What is creative advertising
Creativity is defined as the use of imagination or original ideas to create something; inventiveness. In that sense, creativity is applied in the world of advertising to develop a fresh concept for topics that have much been discussed.
Creative advertising is the act of a team of creatives working together to spark discussion about a product or service in the market. Oftentimes, creative advertising is used to shine a light on under-rated topics such as issues relating to nonprofit causes.
What sets a typical agency apart from a creative agency is its courage to take bold measures when it comes to its advertising campaigns. Today, we will discuss the importance of creative advertising and how you can implement creativity in your future campaigns.
Importance of creative advertising
Aside from the obvious purpose of advertising which is to generate sales, advertising also serves as a medium to build brand reputation and improve brand recall in the market. With the ever-competitive advertising scene brought about by the advent of digital solutions, it takes a lot more effort to stand out from market players within your industry.
One effective way to cut through the online and offline traffic is by emphasizing the value of creativity in your advertising. A little bit of creativity can go a long way. Here are 4 facts to convince you of the importance of creative advertising.
- Creative Ads are Memorable
According to Data Reportal 2020, Malaysians spend an average of 7 hours 57 minutes daily on the Internet. Although it may seem like you can get your online advertisement in front of the audience throughout the day, research has shown that on average, you only have 8 seconds to capture people’s attention with your ads.
With that said, it is important for your ads to have a creative element that reels the audience in the first few seconds of seeing the ad. As there are various formats of ads available on the Internet, creativity can be applied to each format to generate the best results. Besides creative visuals, you can also explore different elements of your ads such as the copywriting, the order of storytelling, the social media platform used and many more.
Creativity goes beyond just beautiful visuals and catchy copywriting. The key to creative advertising is the ability to deliver the central message behind your advertisement in a compelling way. By using storytelling, you can captivate the audience and improve the recall of your advertisement.
- Creative Ads are Engaging
Another reason why you should opt for creative advertising is the ability to engage the audience with your ads. Ask yourself this, each time you are scrolling through your social media timeline, what makes you stop at an ad and tap on the ‘Like’ or ‘Share’ button?
To answer this question, a study done by Millward Brown found that one of the main reasons people share ads is because they find the ads creative and engaging. Not only can creative advertising help to retain your audience’s attention span, but it can also help to increase your brand awareness through organic likes and shares among the online community.
Aside from reaching a wide pool of audience with your ads, you want people to feel that spark when they watch your ads so that it will result in the desired action. We see this happen a lot with advertisements for nonprofit organizations in Cause Marketing. At times, creativity can be just the extra nudge that the audience needs to carry out the call-to-action in your ads.
- Creative Ads are Loveable
One of the reasons why we usually block out advertisements is because they tend to get annoying sometimes. This is proven to be true by a phenomenon known as ad blindness where online users tend to consciously or subconsciously ignore banner-like advertisements while browsing through the Internet.
Well, it’s 2021 and advertisers today know better than to bombard online users with advertisements that they did not ask to see. In addition to the current online advertising advancement such as remarketing and cart abandonment ads, there is one way to make people WANT to see your ads – and that is by presenting your ads in creative formats so that they don’t look like ads.
We see this a lot these days with brands opting for non-traditional ways of advertising by collaborating with influencers and Youtubers. In these cases, the creators put their own creative spin on the brand’s products or services in a way that is relatable to the audience. By leveraging on the influencers’ following base and coupled with creative concepts used in the advertising, you may find that people will love your ads and want to see more from you in the future.
- Creative Ads are Affordable
The most important reason to include creativity in your advertising is due to the cost-effectiveness of creative advertising. As we mentioned earlier, creative ads are more likely to gain organic likes and shares compared to generic and boring ads.
As the top social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram tend to have algorithms that favour posts with higher organic reach and engagements, you will end up spending less money on your online advertising. Audiences tend to view ads that are shared by friends and people they know as more convincing and trustworthy compared to paid promotions.
By taking the time to craft out a creative advertisement, your ads will continue to generate a return of investment even long after the campaign is launched!
Now that you are up to speed on the importance of creative advertising, we would like to share some of our favourite creative advertising examples with you.
Examples of how to do creative advertising
- The Laugh Factor
Who doesn’t love a good laugh? One of the ways to gain the audience’s attention is by injecting humour which helps to highlight the key selling points of your products. Check out this punny example by Pepsi with their new ‘light’ beverage!
- Seeing The Bigger Picture
Part of creative advertising is shocking people with your ads. In order to do so, sometimes it requires you to make bold moves that may seem unimpressive to people at first sight. However, just like this ‘bloody clever’ BBC billboard ad for the popular TV series Dracula, it shows that creative advertising is all about looking at the bigger picture.
- Confidence is Key
It is often said that in order to be a good salesman, you have to first be confident in what you sell. We believe that the world-famous multinational delivery services company, FedEx took that saying to the next level with this cheeky ad. The visual shows a FedEx truck wrapped with an overlapping image of a direct competitors’ truck to illustrate that FedEx will always be one step ahead of its competitor.
- Understanding Your Audience
How many of us are guilty of going to McDonald’s to exploit their WiFi connection? Just us? Alright, cool. McDonald’s knows their audience well enough that they combined two of their audiences’ favourite things together in a simple ad that speaks volumes.
- Use Storytelling to Connect With Your Audience
Nothing captivates the audience more than a good, inspiring story that everyone can relate to. US’ ridesharing service provider, Lyft came up with this animated short video to tell the story of Lyft drivers and their riders in a way that we can all relate to. The authenticity of the ridesharing experience is illustrated beautifully through the different characters in the short.
There you have it! Everything you need to know about Creative Advertising and how you can implement it into your upcoming advertising and marketing campaigns.
If you need help coming up with some creative ideas, drop us a line and let’s get creative together.
We are looking for creative talents to join our Beehive. If you are looking for a platform to connect with like-minded people within the creative community, do check out our Beehive for more information.
