Current Issue Summary
Sept 2023 (Vol. 64, Issue 3)

Who Needs Highly Creative Advertising? How Brand Familiarity Moderates Creativity’s Influence on Attention, Affect and Memory
Highly creative advertising and its effectiveness for popular versus lesser-known brands takes the spotlight in this study, by Ahmed al-Shuaili (University of Technology and Applied Sciences – Nizwa, Oman), Scott Koslow (Macquarie University, Australia) and Mark Kilgour (University of Waikato, New Zealand). To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that explores the effects of creativity on familiar brands versus unfamiliar brands. Using eye tracking, they confirm that creative advertising attracts more attention, but also show the effect varies based on brand familiarity. “Highly creative advertising may negatively influence familiar brands. This supports some brand managers’ contentions that less creative approaches to advertising are better at reinforcing positive affect toward, and heightened memory for, familiar brands,” the authors write, citing an article’s open questions about creativity published in JAR in 2016. (Arthur Kover, the article’s author, was the journal’s executive editor 1999–2004.) Among the findings:

• Creative advertising is not a “one-size-fits-all scenario, and one needs to know about when to use highly creative advertising and when it is less appropriate.
• “Highly creative advertising is critically important for less familiar brands.
• “Although highly creative advertising improves consumer attention to advertisements for highly familiar brands, brand affect may sometimes suffer.
• “If highly familiar brands do seek out highly creative advertisements, they should ensure that the advertisement implicatures are ‘on brand’ to retain their attitudinal advantages with consumers.”

Read the full article here.