RECALL AND PERSUASION

Does Creative Advertising Matter?

Brian D. Till and Daniel W. Baack

ABSTRACT: Creativity is an important component of advertising. This research examines the potential effectiveness of
creative advertising in enhancing recall, brand attitude, and purchase intent. Our basic methodology compares a set of
randomly selected award-winning commercials (Communication Arts) with a random sample of control commercials. The
commercials were embedded in television programs and subjects for a naturalistic viewing experience. Studies 1 and 2 had
aided and unaided brand and execution recall as dependent variables. For Study 3, brand attitude and purchase intent were
the dependent variables of interest. Results indicated that creative commercials facilitate unaided recall, but that creativity
did not enhance aided recall, purchase intent, or brand and advertisement attitude. The basic advantage of creative advertising
in enhancing unaided recall was found to persist over a one-week delay.

Creativity is arguably a very important component of adver-
tising. Advertising agencies pride themselves on industry
awards, which are often focused more on the creativity of the
advertising than brand performance. Past research on the topic
has ranged from focusing on formulaic scales of creativity (e.g.,
Barron 1988; Kneller 1965; White and Smith 2001) to dis-
cussing creative strategy in holistic terms (e.g.. Bell 1992;
Blasko and Mokwa 1986).
A small number of empirical studies of creative advertis-
ing have been completed (e.g., Ang and Low 2000; Kover,
Goldberg, and James 1995; Kover, James, and Sonner 1997;
Pieters, Warlop, and Wedel 2002; Stone, Besser, and Lewis
2000; White and Smith 2001), but the studies, while indi-
vidually interesting, taken as a whole, have not portrayed a
particularly cohesive or comprehensive understanding of cre-
ative advertising. As one article stated, "in all, advertising
creativity research is limited, abstract, and fairly recent in
suggesting that this advertising dimension deserves additional
investigation" (Stone, Besser, and Lewis 2000, p. 8).
Most important, few of the studies address the relation
between creative advertising and effectiveness. Therefore,
while this past work has made an important contribution,
the effectiveness of creative advertisements is not much bet-
ter understood now than it was 40 years ago. This study be-
gins to address this gap by focusing on award-winning
television advertising (in this case. Communication Arts award
Brian D. Till (Ph.D., University of South Carolina) is an associate
professor of marketing, John Cook School of Business, Saint Louis
University.
Daniel W. Baack (B.A./B.S., Truman State University) is a Ph.D.
student, John Cook School of Business, Saint Louis University.
winners) and relevant measures of advertising effectiveness—
recall, purchase intent, and attitude toward the brand.
CREATIVITY A N D ADVERTISING
Advertising is the only profession where the central figure in
the business process is titled a "creative," illustrating the fo-
cus placed on creativity in the advertising process. Although
creativity in advertising is widely recognized as very impor-
tant, the link between creativity and advertising effectiveness
has not been extensively examined.
The first academic work on creativity began with Kneller's
1965 book. The Art and Science of Creativity. This early work
on this topic is typified by the "aha" definition in Parnes
(1975), and these early papers concentrate on simple discus-
sions and deflnitions of creativity. Work in the late 1980s
through the 1990s broke from this trend and began intro-
ducing more sophisticated definitions of creativity (e.g.,
Barron 1988; MacKinnon 1987).
During this same time period, research began to experi-
mentally investigate the effectiveness of "creative" advertise-
ments. A variety of operationalizations for creativity emerged
in this research, including the use of advertising award-
winners as a proxy for creativity (e.g., Kover, Goldberg, and
James 1995). This method is based on the concept that creativ-
ity is, in the end, a subjective concept best evaluated by profes-
sionals (Amabile 1982). Therefore, if the judges of these awards
determine that the advertisement is creative enough to be rec-
ognized for this award, then this judgment is an appropriate
measure of creativity (White and Smith 2001).
This research was funded by grant SEC2OO2-O4321-CO2-O1 from the
Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology.

Journal of Advertising, vol. 34, no. 3 (Fall 2005), pp. 47-57.

