Week 4: Creative Strategy, Implementation and Evaluation

Week 4 (implementation and evaluation) turns from planning to implementation: which appeal should a message use (rational or emotional, or both), which execution style fits, and how should a client evaluate the creative work an agency proposes? The lecture starts from the distinction between high and low involvement products and uses the P&G "Thank You, Mom" campaign as a case of emotional advertising.

High versus low involvement products

Advertising appeals: overview

An advertising appeal is the approach used to attract consumers' attention and influence their feelings toward the product. Appeals fall into two broad categories: informational/rational and emotional. In many cases the creative task is to combine the two.

Informational/rational appeals

• The content emphasises facts, learning and the logic of persuasion.
• Rational appeals tend to be informative: advertisers try to convince consumers that the product has a particular attribute or provides a specific benefit that satisfies their needs.
• Objective: persuade the target audience to buy the brand because it is the best available or does a better job of meeting their needs.

Rational motives that can serve as a basis for appeals include comfort, convenience, economy, health, and sensory benefits such as touch, taste and smell. Other rational purchase criteria include quality, dependability, durability, efficiency, efficacy and performance. Which features or criteria matter differs per product category and per market segment.

Types of rational appeals:

Emotional appeals

• Many consumers' purchase motives are emotional, and their feelings about a brand can be more important than knowledge of its features.
• Many advertisers see rational appeals as dull, and believe emotional appeals work better for brands that do not differ markedly from competitors, since rational differentiation is difficult.

Bases for emotional appeals (personal and social states or feelings): safety, security, fear, love, affection, happiness, joy, nostalgia, sentiment, excitement, arousal/stimulation, sorrow/grief, pride, achievement/accomplishment, self-esteem, actualization, pleasure, ambition, comfort, recognition, status, respect, involvement, embarrassment, affiliation/belonging, rejection, acceptance, approval.

How emotional appeals work:

• Emotional integration (Kamp and MacInnis): commercials portray the characters as experiencing an emotional benefit or outcome from using the product or service.
• Ads using humour, sex and other very entertaining, arousing, upbeat or exciting appeals can affect consumers' emotions and put them in a favourable frame of mind.
• Marketers hope that the positive feeling the ad evokes will transfer to the brand and/or company. Research shows that positive moods created by advertising have a favourable effect on brand evaluations.
• Emotional advertising is better remembered than non-emotional messages.

Transformational advertising

Another reason to use emotional appeals is to influence how consumers interpret their product usage experience. This is done through transformational advertising.

Transformational ads create feelings, images, meanings and beliefs about the product that may be activated when consumers use it, transforming their interpretation of the usage experience. According to Christopher Puto and William Wells, a transformational ad has two characteristics:

1. It must make the experience of using the product richer, warmer, more exciting and/or more enjoyable than that obtained solely from an objective description of the brand.
2. It must connect the experience of the advertisement so tightly with the experience of using the brand that consumers cannot remember the brand without recalling the experience generated by the ad.

Examples:

• Lego holiday ad: a fanciful Christmas excursion with 200+ animated figures made of Lego bricks set to Lionel Richie's "Hello" ("Is it play you're looking for?").
• Starbucks "Drawn Together" holiday campaign: hand-drawn animated illustrations on the red holiday cups showing joyful moments (skiing, ice skating, snow angels); the story of two baristas reconnecting, set to "I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)" by The Proclaimers. Themes: connection, warmth and shared holiday traditions. Animation by Geoff McFetridge; aired during major seasonal programming (CMA Awards, National Dog Show, SNL Christmas specials). Partners: Anomaly (creative), Spark (media), Conscious Minds (social). Drinking from the red cup becomes linked with warmth and togetherness.
• Bvlgari "Together We Celebrate": holiday film under a Roman starry night, emphasising elegance, festive magic, joy, emotional connection and treasured moments (released in Italy, November 2025).

Case: P&G "Thank You, Mom"

• Background: launched in 2010 and linked to the Olympic Games, the campaign honoured the mothers of athletes and brought many P&G brands together under one shared message (an umbrella corporate campaign).
• Objective: create a stronger emotional connection with its main audience, mostly mothers, using the Olympics as setting; link P&G with supporting and appreciating mothers, to improve how people view the brand and increase loyalty.
• Creative concept: mothers often work hard and support their children without recognition. Through emotional storytelling about the sacrifices of mothers of Olympians, P&G showed appreciation for everyday sacrifices, creating feelings of warmth, understanding and loyalty. It combined a global event with personal, everyday love between mothers and children.
• Target audience: mothers, because they make many household buying decisions and strongly influence which products are chosen. The message made them feel valued and understood and closer to P&G's products.
• Metrics: brand sentiment, engagement and sales; social media mentions, shares and hashtag interactions; surveys and focus groups on how the audience felt about the message.
• Results: over 370 million tweets and 74 million video views; around $500 million in revenue linked to the campaign; continued in later Olympic Games. It demonstrated the power of emotional storytelling and the universal bond between mothers and children to strengthen loyalty.

Link to theory: this is an emotional appeal (love, affection, pride, recognition) with emotional integration (the mothers experience the emotional outcome of their support), aimed at a clearly defined target audience and measured with communication metrics as well as sales.

Combining rational and emotional appeals

In many situations the decision is not whether to choose an emotional or a rational appeal, but how to combine the two. Consumer purchase decisions are often made on the basis of both emotional and rational motives, and both need attention in effective advertising.

