Passage 3

Of all the elements in the advertising mix, creativity is the least quantifiable, yet it has potentially the greatest leverage on the media dollars spent. The best way to understand the importance of creativity in advertising is to understand what it does for the advertiser. Creativity first separates the individual advertisement from all the advertisements surrounding it. In the process of doing that, creativity achieves its real goal: to separate the brand in a positive and motivating way from all other brands in the product category.
It may be possible to do something like this through sheer media weight, by simply outspending your competitors. But creativity is usually the least expensive way to make both ad and brand stand out in the crowd. This is not to say it is necessarily the best way. The best way to make a brand stand out is to put a significantly superior or unique product behind it. In the real world, however, competition and technology virtually force parity upon products in the same category-- close similarity in function, quality, price, and often appearance.
Can you give a branded parity product distinction through unique advertising strategy Sometimes still, that is a very limited opportunity. Brands of parity products all marketed to the same group of consumers most likely will have the same advertising strategy, because it is the only one that makes sense. Dishwashing liquids will need to communicate efficacy and mildness, fluoride toothpaste cavity-prion and taste, sports cars performance and status and so on.
When brands all have the same essential advertising strategies, what is it that makes one brand’s advertising more salient and more effective It is the creativity with which the strategy has been executed.
When advertising works, it works because it makes something happen inside the consumer. An advertisement is, after all, no more than a set of stimuli intended to evoke a set of desired responses among a specific group of consumers. The effect of a "creative" advertisement is to generate a more intense positive response to the brand than a "noncreative" advertisement. Whether it achieves its ends through the use of words, images, sounds or music, whether it evokes laughter, fear, shock, or feelings of warmth and tenderness, the creative advertisement stands out in the consumer’s mind and makes the brand stand out.
How do creative people create Nobody really knows, nobody really knows where ideas are bom, where an unforgettable bar of music comes from; why a felicitous phrase pops into someone’s head, knows how some people can put words and pictures and sounds and ideas together in ways that can move millions of other people to think and feel and act.
But we do know the most effective advertising (which I contend is the most creative) always has at least two or three elements and often has all three.
Passage 3Why doesn’t unique advertising strategy help much with the promotion of a parity product