”
—Sternberg & Lubart, Defying the Crowd
Creative Advertising Examples
1.Blendtec
How do you demonstrate the effectiveness of a blender without boring your audience until they want to stick their head in one?
Easy. You take things like camcorders, MP3 players or rotisserie chickens and throw them into a blender to see what happens.
The “Will It Blend” video series has been nominated for a YouTube Award for Best Series, and its host, Tom Dickson, has appeared on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.
Needless to say, the campaign was a huge success for Blendtec.
2. Schusov State Museum of Architecture
Every day we walk through cities completely oblivious to the history of each building. Architects, one could say, are the most ignored artists in the world.
This ad from the Schusov State Museum of Architecture plays on that by implying that the buildings we see are just the tip of the iceberg. And you can find out the rest of the story in this museum.
3. GoPro Channel
At GoPro they are experts when it comes to getting their clients to do the creative advertising for them.
The company enjoys a large number of videos made by its customers. To bring those videos to an audience even larger than a platform’s subscribers, a few years ago GoPro partnered with the now-defunct Virgin America Airlines to play its videos on flights.
At that point, any passenger could tune in to watch GoPro videos of human (and even animal) experiences around the world.
4. Orion Telescopes: An Incredible Example of Creative Advertising
Here’s a brilliant ad that offers a product demonstration in three photos. With an Orion telescope, you won’t just see the moon or the American flag on it.
You will see the writing “Made in China” on the fabric itself. Product demos don’t have to be boring, this one demonstrates what the product can do in just a few seconds.
5.Fedex
No, that’s not another delivery truck race to beat FedEx at the next stop. It’s a paint job conceptualized by two students at the Miami Ad School.
Here, the message is easy to understand and ties in with the company’s value proposition: FedEx always gets there first.
6.Heinz Ketchup
“No one grows ketchup like Heinz”
This is a perfect way to promote a sauce that is made from tomatoes and nothing else.
By constructing the familiar shape of a Heinz tomato sauce from tomato slices, they are suggesting that the product is pure, ripe, organic tomato. And therefore perfect.
A clever example of creative advertising with brand awareness.
7. Lollipops
Chupa Chups has quite the reputation for tongue-in-cheek advertising and this one is no different.
With a picture of the lollipop on the ground, they can promote the sugar-free aspect of the product, and have suggested that it’s so good for you that ants won’t touch it.
8. WWF World Wildlife Fund
To commemorate Earth Day, WWF launched a series of ads to promote the fragility of our planet.
This example of creative advertising relates the world to an ice cream cone, where there are melted bits running down the side of the cone.
Suggesting that the Earth is so fragile and showing it as melting ice cream is very shocking and works across all age groups.
9. Nivea Face Cream Overnight Products
This is a product that is marketed for night use. And, it does not use other words than the brand that appears on the cover of its product.
This is a great example of creative advertising that uses effective photography by positioning the lid of the product to show a shape with the product underneath. Shot against a dark blue background typical of the brand, the white skin cream shines like the crescent moon.
10. Apotek
Some of the best ads are the ones that surprise you. Those who manage to show you something you didn’t expect.
And that’s exactly what this announcement of a new line of hair products did to subway commuters in Sweden.
On train platforms, digital screens with images of models from the neck up were equipped with “ultrasonic sensors.”
When a train arrived, these sensors detected it and made it look like the models’ hair was moving. The result is an illusion that travelers will not forget.
11. The Lego Movie
No “creative advertising” list is complete without a mention of the LEGO franchise.
The building block company, through creative genius, somehow convinces people to pay to see ads about LEGO.
These are the types of ads Gossage was referring to when he said “people read what interests them.” Only today, LEGO fans don’t just read. They are watching and playing, and most importantly, buying.
12. Procter and Gamble
No commercial can truly garner a father’s support during his son’s Olympic trip, but this Procter & Gamble commercial comes close.
The two and a half minute ad combines a montage of falls, injuries and failures with pep talk clips, concluding with a triumphant shot of the athletes vying for Olympic gold.
Set to the tune of “Oltremare” by Ludovico Einaudi, it is enough to touch even those who are not fans of winter games.
13.Air Jordan
When you think of the greatest athletes of all time, the first thing that probably comes to mind is Michael Jordan.
However, this ad describes it as anything less than that: “I’ve missed over 9,000 shots in my career,” says Michael’s voiceover, “I’ve lost over 300 games”…
This is one of those ads that changes perception. It concludes with an image of the Air Jordan logo, which has become one of the most recognizable around the world, largely as a result of commercials like this one.
14. Panasonic Hair Trimmers
This ad literally goes further. It also uses natural settings in the city, telephone wires, and seamlessly incorporates them into the ad.
15. Guinness
This creative advertising is an effective anti-drug ad. It shows how your reaction time decreases significantly when you drink and drive.
16. Greenpeace Canada
The debate over the destructive role of single-use plastics on ocean life reached critical mass this year, with major brands including Starbucks pledging to phase out plastic straws.
Perhaps the most powerful ad to promote this change came from Greenpeace Canada and the Rethink agency, whose print ads feel like a knock on the table.
It’s a powerful and unforgettable image, and one that is sadly not an exaggeration.
17.Getty Images
It’s very rare to find a b2b campaign you actually want to watch, let alone one good enough to win five Lions at Cannes.
But that’s what we got from Brazil’s AlmapBBDO and Getty Images with “Endless Stories,” a retro roundup of surprisingly interconnected events that occurred on March 8, 1971.
The spot takes storytelling video to a new level of difficulty, requiring a lot more research and, of course, plenty of Getty images for you to get an impactful view.
18.Apple
Apple’s Christmas announcements in recent years have been very nice, but the 2018 presentation was a…
