Techniques in Print & Broadcast Advertising

Creative Message Strategies

Message Strategy

• An idea about how to creatively and persuasively communicate a brand message to a target audience

• A message has to have an appeal- an idea that motivates an audience to respond

Creative Brief

• Statements about a brand that summarizes the research and insights for the creative team.

• Also known as IMC Message Strategy Brief, Creative Platform, Creative Plan or Work plan, Creative Strategy or Copy Strategy

Three basic Steps in Developing a Message

Strategy Brief• Step 1: Determining communication

objectives: What type of impact does the message need to achieve?– Sample Marketing Communications

Objectives:• Cognitive: awareness, educate, explain, brand

knowledge• Affective: image or personality, attitudes & brand

liking, desire or need, strike emotional chord• Behavioral: increase trial, purchase, repurchasing

Three basic Steps in Developing a Message

Strategy Brief…Cont’d

• Step 2: Customer Insight: Finding diamonds in the data– Customer insight: below-the-surface

attitudes & beliefs that influence customer’s behavior. For example, Marlboro cigarettes. Insight that young and middle-aged men fantasize about freedom & macho independence of cowboys. It allowed men to escape into this fantasy.

Three basic Steps in Developing a Message

Strategy Brief…Cont’d

• Step 3: Selecting a Selling Strategy– Benefit: how a product satisfies

customers’ needs, wants & desires; promise: what good things will happen if a person buys this product; reason why: substantiation, support or proof that explain why a product will provide the promised benefit

Three basic Steps in Developing a Message

Strategy Brief…Cont’d

• Step 3: Selecting a Selling Strategy– Feature: attributes that give a product a

distinctive difference– Value-pricing: offers the best quality

product you can buy for that price. There may be better-quality products but it would cost more. Price is fixed, value is not. Value is a perception of what something is worth in terms of quality and price.

Three basic Steps in Developing a Message

Strategy Brief…Cont’d

• Step 3: Selecting a Selling Strategy– Unique-selling proposition: selling strategy

based on a product’s most distinctive difference from competitive products; provide reason or proof on which a claim, benefit or proposition rests

– Generic: stresses a basic feature or benefit of a product that is not brand specific

Three basic Steps in Developing a Message

Strategy Brief…Cont’d

• Step 3: Selecting a Selling Strategy– Pre-emptive: focuses on an attribute or

benefit that any other product on the category could have claimed but did not.

– Informational: based on going facts about a brand & its attributes

– Credibility: heightens conviction & decreases perception of risk; use of endorsers, PR, testimonial

Three basic Steps in Developing a Message

Strategy Brief…Cont’d

• Step 3: Selecting a Selling Strategy– Emotional: connects with customers &

prospects at the affective level & moves them to respond with feelings

– Association: psychological connection between a brand & its customers & prospects

Three basic Steps in Developing a Message

Strategy Brief…Cont’d

• Step 3: Selecting a Selling Strategy– Lifestyle: Uses situations & symbols of

lifestyles that the target audience can identify with or aspire to.

– Incentive: Creates a sense of immediacy & rewards customers for responding quickly

Three basic Steps in Developing a Message

Strategy Brief…Cont’d

• Step 3: Selecting a Selling Strategy– Reminder: Keeps a brand top-of-mind with

the target. Used by mature brands with established brand identity & designed to jog the customer’s memory at point of purchase.

– Interactive: Creating two-way communication in order to open up communication with customers & capture their feedback

Selling Strategies

Type of Response

Message Objective

Message Strategy

Think Awareness, brand knowledge, understanding, conviction

Info, generic, pre-emptive, credibility

Feel Brand image & personality, liking, desire, self identity

Emotion, association, lifestyle

Do Buy, try, repeat, visit, contact

Incentive, reminder, interactive

The Big Idea

• Simple• Has legs: can cater to difference

audiences or media or versions• ROI: relevance, originality &

impact

The Creative Process

• Formal procedure for increasing productivity & innovative output by an individual or a group

• Step 1: Exploration– Brainstorming: gather to generate many

new ideas– Lateral thinking: bouncing from one

thought to another in free association; look for metaphors of what the product is like

The Creative Process…Cont’d

• Step 2: Insight– Reviewing all info, analyzing the problem,

identifying patterns and searching for a key verbal or visual concept to communicate what needs to be said

• Changing patterns• Looking at things in different ways• Adaptation- change context• Imagining- what if?• Reversal- opposite, negative effect (what would

happen if you did not use the product?)

The Creative Process…Cont’d

• Step 2: Insight– Reviewing all info, analyzing the

problem, identifying patterns and searching for a key verbal or visual concept to communicate what needs to be said• Connection- join 2 unrelated ideas• Comparison- metaphor• Elimination- subtract or break rules• parody- make fun of something

The Creative Process…Cont’d

• Step 3: Execution• Step 4: Evaluation & Copy testing

– Copy testing: testing the effectiveness of a brand message, a creative concept, or elements such as a headline, slogan, or visual for creative impact and understandability

Creative Brief (Mccann-Ericson 7-question

format)1. Who is our audience?2. Where are we now in the minds of our

target audience?3. Where are our competitors in the minds

of our target audience?4. Where do we want to be in the minds of

our target audience?5. What is the consumer promise or the

big idea?6. What is the supporting evidence?7. What is the tone of voice of the ad?