The research is in: Here’s how creative ads affect purchase intention for new products

How creative should brands be when introducing innovative products to consumers? Too creative and you risk things like clarity and understanding; not creative enough and you risk things like consumer recall and brand attitude; in both cases, conversion is at stake. Advertising creatively can significantly affect consumer processing of ads and subsequent brand responses.

New research released in the paper, Divergent Versus Relevant Ads: How Creative Ads Affect Purchase Intention for New Products, by Hui Jiang, Paul R. Messinger, Yifei Liu, Zhibin Lu, Shuiqing Yang and Gang Li, explores the impact of creative ads (divergent vs. relevant ads) on purchase intention for really new products (RNPs) and incrementally new products (INPs). Think: a brain-sensing headband that uses real-time biofeedback to help users refocus during meditation (the RNP) vs. a smart head massager combining traditional Chinese medicine and modern technology that helps users relieve stress, promote blood circulation and improve sleep quality (the INP). 

While the new product literature recognizes the difference between RNPs and INPs, and the advertising literature recognizes the difference between divergent and relevant ads,until now there has been little attempt to connect these two research areas, despite the vital role of new products for business renewal and growth and the importance of creative ad campaigns in communicating newly launched products to consumers. 

Messinger, a University of Alberta professor of marketing at the Alberta School of Business, who co-authored the paper, references famous economist Joseph Schumpeter and the theory that, in all industries, innovation drives economic development.

“I've always been interested in that idea, and what Schumpeter refers to as the process of creative destruction. Really New Products do that,” says Messinger. “So, cell phones displaced landlines and then smartphones displaced the old-fashioned cell phones."

"Our question as marketers is, how do you market really new products? And is it different from how you market incrementally new products?"

"In particular, we're looking at advertising, but it's all forms of communication where you make the consumer aware of either the incrementally or the really new products.”

The series of studies, which asked consumers to evaluate a number of advertisements for a range of products like pens, kitchen tiles, cell phones and the aforementioned headbands, concluded that: 

1. divergent ads (or highly creative, unique ads) are more effective for promoting incrementally new products,
2. relevant ads (or highly functional, direct ads), are more effective for promoting really new products,
3. self-referencing mediates the joint effect of creative ads and product newness on purchase intention, and 
4. there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between self-referencing and purchase intention for new products. 

Theoretically, the authors argue that a moderate amount of self-referencing is particularly desirable — that is, there is a “Goldilocks region” that produces an optimal level of persuasion and provides guidance to creative ad managers to help them reach the “Goldilocks region” when advertising new products.

Unless you have a strong brand name like Apple or Nike, Messinger elaborates, “don't be too mundane when you're dealing with a mundane product because the whole combination doesn't work. But it's fine to be mundane if it's a super new product, because you just have to get the message across. You have to be understood before anything else. Occasionally advertising agencies will get caught up on being as creative and divergent as possible. And that’s not always the right approach.”

While Messinger sees the research as particularly relevant to high tech industries, he believes it could increase collaboration between departments in marketing, design and computing science across all industries, and that the findings could still be relevant generations from now. 

“I think human nature and human cognitive processing is a constant,” he says. “How people think a hundred years from now is going to be very similar to how they think now, although what they're thinking about will be completely different because the objects they're looking at will be completely different. But I think the basic psychology of what the paper is addressing will carry forward.”