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Part Five Developing the Integrated Marketing Communications Program
Belch: Advertising and
Promotion, Sixth Edition
Exhibit 8-5 Advertising
industry publications are
excellent sources of
information on market
trends
Exhibit 8-6 DDB
Needham’s Life Style Study
provided valuable input in
the development of this
campaign for Westin
V. Developing the
Integrated Marketing
Communications Program
8. Creative Strategy:
Planning and Development
© The McGraw−Hill
Companies, 2003
including local, state, and federal governments, secondary research
suppliers, and various industry trade associations, as well as advertising
and media organizations. For example, advertising industry
groups like the American Association of Advertising Agencies and
media organizations like the National Association of Broadcasters
(NAB) and Magazine Publishers of America (MPA) publish research
reports and newsletters that provide information on market trends
and developments and how they might affect consumers. Those
involved in developing creative strategy can also gather relevant and
timely information by reading publications like Adweek, Advertising
Age, BrandWeek, and The Wall Street Journal (Exhibit 8-5).
Product/Service-Specific Research In addition to getting
general background research and preplanning input, creative people
receive product/service-specific preplanning input. This information
generally comes in the form of specific studies conducted on the
product or service, the target audience, or a combination of the two.
Quantitative and qualitative consumer research such as attitude
studies, market structure and positioning studies such as perceptual
mapping and lifestyle research, focus group interviews, and demographic
and psychographic profiles of users of a particular product,
service, or brand are examples of product-specific preplanning input.
Many product- or service-specific studies helpful to the creative team are conducted
by the client or the agency. A number of years ago, the BBDO ad agency developed
an approach called problem detection 21 for finding ideas around which creative
strategies could be based. This research technique involves asking consumers familiar
with a product (or service) to generate an exhaustive list of things that bother them or
problems they encounter when using it. The consumers rate these problems in order of
importance and evaluate various brands in terms of their association with each problem.
A problem detection study can provide valuable input for product improvements,
reformulations, or new products. It can also give the creative people ideas regarding
attributes or features to emphasize and guidelines for positioning
new or existing brands.
Some agencies conduct psychographic studies annually
and construct detailed psychographic or lifestyle profiles
of product or service users. DDB Needham conducts a
large-scale psychographic study each year using a sample
of 4,000 U.S. adults. The agency’s Life Style Study provides
its creative teams with a better understanding of the
target audience for whom they are developing ads.
For example, information from its Life Style Study was
used by DDB Needham’s creative department in developing
an advertising campaign for Westin a few years ago.
The agency’s Life Style Study showed that the younger
business travelers the luxury hotel chain was targeting are
highly confident, intelligent, assertive, and classy and
considered themselves to be “winners.” Rather than using
the traditional images that feature buildings and golf
courses, the creative team decided to “brand the users” by
playing to their ego and reinforcing their strong selfimage.
The ad campaign used the tagline “Who is he/she
sleeping with? Westin. Choose your travel partner wisely”
(Exhibit 8-6).
Recently a number of advertising agencies have been
conducting branding research to help better identify
clients’ customers and how they connect to their brands.
Agencies use this research to determine how a brand is
perceived among consumers, and these insights, in turn,
are used to develop more effective advertising campaigns.
22 IMC Perspective 8-3 discusses how some of the