Legendary ad person Bill Bernbach once said, “If your advertising goes unnoticed, everything else is academic.” It’s not an understatement to say that managing higher ed brands has become increasingly complex. Marketers are forced to compete in a category that’s in flux—within a culture that questions its value—and improve effectiveness across marketing channels that have not only changed the way we consume content but also caused exponential growth in choice.
Creativity continues to drive commercial value, however, investing in the intangible up front—with both time and resourcing—can prove to be difficult when budgets remain static. And yet, we know that:
- We are exposed to upwards of 4,000 marketing messages a day.
- Our audience reports that our marketing efforts look the same and that most entertainment and consumer brands produce content that lacks imagination.
Without an investment in creativity—the vehicle for our big brand ideas—we risk our message getting lost, splintered and, worst case, ignored.
For those managing higher education brands in our current media environment, the words of Paul Feldwick have never been more true: “If there is a choice to be made between efficiency and thinking big, you cannot afford to be efficient if you want to be famous.” And there’s quite a case building across a decade or so of data that shows just how an investment in creativity is an investment in the bottom line. Here are four that are applicable to higher education.
Outside of brand size, creativity is the most important lever in profitability.
Just as in the case of network theory, the rich get big. That also tends to play out among brands. However, creative quality can be an equalizer of sorts. According to Data2Decisions, the creative execution of your messages is the second most impactful driver of profitability after market/brand size. And while brand size has the greatest overall impact, creative quality remains the most powerful lever marketers can actively control.
Ads that are perceived to be different are more likely to drive business outcomes.
Research from Kantar’s Link database, as well as research from academia, indicates that ads that are perceived as different or unique are more likely to drive positive business outcomes. Per the database, the top one-third of ads that “make the brand seem really different” achieved a 90 percent lift in likelihood to drive short-term sales versus the bottom third.
Emotion unlocks the key output that drives business outcomes.
Starting with the IPA’s “The Link Between Creativity and Effectiveness” and subsequent industry research, there’s not only a through line between creative award-winning campaigns driving market share growth (11x) and top-box profit but intermediate metrics, such as word-of-mouth/social shares, and outputs, such as ad recall.
The largest contributor to lift from advertising is the creative.
Nielsen’s exploration of more than 500 Fast-Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) brands showed that the most important component of a campaign (targeting, reach, brand, context, frequency and creative) was strong or quality creative. Similar patterns were found in the work done by the World Advertising Research Center and Kantar.
If brand is the most valuable business tool and if we argue that brand exists in the minds of the consumer, or our favorite saying in higher education, “a brand is what your audience says when you aren’t in the room,” then it’s time to treat it as a commercial asset and invest accordingly. Whether it’s through internal resourcing or giving partners the time and space to commit to breakthrough ideas, a commitment to creativity isn’t just brave anymore—it’s related to the bottom line.
Christopher Huebner is a director of strategy at SimpsonScarborough.
