Creative performance in professional advertising development: The role of ideation templates, consumer insight, and intrinsic motivation

Alexander Tevi, John Parker, Scott Koslow*, Lawrence Ang

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

To develop more creative advertising, scholars advocate ideation techniques and one of the most strongly supported is the Templates method. This research explores the efficacy of Templates, and evaluates its effectiveness compared to other creative ideation approaches. Two studies are presented. One directly asks professional advertising creatives to use specific Templates to develop advertisements. The other determines if the mere knowledge of the Templates method improves creative ideation. In both studies, industry-based judges assess the quality of respondents’ work. The Templates approach improves the originality of advertising, with no detrimental influence on strategy. Two alternative approaches to enhancing creativity were compared against Templates: 1) providing better domain knowledge through consumer insight and 2) improving the intrinsic motivation of creatives. The research shows these two alternatives both improve originality yet reduce how “on strategy” the advertising is—a trade-off effect. However, the Templates method does not suffer from this trade-off and performs well, by improving originality without any detriment on strategic focus.

Original languageEnglish
Number of pages22
JournalJournal of the Academy of Marketing Science
DOIs
Publication statusE-pub ahead of print - 31 Oct 2024

Keywords

  • Advertising creativity
  • Advertising development
  • Ideation techniques
  • Templates

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