Peter Field and the IPA (2019) are worried about advertising. In The crisis in creative effectiveness, he identifies that following a trend over the last ten years, award-winning advertising is at its lowest level of effectiveness in 24 years. Field puts this down to a ‘misuse of creativity’, blaming an emphasis on campaigns with a short-term focus, rather than reserving creativity for long-term, brand building.
Let’s take a step back here and take a look at what Peter Field means by ‘creativity’ and ‘effectiveness’. According to Sean NIxon (2003), many in the advertising and media industry fall into two camps of defining ‘creativity’. One side defines advertising creativity as combining creative original thinking - a more strategic emphasis - and “creative execution” (Nixon, 2003) - its roots in high art, with a dogged “pursuit of newness” (ibid), originality and innovation. On the other hand, he mentions those, such as Trevor Beattie, who interpret creativity as bringing together ideas from elsewhere:
“...advertising is a world of magpies and we steal sparkling things… We go to a club and steal a trend and go to appropriate whole chunks of youth…. Advertising never sets trends, it only follows them.” (Nixon, 2003, p80)
Nixon shares a quote from Andy Hanby, who agrees with Beattie, explaining that the industry relies on its employees to be “fully immersed in the widest possible set of cultural currents.” (ibid). This cultural immersion makes sense if we try to summarise advertising creativity - handily explained by El-Murad and West (2004) - as bringing together problem solving, originality and appropriateness or relevance - to both the consumer, and the brand.
Ok, so that’s creativity. But remember Peter Field was worried about creative effectiveness. El-Murad and West define this for us too:
“To be successful, creative advertising must first be noticed and then have a specified effect on the viewer. If it is not noticed, or if this effect is not achieved, the creative endeavour is considered to have failed.”
Basically, awareness and an effect on sales.
The industry would do well to remember this, because according to Orlando Wood (Lemon, 2019), he agrees with Field that it’s not looking great for Adland right now. Wood is much more specific in measuring effectiveness - he judges,
“by examining the relationship between ESOV [extra share of voice] and SOM [Share of Market] gain; the stronger the relationship the more the effective the campaign” (Wood 2019, p21).
His research also found strongly positive emotional advertising produces greater business benefits, such as market penetration and share, as well as reducing consumers’ price sensitivity. Testing all US and UK TV ads in 2017-18, he found,
“less than half of the ads on TV today are likely to have the emotional impact needed for long-term growth.” (Wood 2019, p18).
It’s time to bring Peter Field back. Earlier we highlighted his finding that creatively awarded campaigns were at their least effective for 24 years. His analysis discovered that campaigns winning awards at Cannes are more emotional and provoke a stronger response in viewers. Over the last few years, however, this emotional response has been dwindling to the point where Wood proclaims,
“Emotional response to Cannes Lions and Grand Prix winners… reveals how their emotional impact has declined since 2010. They are now no better than the average TV ad.” (Wood, 2019, p21).
Ouch.
But what’s class got to do with it?
In 2021 the IPA published its All In Census results and report. It makes for sobering reading. While the working-class comprise 39% of the UK’s working population, they only make up 19% of the advertising and media industries. This figure remains static at C-Suite too.
We might not expect this to have much of an impact on creativity. After all, creatives should be able to imagine and empathise with those unlike them. Tenzer and Murray (2018) don’t agree though. They feel the significant differences between the industry and the rest of society are too large to bridge. They found not only did the two groups hold very different values, but also diverged in their cognitive biases and psychology. Quite literally, they each view the world from a different perspective. To compound these contrasts, they found Adland’s perception of the mass mainstream’s values was off-kilter. In other words, they don’t actually understand their audience. The image below shows Modern Mainstream’s values vs Media Agencies’ perception of their values, Tenzer & Murray (2018).
What would Bourdieu make of all this? Well firstly, Tenzer and Murray’s ‘values’, ‘perspectives’, cognitive biases and psychology sound a lot like habitus. And remember what Andy Hanby said about how important it is to be immersed in ‘cultural currents’. Once we look at it this way, we can see Bourdieu wouldn’t be surprised such a creative gap exists. Adland struggles to empathise - not only because they aren’t immersed in the culture of the mainstream, but because they don’t value the mass mainstream’s cultural capital. They define themselves as what the mainstream is not. So, when Steve Harrison (2020) argues the advertising industry is out of touch, he really means advertising professionals don't understand the mainstream’s habitus and their culture. It’s those in power, who in fact lack cultural capital.
The result? The rest of us know it. Many consumers feel stereotyped, caricatured and misunderstood, with a whopping 63% of Brits saying "the poor are negatively stereotyped in advertising." (Marketing Communications News 2018).
Why a diverse agency is more creative
So, we’ve seen a more class diverse advertising and media industry will be more effective, because it will be more in touch with consumers’ culture and habitus, and so its output will resonate better with its audience.
But are there other reasons a class diverse workforce becomes more creative? Plenty of research into ethnic diversity and multicultural groups exists. Paulus et al (2016) found when different cultures were present in a group, they brought their different mindsets. In other words, the intermingling of different cultural capital fosters learning new habitus. And becoming exposed to differing attitudes and cultures can spark new ideas, or creativity.
Teresa Amabile echoes the importance of diversity for creativity:
“...you must create mutually supportive groups with a diversity of perspectives and backgrounds. Why? Because when teams comprise people with various intellectual foundations and approaches to work—that is, different expertise and creative thinking styles—ideas often combine and combust in exciting and useful ways.” (Amabile, 1998)
Gocłowska & Crisp (2014) go further. They assert people who adapt to a different culture in fact “train cognitive skills that are conducive to ‘thinking out of the box’.”
Basically, learning to navigate new habitus, heightens a person’s cognitive powers, and their creativity. There’s no reason we can’t apply these reasons for creativity to class diversity. After all, according to Bourdieu, a working class person will have a very different habitus to a middle class person.
But it’s not enough to just get more working class people into the industry. Once present, we still need to foster the conditions for creativity. If making connections with different parts of culture and exchanging different ideas is key to innovating, people need to feel safe enough to put forward these ideas in the first place. As Amabile tells us in ‘How to Kill Creativity’,
“One inhibitor of creativity is fear… Fear largely results from the degree of risk perceived. This includes the risk of failure, ridicule and the exposure of limitations.” (Amabile, 1998)
But despite understanding a class diverse and supportive industry nurtures more creative and effective output, none of these authors explore how to get there. Is there a way to save Adland?
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