4th Brand Growth Event and study into creative

Column Ronald Jansen – Consulting Partner

It’s that time again, DVJ’s Brand Growth Event is just around the corner. A topic within marketing that deserves to be in the spotlight in DVJ Insights’ annual study among thousands of marketeers: creative development. We have known it for years: good creatives ensure your GRP’s work harder.

But if we know that, why are there signs of impoverishment these last 10 to 15 years? (Orlando Wood, 2019) Creatives aren’t as emotionally layered, and would therefore appeal less strongly to the right side of the brain, and more to the left side. As a result, creatives don’t tend to stick as well, and are therefore less effective. The recent publication of James Hurman and Peter Field structures how you can realise the best effect with your creatives. They do this by describing the 6 levels of the creative ladder. Next to these creative levels, there are 3 conditions to increase the chance of success: expenditures on creatives, the duration of the campaign, and media channels.

Coca-Cola advertisement in August 2020, Marie Heinekenplein in Amsterdam

So, effective advertising is possible. If, you manage to stick to a few conditions, which turns out to be quite difficult in practice. Of course, practice is very unruly, especially now that we are in the middle of the corona crisis. A difficult time, with consequences for many advertisers for those 3 conditions, as described by Hurman and Field: a lot of creatives have already, or will, receive less budget. And we have seen that a lot of campaigns change their messaging. With examples where well-intended creatives and copy, missed the boat, such as Coca Cola in Amsterdam. A creative that didn’t sit well with many Amsterdammers. In the middle of the crisis, DVJ Insights already studied many campaigns adjusted to corona. As it turned out, these campaigns do indeed have an impact, but even more often, there was not any brand linkage to be found. In other words, adjusting to the situation seems obvious, but comes with the necessary risks.

Even more reason to focus on the role of creative for brand growth in 2020. How do marketers feel about these issues? What are their experiences? What works in practice, and what doesn’t? Register for the digital Brand Growth Event on October 1st. Lucas Hulsebos will share the brand-new results with you, with contributions from Mark Ritson, Les Binet, Trix van der Vleuten (KFC) and Willem-Albert Bol (DPG Media). The event will be host by Tooske Ragas. Until then!

Creative regards,
Ronald Jansen