Creative Leaders’ Views on Managing Advertising Creation

Abstract

People who create advertising are charged with finding creative ways to solve clients' problems, mobilize the target audience, and to bridge the communication gap between marketers and consumers. However, it is still unclear how to best facilitate the creative process during the creation of advertisements. What are the key ingredients for the successful management of advertising creation? Some research suggests that discipline and rules are important in the creative process, particularly in agencies based in the United States. However, agency leaders feel formulaic creative briefs and copy testing, which should improve the effectiveness of advertisements, are among the factors that hamper the creative process (Koslow, Sasser and Riordan 2006). A conflict exists regarding the balance between freedom to explore ideas and constraints that ensure the ideas are relevant to the problem. Other conflicts in the literature surround the use of diverse tasks, teams and group conflict in the creative process. People who draw from diverse backgrounds are supposed to have access to a wider array of associations (Mumford 2000). However, they may lack the focus to solve the problem at hand (Leenders, van Engelen and Kratzer 2003). Collaboration is supposed to help creativity, but can also lead to group think and social loafing (Mumford 2000). De Dreu (2006) suggests that moderate conflict can help innovation. However, he also suggests the role of conflict depends on whether the conflict relates to the task or the relationship, and on the innovation team culture.