Example: the Mercedes-Benz C-Class Coupe print ad "A wolf in wolf's clothing". The headline and aggressive styling appeal to emotion (power, status, excitement), while the body copy gives rational information: the first fully fledged coupe with the C-Class name, direct-injection performance engines, AMG styling, a panoramic sunroof, the total price ($42,405) and an invitation to book a test drive.

Advertising execution

The creative execution style is the way a particular appeal is turned into a message. Three styles discussed in the lecture:

• Animation: animated scenes drawn by artists or created on computer, using cartoons, puppets or other fictional characters. Especially popular for commercials targeted at children, but increasingly used in general (e.g. Spotify animated ads, Starbucks "Drawn Together").
• Personality symbol: developing a central character or personality symbol that delivers the message and with which the product can be identified. The character can be a person (e.g. a company spokesperson) or a created figure.
• Fantasy: popular for emotional appeals such as image advertising. Particularly suited to television, where the commercial can become a 30-second escape into another lifestyle. The product becomes a central part of the situation the advertiser creates.

Guidelines for evaluating creative output

The client (advertising or brand manager) uses these guidelines to review, evaluate and approve the ideas of the creative specialists:

1. Is the creative approach consistent with the brand's marketing and advertising objectives? The appeal and execution style must fit the marketing strategy and the role assigned to advertising. It must be compatible with the brand's image and positioning and contribute to marketing and advertising objectives.
2. Is it consistent with the creative strategy and objectives: does it communicate what it is supposed to? The appeal and execution must meet the communication objectives in the copy platform. Creatives can lose sight of the intended message; approvers should ask them to explain how the approach adheres to the creative strategy.
3. Is it appropriate for the target audience? Consider whether the appeal will attract, be understood by and communicate effectively with the target audience, studying all elements of the ad and how the audience will respond.
   • Older consumers: it has been suggested to use models about 10 years younger than the target audience's average age, since most people feel younger than their chronological age.
   • Teen market: a challenge because teenagers' styles, fashions, language and values change so rapidly; an approach, spokesperson or expression may already be out of fashion.
4. Does it communicate a clear and convincing message? Many ads fail to give a clear, motivating reason to buy. Creativity is important, but the ad must also communicate attributes, features, benefits and/or images that give consumers a reason to buy.
5. Does the creative execution keep from overwhelming the message? A common criticism, especially of TV commercials, is that so much emphasis is placed on execution that the message is overshadowed; many entertaining commercials fail to register the brand name or selling points.
6. Is the approach appropriate for the media environment? Each vehicle has its own climate from its editorial content, audience and other ads. Example: the Super Bowl has become a showcase for commercials; viewers pay as much attention to the ads as to the game, so advertisers develop new ads especially for it.
7. Is the ad truthful and tasteful? Marketers must consider whether the ad is truthful and whether it might offend. Example: Just For Feet's 1999 Super Bowl commercial showed a Kenyan runner tracked like an animal by white mercenaries, drugged and fitted with running shoes. It caused charges of neocolonialism and racism and a major PR problem; the spot was pulled after one airing and the company sued its agency. The ultimate responsibility for deciding whether an ad deceives or offends lies with the client; the legal department may review ads before they run.

These are basic, partly subjective guidelines. There may be other firm-specific factors, and situations where deviating from the usual standards is acceptable. The client may also go beyond subjective criteria and use more sophisticated pretesting methods to determine the effectiveness of a proposed approach.

Dual models of persuasion: ELM and HSM

The high versus low involvement table above already shows that consumers process ads differently depending on involvement. Dual models of persuasion explain why: people can be persuaded through two different kinds of processing, one effortful and one based on shortcuts. The two best-known models are the Elaboration Likelihood Model and the Heuristic-Systematic Model.

Elaboration depends on two conditions:

• Motivation to process: personal relevance of the topic (involvement), personal responsibility, and the need for cognition (enjoying thinking).
• Ability to process: prior knowledge, time, message comprehensibility, absence of distraction, and repetition. A 15-second radio spot heard while driving limits ability even for an involved listener.

Only when both motivation and ability are present does the central route occur.

Attitude persistence is the key managerial point of the ELM: attitudes formed through the central route last longer, resist competitor attacks and predict purchase better. Peripheral attitudes fade, so brands relying on cues must keep advertising. A variable can also play different roles: an attractive model is a peripheral cue for a soft drink, but can be a central argument for a beauty product where appearance is the benefit.

The Heuristic-Systematic Model (HSM)

• Typical heuristics: "experts can be trusted", "if many people like it, it must be good" (consensus), "longer messages have stronger arguments", "I agree with people I like".
• Least effort principle: people prefer the less effortful heuristic mode.
• Sufficiency principle: people process until they reach a desired level of confidence in their judgement. When the gap between actual and desired confidence is large (high involvement, high risk), they switch to systematic processing.
• Unlike the ELM, which describes a trade-off between the routes, the HSM stresses that the two modes can work at the same time: their effects can add up (additivity), systematic processing can override a heuristic (attenuation), or a heuristic can colour how the arguments are read (bias).

Implications for creative strategy

1. Diagnose the audience: estimate motivation and ability per persona and journey stage before choosing the appeal.
2. High elaboration: use strong, relevant arguments, comparisons, proof and demonstrations; weak arguments backfire because they are scrutinised.
3. Low elaboration: invest in cues and heuristics (credible endorsers, popularity claims, ratings, music, visual identity) and in repetition.
4. Combine both: a strong cue attracts attention and a clear argument rewards the viewer who does think, which suits mixed audiences and media where attention varies.
5. Match the medium: short formats in social feeds favour heuristic processing; websites, brochures and long-form video allow systematic processing.