© 2005 American Academy of Advertising. All rights reserved.
ISSN 0091-3367 / 2005 $9.50 + 0.00.
48 The Joumal of Advertising
Studies have used judges to classify advertisements as cre-
ative or original (e.g., Ang and Low 2000; Pieters, Warlop,
and Wedel 2002; Stone, Besser, and Lewis 2000), but typi-
cally, these judges have been trained students. Students may
not be the best judges of creative advertising (Haberland and
Dacin 1992). We believe that advertising professionals are
superior and more appropriate judges, due to their increased
experience, advertising training, and respect among their
peers. Other studies have found differences between students
and advertising professionals regarding measures of advertis-
ing creativity (e.g., Kover, Goldberg, and James 1995; White
and Smith 2001). Research has also found that advertising
professionals are consistent regarding their opinions of cre-
ative advertising across a variety of demographic and experi-
ence variables (Reid, King, and DeLorme 1998). Therefore,
we use a slightly different version of this tradition by sam-
pling a well-respected advertising awards competition as rep-
resentative of "creative" advertising.
Advertising awards have been used to recognize outstand-
ing advertising for decades (www.oneclub.com), and it is es-
timated that there are 500 advertising award shows worldwide
per year (Shamoon 1987). These awards vary from small, fo-
cused awards such as the International Automotive Advertis-
ing Awards and the International Travel Advertising Awards,
to the attention-grabbing spectacles associated with the Cannes
Film Festival's Lions or the Clios.
A few past studies have looked at the advertising awards
from a variety of perspectives. They have considered the im-
pact of advertising awards on advertising agency performance
(Helgesen 1994; Polonsky and Waller 1995), the measures
used by specific awards (Moriarty 1996), the community links
between judges (Wright-Isak and Faber 1996), and the fea-
tures of award-winning advertisements (Beltramini and Blasko
1986; Ernst 1980; Reid et al. 1985).
Clearly, the relatively limited number of studies on the
role and impact of creativity and advertising suggests oppor-
tunities to continue exploring this area. While the industry
rewards creativity, do creative ads provide any measurable value
to the advertised brand? Do they result in brand-specific ef-
fects such as greater recall, more positive brand attitudes, or
increased purchase intent? There have been criticisms that
advertising awards are like "beauty contests" (Moriarty 1996,
p. 54), focusing on industry-specific criteria (Kover, James,
and Sonner 1997; White and Smith 2001) rather than on the
actual effectiveness of the advertisements. This general feel-
ing is reflected in the creation of the Effective awards, or
EFFIEs, by the New York Chapter of the American Market-
ing Association. This award focuses solely on the results of
the advertisements, excluding any assessment of creativity.
With such an industry focus on creative advertising, and
criticism of creative advertising competitions, it is somewhat
surprising that so little research really looks directly at the
effectiveness of award-winning advertising. There are only
three studies that have contributed to this inquiry.
First, the research by Kover, Goldberg, and James (1995)
investigated the link between creative advertising and con-
sumers' responses to that advertising. Their measures were
purchase intent, commercial liking, congruency, and creativ-
ity. Their measure of effectiveness was purchase intent. Using
these measures, the authors use a cluster analysis to group
their commercial sample into four groups. These clusters did
not correspond to either of their initial three groups, that is,
winning an award—either the One Show award or the
EFFIE—did not relate to how customers responded to the
commercials. Instead, the authors used the participants' mea-
sure of creativity (in terms of old/new and dull/exciting) to
classify commercials as creative. For these commercials, pur-
chase intent was higher, linking creativity to this measure of
effectiveness. Due to the small sample size, the authors were
unable to determine whether this relation was significant.
Because of this small sample size, their statistical analysis was
limited to a cluster analysis. As acknowledged by the authors,
this allowed them to only "examine trends and indications
rather than look for statistically significant differences" (Kover,
Goldberg, and James 1995, p. 31).
The second study, that of Ang and Low (2000), also inves-
tigated the relation between creative advertising and mea-
sures of effectiveness, including attitude toward the ad,
attitude toward the brand, and purchase intent. To classify
advertisements as creative, the authors deflned them in terms
of novelty, meaningfulness, and emotional content. The au-
thors found that creative ads, as they defined them, were con-
sistently perceived as more favorable, and, to a lesser degree,
resulted in a more favorable view of the brand and increased
purchase intent.
The last study, that of Stone, Besser, and Lewis (2000),
attempts to link creative commercials to the likability of that
commercial. To measure creativity, participants (undergradu-
ate seniors studying advertising) assessed the creativity of the
advertisements that were previously listed by the general pub-
lic as advertisements they particularly liked or disliked. To be
judged creative, 80% of the students had to agree that the
advertisement was creative. Overall, the study found that 70%
of the liked commercials were judged as creative, whereas only
46% of the disliked commercials were judged to be creative.
Thus, this study links likability, measured in simple terms,
to advertisement creativity.
Overall, prior research suggests an interest in wrestling
with the role and importance of creative advertising in hav-
ing some measurable effects. And while some of the studies
have methodological issues (i.e., use of students as judges of
creativity, small sample sizes and such), there are some initial
signs that creative advertising may provide some incremental
beneflt to the brand.

