This document summarizes a study on the effects of creative advertising on memory. It finds that creative ads both facilitate and impair memory. Specifically: 1. Creative ads strengthen memory of the creative ad (facilitation effect), increasing recall by 50%. 2. But viewing creative ads alongside regular ads impairs recall of the regular ads by 63% (impairment effect). 3. Creative ads are recalled earlier in sequences than regular ads. 4. Creative ads impair recall of competing brands more than non-competing brands, by 46% vs 38%. The study demonstrates the "creativity-based facilitation effect" but also an "impairment effect" of creative ads on

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The Unknown Bonus Effect
of Advertising Creativity
Professor Gayle Kerr
School of Advertising, Marketing and Public
Relations

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“Combinatory play seems to be the
essential feature of
productive thought.”
Albert Einstein

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Theory of Associative Thinking
• Creativity requires associative thinking “to bring otherwise mutually remote ideas
into contiguity to facilitate a creative solution” (Mendelson 1976).
• Dependent on the availability of a large number of facts with which, and from
which, to draw associations (Reid and Rotfeld 1974).

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Advertising Creativity defined by
(1) Originality - newness, novelty, or divergence.
(2) Relevance - appropriateness or meaningfulness.
(Ang and Low, 2000; Ang et al., 2007; Chen et al., 2016; Koslow, 2015; Koslow et
al., 2003; Pieters et al., 2002; Smith and Yang, 2004; Stone et al., 2000; Yang and
Smith, 2009).

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Advertising professionals and consumers
define creative advertising differently
• Practitioners define creativity by its relevance, originality and being goal-directed,
while consumers defined creativity by its execution or tactics (West et al 2008).
• Creative professionals responded positively to award-winning commercials, while
consumers responded positively to advertising that generated feelings of
personal enhancement (Kover et al 1997).

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Different interpretations across ad agencies
• Advertising Managers tend to value “effectiveness” - measured by awareness or
sales.
• Creatives are generally more concerned with the personal and reputational
rewards from producing creative advertising (Kover et al., 1995).

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How does advertising
creativity work?

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Creative Advertising works
by facilitating memory
• Creative ads are positively associated with the ability to recall (Ang
et al., 2007; Baack et al., 2008; Pieters and Bijmolt, 1997; Till and Baack, 2005;
Smith et al., 2008).
• Linked to increased attention, motivation to process the advertisement, and
depth of processing
(Pieters et al., 2002; Smith and Yang, 2004; Smith et al., 2007).
• Creative advertising is more quickly remembered and not as easily forgotten
(Chen et al., 2016).
• We called this the Creativity-based facilitation effect – creativity facilitates
memory (Jin, Kerr and Suh 2019).

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But if creativity strengthens
our memory,
does it make other regular ads
less memorable?

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Memory Impairment Theory
• Strengthening the memory of some items impairs memory of other non-
strengthened items
• List Strength Effects (Ratcliff, Clark & Shiffrin, 1990);
• Part-list Cueing Effects (Slamecka, 1968);
• Retrieval Inducing Effects (Anderson, Bjork, & Bjork, 1994).
• Prior research has tested strengthening manipulations such as repetition or
increased exposure.
• We argue that increasing creativity in ads can be an effective way of
strengthening memory. If so, we should find impairment effects.

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Hypotheses
H1: Creative ads will impair brand recall for other regular ads.
H2: Creative ads will be recalled in earlier sequences.
H3: Creative ads impair the recall of competing brands more than non-
competing brands.

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Building Scientific Rigor
• Develop and test stimulus ads – regular ads from YouTube and creative ads from
chosen from advertising award-winners and pre-tested on consumers.
• College students in US randomly assigned to one of two conditions – control or
experimental.
• Control group saw 12 regular ads. Experimental condition saw 6 regular and 6
creative ads.
• View 20 min video ! filler task (5 min) ! memory measure (brand recall) !
creativity rating of the ads.

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Results show facilitation and impairment
effect of creativity
• Increase in creativity rating by 27%
facilitated a 50% increase in recall.
• When viewed alongside creative ads,
brand recall dropped 63%.

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Results show creative ads are recalled
earlier than regular ads
• Using a Vincentized analysis, results show those in the experimental condition
recalled creative ads earlier than regular ads (t = 2.39; p = .036).
• This supports H2.

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Experiment 2 changes presentation order
but confirms results
• But given attention is a limited resource,
did seeing a regular ad first impact
encoding?
• Lower level of attention for target ads !
weaker encoding ! poorer memory
performance for target ads.
• Experiment 2 controlled the presentation
order so that all participants were exposed to
the same target ads first prior to manipulated
ads.
• Results were consistent with Experiment 1.
• Impairment effects not the result of
presentation order and were consistent
across the longer test of time.

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Experiment 3 explores impact of creativity on
competitor ads
• First two experiments only used non-competing brands.
• Experiment 3 examined whether creative ads impaired competing brands within
the same product category, using 159 US College students.

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Results show creative ads impair recall of competing
brands more than non-competing brands.
Creative ads up
25%
Competing brands
down 46%
Non-competing
brands down 38%

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Four important findings
1. Creative ads facilitate memory
This is the Creativity-based Facilitation Effect.
2. Creative ads impair the brand recall of other regular ads.
3. Creative ads are recalled earlier than their regular counterparts.
4. Creative ads impair recall of competing brands more than non-competing brands.
This is the Creativity-based Impairment Effect.
The second unknown bonus effect of advertising creativity.

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Practical Implications
• Invest in creativity (and test to make sure your customers also think it is
creative).
• Or don’t place your regular ads alongside other creative ads, especially those of
your competitors.

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Jin, H., Kerr, G. and Suh, J. (2019)
"Impairment effects of creative ads on
brand recall for other ads“
European Journal of Marketing,
Vol. 53 No. 7, pp. 1466-1483.
https://doi.org/10.1108/EJM-10-2017-0674
Email: gf.kerr@qut.edu.au