Who won? Of course the consumer!

What was billed to be the bloodiest challenge of all time, with heavyweights from the marketing and advertising industries locking horns to debate on the age old question of whether creativity or effectiveness is more important for marketing communications, took place last week.

This question and debate has been doing the rounds in both the advertising and marketing circles also leading to the breakaway of the ad industry from the SLIM awards and forming its own awards called the “Chillies” focussing more on creativity than expected results.

The debate, presented by the International Advertising Association (IAA) Sri Lanka, simply titled “Effectiveness vs Creativity” saw Gerald De Saram, Managing Director of CIC Paints (Pvt) Ltd and Debu Bhathnager, Director of the Hemas Group and Managing Director of Hemas Marketing pitted against Russell Mirando, Executive Creative Director at Grant McCann Erickson and Chandini Rajaratnam, Vice President/Executive Creative Director of JWT with Dr. Harsha de Silva acting as moderator. The tempo of the debate appeared to be dominated by De Saram and Bhathnager speaking for the marketing fraternity and effectiveness. De Saram put things in a business perspective by saying that the primary importance was the ability of the advertisement to attract the attention of the customer and to deliver the brand message quickly and accurately.

“Most advertising people will have you believe that creativity is the holy grail of advertising. Don’t believe a word of it,” he said. The opinion of the “Effectiveness” team was that a good ad need not necessarily be creative to be effective.

Bhathnagar brought this point forward and also dealt a number of deadly blows to the arguments of the “Creativity” team in his speech. His first blow came right at the beginning of his speech when he said, “It has been said that politics is the last refuge of the scoundrel. But I submit too that creativity is the first refuge of the irresponsible” --much to the amusement of the audience.

“No matter what the advertising fraternity tells you, advertising is not art,” he said. Going on to describe the advertising industry, he said: “It is just to serve a commercial purpose and has no basis for existence if it does not perform this function well.” Making, what he described as his first point, he said “In advertising there is no true creativity or creative people to start with,” reiterating that no matter how creative, if the advertisement did not deliver results at the end of the day, it would be a waste of time. Both marketers were of the view that not every creative ad is an effective ad and they appeared to leave the “Creativity” team at a loss for words.

The “Creativity” team’s argument was that creativity is effectiveness and they said that it was creativity which attracted and hooked a consumer to a particular brand. In Mirando’s words, “For it to be effective advertising it needs to be creative advertising.”

He explained saying that the title was a red herring giving the impression that creativity and effectiveness is mutually exclusive whereas it is not so. Russell said “80% of the award winning work – the alleged indulgence of the creative people – has over achieved their net growth.” At the end of his speech, he said “You don’t need to offer a rational benefit to a person. You need to offer a benefit that a rational person can understand,” he said, defending the use of creativity in delivering an effective ad. Rajaratnam, speaking after the Hemas marketer, began by stating that the topic itself was ridiculous.

Stating the case for creativity she questioned as to why every agency in the world possesses a Creative Department if creativity was not essential. “Creativity is what turns a product into a brand,” she said. She described creativity as the vehicle which communicates the message of a brand to the customer, defending her stance that creativity is in fact effectiveness, also saying that creativity is the hook that binds a customer to a particular brand.

At the end of the day, it is obvious that a question such as this, which has been debated time and again, cannot be answered after one night of debating.

In fact this was the view of the moderator Dr. Harsha De Silva as well. Both teams presenting their cases seemed to have held on to their arguments very strongly and the debate was very interesting and entertaining but it appeared that the team for “Effectiveness” managed to get the last word in, at least until the next such debate comes around!