MEASURES OF ADVERTISING EFFECTIVENESS
There are different measures of advertising effectiveness in
the literature, though they tend to be generally recall- or per-
suasion-focused, including measures such as likability (Leather,
McKechnie, and Amirkhanian 1994), attractiveness (Wells
2000), attitude toward the brand (Ang and Low 2000), and
recall (Higie and Sewall 1991). For our initial studies, we
chose to focus on recall. Later, Study 3 examines the impact of
creative advertising on persuasion measures, brand attitude,
and purchase intent.
STUDY 1
The literature on the use of recall and recognition is extensive
and much of it focuses on whether these two constructs mea-
sure one or two facets of memory (for reviews, see Bagozzi and
Silk 1983; Finn 1992; Stewart and Krishnan 2001), but there
is agreement that both are measures of explicit memory
(Insingrini, Vazou, and Leroy 1995; Rajaram, Srinivas, and
Travers 2001; Stewart and Krishnan 2001). For our first study,
our particular interest is in recall rather than recognition. The
use of recall has been well established in the advertising lit-
erature (Donthu, Cherian, and Bhargava 1993; Muehling,
Stoltman, and Grossbart 1990; Stewart 1989; Stewart and
Furse 1986; Stone, Besser, and Lewis 2000), is linked to put-
ting a brand into a consumer's evoked set (Stewart 1989;
Stewart and Furse 1986), and is frequently used by advertis-
ing professionals (Jones 1986; Walker and von Gonten 1989).
The flrst study measures both aided and unaided recall.
While both types of recall have been widely used as measures
of advertising effectiveness, they have rarely been used in the
same study (for an exception, see Donthu, Cherian, and
Bhargava 1993).
Creative Advertising, Attention, and Recall
While no studies have expressively investigated the effect of
increased creativity on recall, past research suggests some
possible relations. To begin, creative advertisements have been
consistently deflned, at least in part, as novel and/or original
(Ang and Low 2000; Haberland and Dacin 1992; Jewler and
Drewniany 1998; Marra 1990; White and Smith 2001). The
inclusion of this feature in any definition or scale of creativity
is one of the strongest trends in the literature. In turn, nov-
elty and visual prominence have been strongly shown to in-
crease attention in a variety of settings, including advertising
(Bettman 1979; Johnston et al. 1990; Mitchell 1987; Pieters,
Warlop, and Wedel 2002; Rossiter and Percy 1985).
This increased attention is an important component of
advertising effectiveness and is linked to recall (e.g.. Mulli-
gan 1998; Walker and von Gonten 1989). Many studies have
Fall 2005 49
examined the relation between increased attention and re-
call, and have found that it leads to greater levels of both
aided (Craik et al. 1996; Isingrini, Vazou, and Leroy 1995;
Rajaram, Srinivas, and Travers 2001) and unaided recall (Craik
et al. 1996; Olsen 1995; Rosbergen, Pieters, and Wedel
1997). Based on this research stream, it is expected that this
process will lead to increased levels of recall for creative
advertisements.
Also, it is expected that the effect will be more pronounced
for unaided recall. Aided and unaided recalls, while related,
represent different tasks (Lockhart 2000; Padilla-Walker and
Poole 2002). This study assumes, based on past research, that
creative ads are more attended to, and as a result, have a stron-
ger, deeper memory trace. For unaided recall, the task will be
difficult enough to clearly provide an advantage to the cre-
ative award-winning ads. On the other hand, for aided recall,
the task may not be sufficiently challenging so as to render a
detectable advantage of creativity. First, many of the atten-
tion-related aided recall studies above used distracting tasks
resulting in a strenuous memory procedure (e.g., Craik et al.
1996; Insingrini, Vazou, and Leroy 1995; Mulligan 1998;
Rajaram, Srinivas, and Travers 2001). Second, aided recall is,
as stated in the name, an assisted recall. This help results in
easier memory access for the participants. Based on this, we
expect to flnd little difference between creative and normal
ads on aided recall.
In this study, we look at recall for two different aspects of
advertising: brand names and commercial features (i.e., ex-
ecutional recall). Consider the famous Budweiser beer com-
mercial using three frogs chanting "bud," "weis," and "er."
The goal of this advertising was to both increase brand name
awareness and to associate the humor and fun of the commer-
cial (commercial features) with Budweiser. As shown in this
example, effective advertisements should increase brand name
awareness and should associate features of the commercial with
the brand.
Hypotheses
Fundamentally, we are interested in the degree to which cre-
ative, award-winning advertising may (or may not) enhance
unaided and aided recall of both the brand and the ad execu-
tion. Based on the above research review, four hypotheses
emerge:
HI: Unaided brand recall levels will be greater for creative
commercials than for control commercials.
H2: Unaided adfeature (execution) recall levels will be greater
for creative commercials than for control commercials.
H3: Aided brand recall levels will not differ between creative
commercials and control commercials.
50 The Joumal of Advertising
