{"id":659474,"date":"2013-05-21T10:00:41","date_gmt":"2013-05-21T14:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/serkadis.com\/index\/?guid=fc5d9757be79fa7bd3c176db59283d83"},"modified":"2013-05-20T15:24:12","modified_gmt":"2013-05-20T19:24:12","slug":"how-to-assess-an-ads-creativity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/659474","title":{"rendered":"How to Assess an Ad’s Creativity"},"content":{"rendered":"

Most measures of creativity are based on the work of psychologist Joy Paul Guilford<\/a> (1897-1987), who defined creativity as the ability to think differently along a number of clearly defined dimensions. Building on Guilford’s work, psychologist Ellis Paul Torrance<\/a> (1915-2003), probably the international leader in creativity research, developed the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking<\/a> (TTCT), which are used in the business world and in education to assess individuals’ capacities for creativity. <\/p>\n

In the early 2000s, Torrance’s metrics were adapted to an advertising context by a group around communications researcher Robert Smith from Indiana University<\/a>. Focusing only on the components that are directly related to how consumers consume and process advertisements, Smith’s group defined advertising creativity as the degree of divergence from a norm along five dimensions: originality, flexibility, elaboration, synthesis, and artistic value.<\/p>\n

As we describe in our HBR article<\/a>, we used Smith’s scale to assess the creativity of 437 TV advertising campaigns in Germany. We recruited a panel of representative consumers and asked them to give a response on a scale of one to seven to a series of questions. From these responses we were able to assess the various ads and we found that there was significant divergence across ads in terms of the type of creativity that were most salient. Here’s how we defined and assessed the five dimensions:<\/p>\n

Originality<\/strong><\/big><\/p>\n

An original ad comprises elements that are rare, surprising, or move away from the obvious and commonplace. The focal element here is uniqueness of the ideas or features contained in the ad. To assess originality we asked three questions:<\/p>\n

1) Is the ad “out of the ordinary”?
\n2) Does it depart from stereotypical thinking?
\n3) Is it unique? <\/p>\n

The highest originality score was given to Coca Cola’s “Happiness Factory.” The panelists unanimously gave it the maximum score of 7.0. This ad also scored 6.3 for artistic value.<\/p>\n