Consumer Insights and Creativity

Volume 15, Number 3 Article by Asha Ganesan Sen September, 2003

Consumer Insights and Creativity :

Consumer insights have become imperative in developing a brand’s positioning and its advertising objectives and almost all marketers today claim to base their brands on consumer insights. Message content and form are the two main pillars of advertising. If consumer insights are critical to the former, when it comes to the latter, the discipline of uncovering and using consumer insights often takes a back seat to the creative instinct which relies more on hunches, avers Asha Sen.

Consumers could perceive product-related messages either through the central route — which is evoked when they are highly involved with the product, or the peripheral route — evoked when the product elicits a low level of involvement. To come up with a framework for thinking through the creative process, the creative team could answer a set of simple questions. What is the relationship between the consumer and my product? What is the role of brands in this product group? What is the relationship between different brands in my product category?

The challenge ultimately lies in combining the rigour and discipline of the search with the imagination and creativity that insights and advertising need.

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