H4: Aided ad feature (execution) recall levels will not differ
between creative commercials and control commercials.
Method
Pretest
Brand familiarity is one variable shown to affect recall (Kent
and Allen 1994; Pieters, Warlop, and Wedel 2002). To rule
this out as a possible explanation for our results, subject famil-
iarity scotes for all the brands featured in this study were ob-
tained. Familiarity was measured through an adaptation of a
measure developed in Park (1976). The parent measure was
more complex than necessary for this study, so it was simpli-
fied and shortened. This measure was completed as part of the
pretest procedures. Participants were asked to rate the famil-
iarity of the ad on a seven-point scale, with familiar with brand
and not familiar with brand at the endpoints. Subjects also rated
whether the brand was well known or not well known on a
seven-point scale. A t test comparison of the mean scores found
no significant differences between the two experiment condi-
tions (familiar: / value = 1.00, n.s.; well-known: / = 1.33, n.s.).
Commercial Samples
For the creative commercial sample. Communication Arts
award winners were used. Communication Arts uses a panel
of nine leading creative directors to assess thousands of en-
tries, ultimately bestowing recognition for creative excellence
on approximately 150 recipients. A representative from Com-
munication Arts conflrmed via a telephone conversation that
the primary criterion that judges focus on is creativity. The
most recent two years available (2000 and 2001) were used as
the pool. Forty advertisements were randomly selected from
this pool to form the sample of award-winning advertisements
(20 would be used on each of the 2 videotapes).
To create the pool of control advertisements, a procedure
combining those used in two previous studies was used (Cho et
al. 1999). Television advertisements were sampled during
prime-time television (7:00 to 10:00 P.M.) during four randomly
selected days of the week. The networks used, NBC and CBS,
were randomly selected from a pool of the four major networks,
ABC, NBC, CBS, and FOX. Only 30-second commercials were
used. Duplicate commercials were removed, as were separate
commercials for the same brand name. To control for the possi-
bility that award-winning advertisements would be included
in our set of control commercials, a search of lists of recent
Clio, Communication Arts, Lion, and Advertising Age award
winners was completed. To our knowledge, none of the control
commercials sampled has won an award. From this pool of con-
trol commercials, 40 were randomly selected for use in our vid-
eotapes (again, 20 for each of 2 videotapes). In creating these
two groups of commercials (award-winning and control), we
do not mean to imply that the control commercials sampled
off the air were devoid of creativity. We simply recognize that
the key consideration for the Communication Arts advertis-
ing awards is creativity; therefore, the degree of creativity in
the award-winning group will be, on average, higher than
that in the control group. However, we also recognize that
creativity is a continuous variable, and for clarity of study
design, have created two groups (the creative award-winning
ads and the control ads randomly sampled off-air).
Materials
Subjects viewed a 30-minute television program. Our objec-
tive in choosing a television program was for it to be of at
least some interest to undergraduate students, yet not so in-
teresting as to overwhelm the embedded ad executions. We
selected two half-hour shows: Dream Living, featuring a Frank
Lloyd Wright house, and Ground Force, a British television
show focused on lawn and garden makeovers. We used two
shows to test the replicability of recall effects independent of
the television show in which the advertising is embedded.
An analysis of the television recordings revealed that com-
mercials were typically shown in pods of three or four, con-
firming claims in previous studies (e.g., Goldberg and Gorn
1987). We inserted commercials selected for our study—five
in each of the four pods. Therefore, our study used four, two-
and-a-half-minute pods, each with flve commercials.
This resulted in a total of 10 minutes of advertising (20
commercials) per program. To control as best as possible for
order effects, the 20 commercials were alternatively creative ot
control. In one of the television program videos, the first ad
was creative; in the other program, the first ad was a control ad.
Participants
Participants were undergraduate students enrolled in busi-
ness courses at a private Midwestern university. Participants
were aware that they were taking part in a research project,
but were not aware that the advertisements embedded in the
television program were of any special importance. Instead,
they were led to believe that the purpose of the study revolved
around the actual television program. By embedding the ad-
vertisements in television programming and by mimicking
typical television practices, the ecological validity of the re-
sults to real-world advertising situations increases (Rosbergen,
Pieters, and Wedel 1997; Russo and Leclerc 1994). A total of
77 participants participated.
Procedure
Participants watched a 30-minute television program, either
Dream Living (46 participants) or Ground Force (31 partici-

