The relationship between advertising effectiveness and creativity: a critical approach to the campaigns winning Efi and the El Sol festival (2011-2020)

Abstract

This work sought to determine the relationship between creativity and advertising effectiveness. After a theoretical and conceptual review of these notions and their interrelatedness, an analysis was carried out in two phases. The first is a quantitative analysis that relates data campaigns awarded in Spain for their effectiveness in Efi Awards and those awarded in the same space-time for their creativity in Festival El Sol. Subsequently, the qualitative parameters of the ECREP creativity measurement table (Vejling, Tomba and Mateo, 2014) are applied to award campaigns in the commercial effectiveness awards (2011-2020). The results highlight that the connection between both variables, creativity, and effectiveness, is not decisive and does not always pertain; only 37% of the campaigns awarded for their effectiveness are also awarded for their creativity, and only 6.4% of the winners in Sol also obtain a prize in the Efi awards. And this even though the creativity level is high, a fact that has not changed significantly over the years. In the complex and changing context that digital society offers for advertising, brilliant creativity is not always a guarantee of effectiveness, at least in the parameters by which the industry measures it, which perhaps illustrates the need to rethink the limits of this core concept.