The creativity conundrum of advertising development: solving a knowledge resources paradox by activating dynamic capabilities

Scott Koslow; Huw O’Connor; Mark Kilgour; Sheila L. Sasser

doi:10.1080/02650487.2025.2551393

The creativity conundrum of advertising development: solving a knowledge resources paradox by activating dynamic capabilities

Scott Koslow^*, Huw O’Connor, Mark Kilgour, Sheila L. Sasser

^*Corresponding author for this work

Department of Marketing

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

1 Citation (Scopus)

Abstract

Some presume that advertising quality depends on the calibre of knowledge resources marketing clients and advertising agencies bring to the table: better information yields better creativity. Unfortunately, advertising development is not this straightforward. Although advertising agencies with access to knowledge resources can do great work, clients must also activate their agency’s dynamic capability of creativity by building strong relationships and exploring with their agency. We show data on over two thousand campaigns across two studies demonstrating that advertising development is more than just information flows. Developing great advertising is often about the right motivation and not just the right information.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	875-897
Number of pages	23
Journal	International Journal of Advertising
Volume	45
Issue number	4
Early online date	29 Aug 2025
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1080/02650487.2025.2551393
Publication status	Published - 2026

Bibliographical note

© 2025 the author(s). Published by Informa uK limited, trading as taylor & francis group. Version archived for private and non-commercial use with the permission of the author/s and according to publisher conditions. For further rights please contact the publisher

Keywords

Advertising development
Client-agency relationships
Creativity

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10.1080/02650487.2025.2551393Licence: CC BY-NC-ND

Publisher version (open access)Final published version, 2.4 MBLicence: CC BY-NC-ND

Cite this

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The creativity conundrum of advertising development: solving a knowledge resources paradox by activating dynamic capabilities

Abstract

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Keywords

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