If the product/service is the body, advertising is the soul and together they make an individual with a differentiated identity. advertising is what breathes life into a product, what makes it come alive to the people and builds its personality i.e. "the brand". The success or failure of this individual in the war depends on the ad campaign by the advertising agency. Thus the entire exercise of branding and advertising comes down to one question - how to infuse a soul into the brand...this is what advertising is!!
The debate which comes up often is how important is creativity to advertising. I have long pondered, thought, debated with my self and others and have come to the conclusion that creativity is very important to and ad. Just like a good movie should have the ability to entertain you, and ad should have the ability to attract. Unless you are a consumer who already has a great need for a product, in which case any ad no matter how bad or good will attract you, for a normal person to be attracted to the ad, to want to look at it 10 times in a day or in best case actively seek the ad and soak in the information - yes the ad has to be created. There is no person on Earth who would like to look at a boring ad and more importantly, and ad for the masses is the first time they come into contact with the personality of the product. If the ad is shoddy, that is the first impression we carry in our mind of it. If it is hi-tech - that becomes the personality image of the product in our mind. Like we say in life - first impression, is often the last impression, to get your ad to do any good..yes there has to be a certain amount of creativity.
That said, creativity cannot be undirected and be there for the sole sake of being creative and winning awards. The most important point to keep in mind would be that the creativity highlight and emphasize the one or two core points that the brand wants to convey to the audience. A most prominent example would be the Hutch pug ad..creativity was present - using the pug and a child in their normal cute day to day work, but the point was never lost - Hutch has a great network, we are there everywhere.
Before i forget - a few formal definitions of advertising:
- The American Marketing Association has adopted the following as a definition of advertising. "Any paid form of non-personal presentation and promotion of ideas, goods or services by an identified sponsor."
- Literal meaning - Derived from latin word "advertero" "ad" meaning towards and "verto" meaning I turn. Literally it means "to turn people's attention to a specific thing"