pants), with 20 minutes of program content and 10 minutes
of commercial content. After watching the program, partici-
pants spent five minutes completing a brief questionnaire
about the television program. This interpolated task was in-
cluded to reinforce the study ruse and clear short-term memory.
After completing this step, a booklet of various recall mea-
sures was handed out to each participant.
Measures
For unaided brand recall, participants were simply asked to
recall and list as many brands as they could that had appeared
in the television show they just watched. For aided brand re-
call, participants were then presented a list of product cat-
egories (e.g., beer, videogame, etc.) representing the product
categories for the brands advertised during the show. The use
of product categories as a recall aid is consistent with past
advertising studies (e.g., Keller, Heckler, and Houston 1998;
Stewart and Furse 1986). Participants were asked, with these
product categories as prompts, to list the brands they remem-
bered being advertised on the show. After the brand recall
measures, the ad execution recall was measured. For unaided
ad execution, participants were simply asked to describe briefly
features of the commercials from the television show they just
watched. Finally, participants were again presented with prod-
uct category prompts, and again asked to recall briefly fea-
tures of the ads they had just seen.
Brand recall was scored when the participant correctly re-
membered the speciflc brand name (e.g., Doritos, not snack
food). Commercial descriptions were scored as effective ad
execution recall when the information was sufflcient for a spe-
cific commercial to be linked to the information (e.g., polar
bears playing, not a commercial for soda). Two separate cod-
ers were used to determine whether or not the ad execution
was successfully recalled based on the descriptions supplied
by the participants. Intercoder reliability (agreement) was ap-
proximately 98%, with those few disagreements resolved
through discussion with the lead researcher.
Results
A 2 X 2 repeated-measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) was
used to measure the effect of the within-subject variable of
commercial type (award-winning versus control) and the be-
tween-subject variable of television program (Dream Living
versus Ground Force). A separate ANOVA was used to analyze
each dependent variable (e.g., brand-name aided recall, com-
mercial-features aided recall). Recall means and standard de-
viations can be found in Table 1.
No effect was found for television program regardless of
dependent variable analyzed: brand-name unaided recall,
F(l, 16) = .03, n.s.; commercial-features unaided recall.
Fall 2005 51
F{1,16) = 3.23, «.i.; brand-name aided recall, F(l, 76) = .18,
n.s.; commercial-features aided recall, F(\, l6) = .94, n.s. In
addition, for all dependent variables, no interaction effect
was found for commercial type and television program:
brand-name unaided recall, F(l, 76) = .42, w.i.; commercial-
features unaided recall, F(l, 16) = .08, n.s.; brand-name
aided recall, F(l, 76) = 1.95, n.s.; commercial-features aided
recall, F(l, 16) = .17, n.s. Therefore, television program did
not have a main effect, nor did it interact with commercial
type to affect the recall of either brand names or commercial
features.
The within-subject analysis for commercial features re-
vealed interesting differences between commercial type (award
versus control) and between different recall measures. For
unaided recall, commercial type had a signiflcant main effect
for both brand names, F(l, 76) = 21.01, p < .001, and com-
mercial features, F(l, 76) = 46.50,Z' < .001. Award-winning
commercials were signiflcantly better recalled than control
commercials: brand name, 4.06 versus 2.81; commercial fea-
tures, 4.43 versus 2.77. In contrast, no signiflcant commer-
cial type main effect was found for aided recall—neither brand
name recall, F(l, 76) = 1.18, n.s., nor commercial features,
F(l,76) = 2.83, n.s.
Overall, the analysis suggests that regardless of the televi-
sion program, creative advertisement led to higher levels of
unaided recall. In addition, the analysis indicated that in an
aided recall task, this difference dissipated. Therefore, all four
of the hypotheses were supported.
STUDY 2
To assess the robustness of Study 1 flndings, a second experi-
ment was completed using a one-week delay measure of both
aided and unaided recall. Advertising effects are assumed to
lag, that is, to have an effect on consumer behavior over time
(Berkowitz, Allaway, and D'Souza 2001; Jastram 1955). In
addition, past research has found that measure delay does af-
fect advertising effectiveness and may result in different re-
sults than immediate measures (Grossman and Till 1998; Lee
and Mason 1999; Singh, LinviUe, and Ajay 1995; Till and
Priluck 2000). The core question addressed in Study 2 is
whether the advantages of creative advertising versus normal
advertising persist over time. Based on the results in Study 1
and the above discussion, it is expected that the pattern of
results from the flrst study will be replicated. Therefore, the
following hypotheses are proposed:
H3: Delayed unaided brand recall levels will be greater for
creative commercials than for control commercials.
H6: Delayed unaided ad feature (execution) recall levels will
be greater for creative commercials than for control commercials.
52 The Joumal of Advertising

