Find the latest and most impactful research on advertising creative here. All the research listed comes from the ARF or one of its subsidiaries: The Journal of Advertising Research (JAR), the Marketing Science Institute (MSI) or the Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement (CIMM). Feel free to bookmark this page, as it will be updated periodically.
Negative or outlaw film and television characters, like Breaking Bad’s antihero and drug kingpin Walter White, are liked and trusted less than their real-world counterparts, yet can be effective product endorsers, new research has found, opening the door to a novel and creative marketing tactic.
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Data-driven marketing presents opportunities but also many challenges for managing creativity and creative teams. A new study offers a roadmap for managers at agencies to be more strategic in the creative integrated marketing communications process by rethinking the distribution and valuation of creativity.
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Editors at the Journal of Advertising Research have launched two new calls for papers on timely themes — one on immersive technologies and the other on prosocial advertising messages. Interested in contributing your robust work in these areas? Read on to learn about goals for each call and the journal’s resources and support toward submitting a successful paper.
Today, it is more common than ever for consumers to access media and make decisions on the go. Marketers need to know how being in a state of mobility affects them in order to reach them with the right message at the right time. This study helps shed a little light on how such mobility itself may influence consumer thinking and behavior.
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Advertising creative is critical to driving business growth and positive business outcomes for brands, several studies have shown. It is also crucial to the overall ecosystem and brands’ ability to reach their marketing goals. Given the importance of good creative, the ARF Creative Council put together a white paper to inform and educate members on new methods and approaches for generating and optimizing advertising creative content. These fresh and innovative methods offer potent insights during the creative development process. The white paper focuses on tools that can be leveraged in the early stages of creative development, particularly those that take advantage of state-of-the-art technology.
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Talking M&Ms, Mr. Peanut, the Michelin Man and the Pillsbury Doughboy are among the most popular anthropomorphic product characters, many of which we remember since childhood. A new study asks: How can a brand that uses this popular communication strategy avoid the negative impact of consumer ethnocentrism—the belief that buying foreign products is wrong—when entering foreign markets?
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As charity fundraising becomes more competitive, the imagery used in crowdfunding campaigns requesting help for victims can make the difference between higher or lower donations. Evidence from new research shows that campaigns with images that show victims as helpless attract fewer donations than those showing victims helping themselves.
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Product placements have grown in recent years and the practice is predicted to increase even further. According to a new “Global Product Placement Forecast” by media economists PQ Media, global product placement spending has rebounded at double-digit rates in 2021 and is forecast to do so again this year. What makes this strategy effective? Decades of research provide us with several useful insights.
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Artificial intelligence is already changing advertising, but how will it reshape it moving forward? Researchers unpack the potential effects of three different forms of AI—analytic, interpretive and creative—on seven categories of advertising industry stakeholders. Can those who embrace the evolving creative AI mechanisms get ahead of competitors?
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Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR) is increasingly used in video ads to magnify your experience with, for example, whispers that trigger tingling sensations. Using four experiments, a global research team explores consumers’ reactions to ASMR and its sensory effect on memory.
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