White paper on creativity - ebla center

Chapter 10The new media have in some waysencouraged the advent of a more fluidform of creativity and have given nonspecialistsaccess to the world ofadvertising. A good example comes fromwhat happened during the 2007 editionof the Super Bowl, the final of theAmerican football championship whichhas the largest US television audiences ofthe year and the most costly advertisingtime. At the football final, Doritos, thesnacks manufacturer, broadcast acommercial entirely made by consumers(who had been invited by the companywebsite to take part in a competition):“Doritos demonstrated on the SuperBowl stage simplicity, anti-rhetoric, avideo with a spontaneous zero-costgarage technique in a parodying, absurd,minimalist language brazenly directed atthe product, typical of viral advertisingseen on YouTube” (Lombardi, 2007).From the perspective of Web 2.0 andconsumer empowerment (Mortara,2007) the boundary between creator anduser of advertising has practicallydissolved.Trends in corporate communicationsCorporate communications, i.e. the setof all communication flows towardsinternal and external stakeholders,cannot forego the concept ofintegration. In fact integratedcommunications (Collesei, Ravà, 2004)refer to the company’s capacity to coordinateall communication tools – fromadvertising to public relations, visualidentity (co-ordinated management oflogo, branding and lettering) Internetsites, sponsorships and promotions –which must be orchestrated (Fabris,2003) to achieve a unique distinctiveimage of the company to be impressedindelibly in the mind of the variousstakeholders and customers. The mostcommonly used tools today are stilladvertising and public relations. Thisapplies to all fields from corporatecommunications at the top of the systemof integrated communications tocorporate advertising, down to brandand product advertising mainly aimed atthe end consumer. As has often beenstressed, advertising is still the mosteffective way of “establishing in themind of the consumer a distinctive andmemorable identity for a product or acompany” (Collesei, Ravà, 2003, p. 104),while public relations in recent yearshave evolved considerably and, from thepoint of view of the integratedmanagement of corporatecommunications, they have taken on akey co-ordination and controlling role.WHITE PAPER ON CREATIVITY 242