By Adam Wakefield 
 
The topic of creativity was the focus of a presentation Poole gave at a Kantar event in Johannesburg at the end of September, where it was also revealed that TV is still the dominant ad spend channel in most markets.
 
It was on this point that Poole began his presentation, rhetorically asking the audience what people do while they watch TV.
 
“If you are a TV advertiser, you are competing with smartphones,” he said, with the reverse also holding true. As such, the best way to get ROI on a brand’s ad spend is through creative advertising, regardless of the channel.
 
“How do you actually do it? Our world has changed tremendously. What hasn’t changed is what’s in here,” Poole said, pointing at his brain.
 
“Humans haven’t evolved quite as quickly as communications. The way we do think about brands or, more accurately, don’t think about brands, hasn’t changed very much at all.”
 
To work around this understanding, Poole has five principles about how creativity and advertising dovetail with one another.
 
The first is brands and advertising need to have instant meaning. What Poole means is that when consumers see an advert, they need to immediately have a sense of what the brand is about without thinking about it. 
 
“When we have to think about it, we don’t want to, because our brain has to take blood and oxygen from other organs,” he said.
 
This is important in the two systems the brain uses to make purchasing decisions. System one is “automatic, easy and fast”, compared to system two which is an “effort, slow and takes blood and oxygen away” from elsewhere in the body. Consumers prefer to avoid system two for this reason.
 
“This [system two] is what we use sometimes when we buy cars, holiday houses, and sometimes things at the store,” Poole said.
 
Critically, system one and two are not independent of each other, with system one holding a strong influence on how consumers think about brands in system two. This is why instant meaning, which falls within the domain of system one, is critical to effective advertising.
 
“We need to make sure that brands have instant meaning, so we influence any complicated decisions we make. We don’t like to think about advertising,” Poole said.
 
The second principle is to advertise the brand, not the product. Thoughts around brands are more sustainable than thoughts around products, which have a much shorter life cycle. Brand disposition is what is desired, which delivers brand associations that are meaningful and engaging to consumers. 
 
According to Poole, there are a number of ways to do this.
 
“In our head, brands work much better if they are balanced. We don’t think of brands as a single entity in our mind,” Poole said, with that balance being divided in three criteria: knowledge, experience, and emotion.
 
Knowledge is clear symbols and cues to identify a brand and an understanding of what it is. Experience is what the brand experience is like, such as its benefits, how it is used, or found. Emotion relates to positive feelings, good social values and the desirability of a brand. An example of a brand that fulfils all three criteria is Coca-Cola.
 
“Brands need to be talking about the elements that are most missing in that mental make-up. The other thing that brands need to be is both meaningful and different, with both a functional side and a different side,” Poole explained.
 
“Competitors can copy a product’s features easily. It’s important for brands to deliver emotional difference. It’s about a brand behaving in a different way. That is manifested in advertising.”
 
Principle three is brand, brand, brand, ensuring the brand is present in the advertising, but not to an overwhelming degree. 
 
Four is advertising consistency, where building on a strong and singular foundation helps consumers and permits creative agility. In a pyramid structure, consumer insight is the base, followed by brand purpose, creative platform, executional idea, and at the top, executing the advert.
 
The fifth and last principle is research and test the advertising. According to Poole, this is more important today than ever, as on average, one in four pieces of digital creative can actually damage a brand instead of enhancing it. This is where the base of that pyramid, consumer insight, is derived from.
 
“There are no silver bullets in delivery and great creative,” Poole said. “If you keep it simple and consistent, there is no reason why your brand shouldn’t grow.”
 
For more information, connect with Poole on Twitter.