TABLE I
Evaluation of Recall Means and Standard Deviations: Study I

N Mean SD

Control advertisements:
Unaided recall of brand names 77 2.81 1.64
Creative advertisements:
Unaided recall of brand names 77 4.06 1.94

Control advertisements:
Unaided recall of commercial features 77 2.77 1.71

Creative advertisements:
Unaided recall of commercial features 77 4.43 1.85

Control advertisements:
Aided recall of brand names 77 6.43 1.89

Creative advertisements:
Aided recall of brand names 77 6.14 2.00

Control advertisements:
Aided recall of commercial features 77 7.14 1.79

Creative advertisements:
Aided recall of commercial features 77 6.74 1.96

H7: Delayed aided brand recall levels will not differ between
creative commercials and control commercials.
H8: Delayed aided ad feature (execution) recall levels will
not differ between creative commercials and control commercials.
Method
For Study 2, the same procedures and materials from Study 1
were used on a new sample of 27 students from the same
Midwestern university. The only change in procedure was the
delay in recall measurement. Participants watched the Dream
Living video, and one week later, at the same approximate
time in the day, aided and unaided recall were recorded for
both commercial feature and brand names. Only one televi-
sion show was used since no main effect or interaction effects
were found for program type in Study 1.
Results
A one-way ANOVA statistical analysis was used to determine
the effect of advertising type on each recall condition. The
means and standard deviations for each recall group can be
found in Table 2. The ANOVA for unaided recall of brand
names found a signiflcant main effect, F(\, 26) = 19.35,/' <
.001, with creative advertisements having a higher level of
recall (1.30 versus .41). A similar significant result was found
for unaided recall of commercial features, F(\, 26) = 27.15,
p < .001, and again, creative advertisements had a higher level
of recall (1.35 versus .15). Analysis revealed no significant
differences between normal and creative advertisements for
aided recall of both brand names, F(l, 26) = 1.18, n.s., and
commercial features, F(l, 26) = 1.76, n.s.
Overall, the analysis flnds that, as was found for immedi-
ate recall in Study 1, creative advertisements were linked to
greater levels of unaided recall. Also, as in Study 1, this effect
was not found for aided recall. It is important to note that
Study 2 provided evidence that the advantage that creative
advertising has in facilitating unaided recall persists over time.
STUDY 3
The above studies found a clear recall benefit from creative
advertising. The next question is what effect creative adver-
tising might have on persuasion measures such as brand atti-
tude and purchase intent. As discussed above, previous studies
have found a link between creative advertising and a variety
of affective measures, including purchase intent (Ang and Low
2000; Kover, Goldberg, and James 1995), attitude toward
the brand and ad (Ang and Low 2000), and likability (Stone,
Besser, and Lewis 2000).
While the results of the above-cited studies are interest-
ing, in every study, students were used to judge creativity.
As discussed earlier, there are signiflcant concerns regard-
ing the appropriateness of students as judges of creativity
(Kover, Goldberg, and James 1995; White and Smith 2001).
As students may not be the best judges of creativity
(Haberland and Dacin 1992), and professional ratings may
 Fall 2005 53

