Current Issue Summary
June 2022 (Vol. 62, Issue 2)
How Has the Digital Environment Affected Advertising Creativity? Digital’s Impact on the Creative Process, Person and Product: A Delphi Study
Digital media has both constrained and benefitted advertising creativity, but the question is: how? Petra Goor, Gayle Kerr and Hyun Seung Jin (all three at Queensland University of Technology), sought to fill that knowledge gap by applying the seminal Four P’s model to three research questions:
- How has the digital environment supported or constrained the creative process?
- How has the digital environment changed the role of the creative person in advertising agencies?
- How has the digital environment supported or constrained the creative product?
The Four P’s model (Rhodes, 1961) identifies four key perspectives of creativity based on a literature review of nearly 60 definitions of creativity and imagination. The four P’s are: process (what the individual does), person (the creator/creative), product (the result of the process) and place (how the environment supports or constrains creativity). Each of the four P’s is unique academically but operates functionally only when applied together. Evidence in recent research shows that the Four P’s model “still holds true, despite the acceleration of technology and changes in the past 40 years,” the authors write.
What makes the study particularly noteworthy is, to date, there has been very little empirical research on constraints in the advertising creative process. The authors used the rigorous Delphi method to assemble a what they referred to as a “think tank” of creative experts who would then address the research questions. These experts—14 Cannes Lion awarding-winning creative directors from Australia, Canada, Germany, Indonesia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Paraguay, the U.K. and the U.S.—contributed to the study significantly.
Among the takeaways:
- “The digital environment has empowered creativity with new information, new technology and new opportunities but also underscores the necessity of keeping the human connection with consumers.
- “The creative process has been constrained by time and money and expanded by technology and possibility.
- “Creative directors have more responsibilities and work with more stakeholders on faster and cheaper campaigns.
- “Too much information is not always a good thing, as scarcity can foster a more creative product.”