The Creativity Trap

Jack TroutSeptember 22, 20074 min

At present, the advertising industry is in some disarray. People are questioning the viability of traditional advertising. As I’ve written about, many new forms of marketing tools are being cooked up daily, most of which revolve around the digital world in which we live.

The biggest threat is Ti-Vo and the ability to digitally record shows and skip by the commercials. All this has led the advertising industry to declare that more creativity is needed to keep people watching. Thus emotion, humor or whatever it takes to freeze viewers is the advertising rule of the day. Even a powerful idea like the Visa tagline, “Everywhere you want to be” gets changed to an “emotional” tagline “Life takes Visa.” That’s bad enough, but their competitor, American Express, is running a program that says: “My life. My card.”

What’s going on here?

To me, it’s creativity run amok. Advertising people don’t realize is that selling isn’t about being creative or cute or imaginative. It’s all about logic, which is a science that deals with the rules and tests of sound thinking.

A trip to a dictionary will define a logical argument as one that is cogent, compelling, convincing, valid, clear. It shows skill in thinking or reasoning.

Now doesn’t that sound like an argument should support what you’re trying to sell? You’d better believe it. And yet, how many logical arguments do you come across in the marketing world? Very few. That lack of logic is at the heart of most programs that fail. On the other side of the coin, if you can see the logic in the argument, chances are you’ve got a winner.

If Avis is only No. 2 in rent-a-cars, then it figures that they have to try harder. It’s not creative, it’s logical.

If  IBM’s size covers all aspects of computing, then it’s logical that they can integrate all the pieces better than any other manufacturer. Integrated computing is what makes them different.

Since logic is a science, it’s logical that constructing a unique selling proposition or point of difference should be a science, not an art. And yet the creative faction fights this idea tooth and nail. They hate the thought of being locked into a process that limits their creative musing.

But what’s worse is to see a company go through the strategy process and come up with a straightforward logical argument for their brand, then turn it over to the creative folks and watch the argument disappear in a cloud of singing and dancing or whatever.

Once, while working with a bank on their strategy, we discovered that they were the leader in Small Business Administration loans in their trading area. Most of those loans, it turned out, were going to recent immigrants starting businesses in America. People pursuing the American dream of success.

The recommended strategy was logical and direct. What made this bank different was that it was “the home of the American dream.”

Everyone liked the idea, and it was handed over to an agency for implementation. When we saw it again, it had become: “We bank on your dreams.”

So much for logic and a differentiating idea.

Or you have the case of the new agency arriving that wants to exercise their creativity by changing a perfectly good strategy. Some years ago, in working with Continental Airlines, I encouraged them to exploit their new airplanes and other value ideas with the simple concept of “More airline for the money”. This ran until a new agency arrived and talked them into “Work Hard. Fly right”. What in the world does that mean? (I get furious every time I drive by one of their billboards.)

I’m not naïve about why agencies like to push “Creativity”. They see all those award shows about creativity as their ticket to more new business. The problem is that these activities only lead to more wild and crazy advertising that lacks a clear reason to buy. Nobody gives out awards for clear logic. All this has to stop if the agency business is to regain its footing.

What’s to be done? Well, I have suggestions that advertising agencies do away with their creative departments and replace them with dramatizing departments. In other words, replace creativity with dramativity.

The fact is that creativity was always a misnomer. An agency isn’t creating something. The company or product or service already exists. What they are doing is figuring out what is the best way to sell it. That, simply stated, is to take that logical, differentiating argument and dramatize it.

How do you make that argument exciting and involving? Long ago, Crest toothpaste in a TV commercial declared, “Triumph over tooth decay”. Volvo put a car next to a tank in a print advertisement with the headline: “The execution is different but the concept is basically the same.” How’s that for dramatizing a safety strategy?

The new retro-Alka Seltzer ads are wonderful dramatizations of solving the problem of over-eating. Today, you see some animals introducing some off-beat drama as they deliver a pretty good message. The Geico Gekko and the Aflac Duck are pretty good examples, though you have to be careful about stuff like this as it can be visually distracting. And when this happens, people stop listening and no selling message is delivered.

However you choose to introduce dramativity into your advertising, one thing is clear. Your reason to buy must be perfectly logical and not submerged into what people call creativity.

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Jack Trout

One comment

  • George Karahalios

    September 23, 2007 at 8:17 am

    What an interesting and understanding article. Congratulations.

    Just to add a little comment a famous Greek painter once gave me while taking an interview of him for a free magazine in Athens

    ‘Advertising is a criminal act’
    Dimitris Mytaras, 2004

    and added ‘Hey George, better delete this one, I will say it later…’

    Well, I cannot wait until later! Today I’ll make it public.

    Indeed, logic is the key for the average consumer in order to decide to buy. However, advertising messages do a lot more than target logic: Create attention, put questions in the brain, diversify cross-logic of competition’s messages, entertain, make money for the ad agency, make money for the production company,prepare space for evolution of the brand for the day after, alert, squeeze target audience & publics in one consuming-room, and many many more.

    So, logic might easily interfere to many of the above, while all (and more) are needed for the actual and the abstract values that consuming a product may carry.

    In Greece, a product called Logo, is the best seller glue, owned by a Greek entrepreneur.

    In 2001 he asked his ad agency to prepare a tv ad for logo stick brand.

    The concept created was named ‘Changing History’.

    It was a number of TV ads showing Marilyn Monroe being changed to a nanny within seconds just by the use of logo stick, Charley Chaplin into a monk, Adolf Hitler into a nurse etc.

    Huge success in the market sales.

    Now, where is the logic in it? We all know that history cannot be changed with a tube of instant glue…

    That is the point: Logic here would have damaged the ‘entertaining’ part of the ad, would have separated the ‘attention strength’ and other values that finally contribute to a best seller.

    Logic can easily be hidden from an ad and still excel, be it on a billboard, on radio or TV. Logic is not a straight line of brain processes since our brain is consisted of multiple paths, spherical images and narrow cross-roads without traffic lights.

    Advertising, because it can mislead (logo stick example), yes, to an extended analysis can easily be a criminal act.

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