TABLE 2
Evaluation of Recall Means and Standard Deviations: Study 2

N Mean SO

Control advertisements:
Unaided recall of brand names 27 .41 .75
Creative advertisements:
Unaided recall of brand names 27 1.30 1.03
Control advertisements:
Unaided recall of commercial features 27 .15 .37
Creative advertisements:
Unaided recall of commercial features 27 1.35 1.16
Control advertisements:
Aided recall of brand names 27 2.44 1.97
Creative advertisements:
Aided recall of brand names 27 2.04 1.29
Control advertisements:
Aided recall of commercial features 27 2.22 1.65
Creative advertisements:
Aided recall of commercial features 27 1.74 1.26

be superior, we believe it is more relevant to use advertising
judged as being creative by professional judges. If profes-
sionals do view creative advertising in different ways than
students do, it is possible that the positive effect on pur-
chase intent and brand attitude found in previous studies
will not be replicated. On the other hand, it is also possible
that, while the groups disagree, there will be much overlap
between what students and advertising professionals find
creative. This would result in support for the findings of previ-
ous studies (Ang and Low 2000; Kover, Goldberg, and James
1995; Stone, Besser, and Lewis 2000). Therefore, based on
this previous research linking creative advertisements to in-
creased purchase intent, attitude toward the brand/advertise-
ment, and likability, the following hypotheses are proposed:
H9: Creative advertising will lead to higher levels of purchase
intent for the advertised brands.
HIO: Creative advertising will lead to more positive attitudes
for the advertised brands.
a questionnaire measuring the attitude and purchase inten-
tions of the brands appearing in the ads. Then, after the three-
week delay, participants watched a 30-minute television
program {Dream Living [32 participants] or Ground Force [37
participants}). After watching the program, participants fllled
out the same attitude and purchase intent measures they had
previously completed.
To measure purchase intent, participants were asked to
rate on a seven-point, bipolar adjective scale, "If given the
opportunity to purchase this brand, the likelihood of me
doing so would be: unlikely/likely, improbable/probable,
definitely would not/definitely would." Attitude toward the
brand was also measured using a seven-point, bipolar adjec-
tive scale. The prompt was: "My overall impression of this
brand is," and the adjective pairs used were dislike/like,
unfavorable/favorable, negative/positive, inferior/superior,
and bad/good. Both of these measures were based on those
used in previous studies of purchase intent and brand atti-
tude (e.g.. Chapman and Aylesworth 1999; Chattopadhyay
and Basu 1990; Till and Busier 2000).

