THAT CREATIVE SPARK
| Pages | 17-18 |
| Date | 01 January 1981 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb057166 |
| Published date | 01 January 1981 |
| Subject Matter | Economics,Information & knowledge management,Management science & operations |
INDUSTRIAL ADVERTISING
THAT
CREATIVE
SPARK
Do you
need
it? Does it
work?
How
do you
get
it?
THE CREATIVE side of
advertising is perhaps more
maligned, more misunderstood
and more misused than any
other facet of the business. Its
professional practitioners -
and professional indeed they
are (they have to be to survive
in a very competitive world) -
have a tendency to adopt curi-
ous titles and even more curi-
ous clothes, but remember
when you next meet one, that
perhaps, unlike
yourself,
they
are not paid for what they look
like but for what they produce.
Copywriters and art directors,
typographers and artists,
photographers and studio
managers are collectively the
lifeblood, the raison d'etre, of
the advertising agency. With-
out them no agency would have
a saleable product of its own,
without them many companies
wouldn't have either the sales
graph or reputation that they
do.
Remember Dunlop's lady on
telly losing her elastic.
Remember Ronnie Corbett's
impersonation of the entire
T.I. Group or Desoutter's fam-
ous horse? Think of the indus-
trial company symbols you can
call to mind and what those
simple pieces of graphics mean
in terms of confidence, author-
ity and quality. The list is end-
less and it's a list of the work of
those creative advertising peo-
ple who invented an image, an
idea, a form of words that stuck
in your mind and that predis-
posed you to think well of an
industrial company and its
products.
TALKING IN A CROWD
The moment any manufac-
turer sets out to attract poten-
tial customers to buy, he is
made forcibly aware that the
chap he's trying to talk to is not
just busy about his own busi-
ness but is being continuously
got at by a vast range of com-
petitive claims on his attention
and his budgets. The competi-
tion from an advertising point
of view is not simply that put
out by the immediate com-
petitors, but every other factor
which distracts his attention
away from what you are trying
to say.
Imagine yourself in a
crowded bar. There's one per-
son you want to talk to, to get a
point across. He's surrounded
by a lot of other people trying
to do exactly the same thing.
You have four basic problems.
Firstly, how do you attract his
attention at all? Secondly, how
do you get him interested
enough to listen for a few
minutes? Thirdly, how do you
get him to remember you, so
that fourthly, he takes the
action that you want to suggest
to him. You haven't much
time.
You can't take him aside
and yet you have to get through
without being offensive.
The construction of an
industrial advertisement, crea-
tively, to be effective has to
perform just these four func-
tions.
And this is where things
can go disastrously wrong.
There are lots of attention get-
ting devices. You could, after
all,
take all your clothes off.
Certainly, people would notice
but... And yet this is a trap
that some industrial advertis-
ing falls into- "If we put a scan-
tily clad lady in the ad every
man will have to look at her."
So you get the attention to the
wrong product for the wrong
reasons. The page is turned
over and the sale is lost because
the approach was irrelevant.
Before pen or Pentel is put to
paper your creative team need
to have a very clear idea indeed
of just what you are trying to
sell and of the action you wish
JANUARY 1981 17
To continue reading
Request your trial