Creative Message Strategies

Techniques in Print and Broadcast Advertising, Creative Message Strategies

1. Techniques in Print & Broadcast
Advertising
Creative Message Strategies

2. Message Strategy
•An idea about how to creatively and
persuasively communicate a brand
message to a target audience
•A message has to have an appeal- an
idea that motivates an audience to
respond

3. Creative Brief
•Statements about a brand that
summarizes the research and insights
for the creative team.
•Also known as IMC Message Strategy
Brief, Creative Platform, Creative Plan
or Work plan, Creative Strategy or Copy
Strategy

4. Three basic Steps in Developing a
Message Strategy Brief
•Step 1: Determining communication
objectives: What type of impact does the
message need to achieve?
–Sample Marketing Communications Objectives:
•Cognitive: awareness, educate, explain, brand
knowledge
•Affective: image or personality, attitudes & brand liking,
desire or need, strike emotional chord
•Behavioral: increase trial, purchase, repurchasing

5. Three basic Steps in Developing a
Message Strategy Brief…Cont’d
•Step 2: Customer Insight: Finding diamonds
in the data
–Customer insight: below-the-surface attitudes &
beliefs that influence customer’s behavior. For
example, Marlboro cigarettes. Insight that young
and middle-aged men fantasize about freedom &
macho independence of cowboys. It allowed men
to escape into this fantasy.

6. Three basic Steps in Developing a
Message Strategy Brief…Cont’d
•Step 3: Selecting a Selling Strategy
–Benefit: how a product satisfies customers’
needs, wants & desires; promise: what
good things will happen if a person buys
this product; reason why: substantiation,
support or proof that explain why a
product will provide the promised benefit

7. Three basic Steps in Developing a
Message Strategy Brief…Cont’d
•Step 3: Selecting a Selling Strategy
–Feature: attributes that give a product a distinctive
difference
–Value-pricing: offers the best quality product you
can buy for that price. There may be better-quality
products but it would cost more. Price is fixed,
value is not. Value is a perception of what
something is worth in terms of quality and price.

8. Three basic Steps in Developing a
Message Strategy Brief…Cont’d
•Step 3: Selecting a Selling Strategy
–Unique-selling proposition: selling strategy based
on a product’s most distinctive difference from
competitive products; provide reason or proof on
which a claim, benefit or proposition rests
–Generic: stresses a basic feature or benefit of a
product that is not brand specific

9. Three basic Steps in Developing a
Message Strategy Brief…Cont’d
•Step 3: Selecting a Selling Strategy
–Pre-emptive: focuses on an attribute or benefit that
any other product on the category could have
claimed but did not.
–Informational: based on going facts about a brand
& its attributes
–Credibility: heightens conviction & decreases
perception of risk; use of endorsers, PR, testimonial

10. Three basic Steps in Developing a
Message Strategy Brief…Cont’d
•Step 3: Selecting a Selling Strategy
–Emotional: connects with customers &
prospects at the affective level & moves
them to respond with feelings
–Association: psychological connection
between a brand & its customers &
prospects

11. Three basic Steps in Developing a
Message Strategy Brief…Cont’d
•Step 3: Selecting a Selling Strategy
–Lifestyle: Uses situations & symbols of
lifestyles that the target audience can
identify with or aspire to.
–Incentive: Creates a sense of immediacy &
rewards customers for responding quickly

12. Three basic Steps in Developing a
Message Strategy Brief…Cont’d
•Step 3: Selecting a Selling Strategy
–Reminder: Keeps a brand top-of-mind with the
target. Used by mature brands with established
brand identity & designed to jog the customer’s
memory at point of purchase.
–Interactive: Creating two-way communication in
order to open up communication with customers &
capture their feedback

13. Selling Strategies
Incentive,
reminder,
interactive
Buy, try,
repeat, visit,
contact
Do
Emotion,
association,
lifestyle
Brand image &
personality,
liking, desire,
self identity
Feel
Info, generic,
pre-emptive,
credibility
Awareness,
brand
knowledge,
understanding,
conviction
Think
Message
Strategy
Message
Objective
Type of
Respons
e

14. The Big Idea
•Simple
•Has legs: can cater to difference
audiences or media or versions
•ROI: relevance, originality & impact

15. The Creative Process
•Formal procedure for increasing
productivity & innovative output by an
individual or a group
•Step 1: Exploration
–Brainstorming: gather to generate many
new ideas
–Lateral thinking: bouncing from one
thought to another in free association; look
for metaphors of what the product is like

16. The Creative Process…Cont’d
•Step 2: Insight
–Reviewing all info, analyzing the problem,
identifying patterns and searching for a key verbal
or visual concept to communicate what needs to be
said
•Changing patterns
•Looking at things in different ways
•Adaptation- change context
•Imagining- what if?
•Reversal- opposite, negative effect (what would happen
if you did not use the product?)

17. The Creative Process…Cont’d
•Step 2: Insight
–Reviewing all info, analyzing the problem,
identifying patterns and searching for a key
verbal or visual concept to communicate
what needs to be said
•Connection- join 2 unrelated ideas
•Comparison- metaphor
•Elimination- subtract or break rules
•parody- make fun of something

18. The Creative Process…Cont’d
•Step 3: Execution
•Step 4: Evaluation & Copy testing
–Copy testing: testing the effectiveness of a
brand message, a creative concept, or
elements such as a headline, slogan, or
visual for creative impact and
understandability

19. Creative Brief (Mccann-
Ericson 7-question format)
1.Who is our audience?
2.Where are we now in the minds of our
target audience?
3.Where are our competitors in the minds of
our target audience?
4.Where do we want to be in the minds of our
target audience?
5.What is the consumer promise or the big
idea?
6.What is the supporting evidence?
7.What is the tone of voice of the ad?