Method
For Study 3, the same advertising samples and television pro-
gram used in Study 1 were used on a new sample of 69 stu-
dents from the same Midwestern university. The questionnaire
was modifled to measure brand attitude and purchase intent
instead of recall. Three weeks before watching the television
program with embedded advertising, participants completed
Results
The unit of measure for the analysis is the change in purchase
intent and brand attitude between pre- and postadvertisement
exposure. The three purchase intent and flve brand attitude
adjectives were collapsed into a single measure of purchase
intent and brand attitude for both creative and normal ad-
vertisements. The Cronbach a's for each of these measures
54 The Journal of Advertising
TABLE 3
Change In Evaluation of Purchase Intent and Brand Attitude Means and Standard Deviations
Pre- Versus Postexposure: Study 3
N Mean
Control advertisements:
Brand attitude 69
Creative advertisements:
Brand attitude 69
Control advertisements:
Purchase intent 69
Creative advertisements:
Purchase intent 69
were all above .97, showing a high level of internal reliability.
A one-way, repeated-measures ANOVA statistical analysis
was used to determine the effect of advertising type on pur-
chase intent and brand attitude. Due to a lack of effect for
television show in Study 1 and the lack of an interaction ef-
fect between television show and either purchase intent,
F(l, 68) = .98, n.s., or brand attitude, F(l, 68) = 2.75, n.s.,
the results from both Dream Living and Ground Force were
pooled. This resulted in a total sample size of 69 responses.
The mean change in brand attitude for creative commer-
cials shown was 0, while the mean change in brand attitude
for control commercials was .16 (see Table 3). The analysis
revealed no signiflcant differences between control and cre-
ative advertisements for brand attitude, F(l, 68) = 1.48, n.s.
For change in purchase intent, the mean for creative adver-
tisements was .05. The mean change for control commercials
was .07 (see Table 3). The analysis found no significant differ-
ence between control and creative commercials for change in
purchase intent, F(l, 68) = .13, n.s. There were no interac-
tion effects; therefore, neither hypothesis was supported.
DISCUSSION
This research focused on the effect of creative advertising on
recall, purchase intent, and attitude toward the brand. Cre-
ative advertising is operationalized as winning an advertising
reward, in this case. Communication Arts. The results sug-
gest that creative advertisements generate significantly greater
brand and execution recall on an unaided basis. This advan-
tage dissipates when product category prompts are given as
an aid to recall. This effect was found for both immediate and
one-week delayed recall. In addition, creative advertisements
in our study did not have an effect on purchase intent or atti-
tude toward the brand.
For the recall results, the literature suggests a possible ex-
planation for this difference between groups. First, aided recall
is different from unaided recall (Lockhart 2000; Padilla-Walker
SD
.16 .60
.65
.07 .74
.05 .61
and Poole 2002) and is an easier memory task. Second, unlike
previous research on the effect of attention on aided recall
(e.g., Craik et al. 1996; Insingrini, Vazou, and Leroy 1995;
Mulligan 1998; Rajaram, Srinivas, and Travers 2001), the
differences in attention levels in this study were not actively
manipulated; rather, they were a natural fiinction of the greater
interest value that creativity seems to bring to the advertis-
ing. For aided recall, the task is less cognitively challenging,
and therefore the ability to detect any advantage that creative
ads bring is mitigated. This may have led to the lack of differ-
ence between the creative and control groups on the aided
recall measure, regardless of time delay. The cognitive advan-
tages created by increased attention to creative advertisements
may only surface during the more difficult unaided recall task.
For the purchase intent and attitude toward the brand find-
ings, the results suggest a rethinking of past studies finding
that creative advertising led to increased attitude toward the
brand, purchase intent, and likability (Ang and Low 2000;
Kover, Goldberg, and James 1995; Stone, Besser, and Lewis
2000). The use of professional judges of creative advertising,
as compared with the student judges in the above studies,
may be the source of this difference. The different results of
this study compared with past research using student judges
(e.g., Ang and Low 2000; Kover, Goldberg, and James 1995;
Stone, Besser, and Lewis 2000) cast doubt on the generaliza-
bility of this research and raise questions regarding who is
best suited to judge a commercial as "creative."
It is also possible that these results reflect the difficulty in
effecting consumer brand attitude and intent to purchase with
a single commercial exposure. Unlike measures of recall, as
used in Studies 1 and 2, brand attitude and purchase intent
were likely preexisting, and therefore more solidly ingrained
and less likely to be easily changed (Machleit, Allen, and
Madden 1993).
Overall, the advantage that creative, award-winning ad-
vertising bestows in an unaided context suggests that adver-
tising awards are more than "beauty contests," and may be

doing more than selecting industry darlings. Creative adver-
tising may actually bestow value to the advertised brand.
These results also have valuable implications for practi-
tioners. Currently, the value of advertising awards may be
primarily seen as limited to recognition within the industry.
The creation of the EFFIEs, with their emphasis on demon-
strated sales results, shows that some in the industry cast a
skeptical eye on the majority of the advertising awards that
primarily reward creativity. This study expands the impor-
tance of advertising awards by showing that award-winning
advertising may be signiflcantly more successful than less "cre-
ative" advertising, at least in facilitating recall.
Future studies should also investigate the features of the
advertisements themselves. Are award-winning ads more
novel? Do participants pay increased attention to the award-
winning advertisements? Possible other factors that may be
driving the results should be investigated. For example, cre-
ative advertisements may also be differentiating, regardless
of novelty (Andrews and Smith 1996). These factors should
be investigated in future studies.
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