Creativity is arguably the most important element in advertising success. This article reviews the trends in creativity research and asks (1) what do we know about advertising creativity, (2) how can we measure it, and (3) how can we enhance and encourage it? After tracking its importance, this article examines how it is defined, the nature of the theories underpinning it, and the various typologies suggested by researchers. The impact of issues such as the environment, management practice, and myths on enhancing and encouraging advertising creativity are assessed. It is argued that, to encourage and enhance creativity, managers should address the effects of self-doubt, fear of risk taking, and fear of opposition and criticism.

Advertisers are recognizing the internet's potential for helping firms directly communicate with consumers using media rich emails. Though the efficiency of such emails cannot be denied, their effectiveness needs to be assessed. It is argued that components of promotional emails are likely to be evaluated differently by males and females. The results from a survey suggest that women and men differ in their evaluation of information content and the visual presentation used in emails. Compared to men, women were also more concerned about privacy and preferred to use the media to build social contacts. Implications for using promotional emails are discussed.

Accountability is management's new mantra. The challenge comes from the fact that currently each discipline within the marketing communications plan is measured differently, so there can be no composite scorecard. McCann introduces two models, based on seven Universal Marketing Drivers that assess how these drivers work in tandem, in a discipline-neutral manner. These models can help marketers assess the contributions of each of the diverse disciplines within a marketing communications plan and accurately allocate resources to best deliver strategic priorities.

As evidenced in this issue, IMC remains a controversial theoretical concept in terms of generalizing what it is and what it does. However, if IMC is viewed from a different paradigmatic perspective on theory, namely that of poststructuralism, then we might consider it as a set of contingently framed practices and discourses where localized, particular practitioner interpretations are just as important as general theoretic ones. When viewed this way, IMC emerges as a powerful tool that guides practitioners in developing and implementing marketing communications programs even if they apply it in disparate ways according to their own specific understandings and circumstances.

This study looks into different types of interactive functions, and the associative relationship between these interactive functions and website ranking. Six types of interactive functions are identified, and four of them are found to be significant in affecting website ranking. The four important types of interactive functions are Online Two-way Communication, Customization, Content Variety, and Interactive Job Search.

This article introduces a moment-by-moment picture-sorting technique for measuring the emotional content of TV commercials. This new dynamic approach to analyzing the dramatic structure of commercials is shown to be a valid predictor of purchase intent.

Retail marketers' understanding of radio and television advertising campaigns' impact on retail store visits would be a major breakthrough in evaluating return on media investment. This article presents results from pilot research using Arbitron's Portable People Meter (PPMSM, a mark of Arbitron Inc.)—a unique audience measurement system that enables radio, broadcast television and cable television usage, and retail store visits to be captured from a single-source national panel of consumers. The pilot research indicates that retail store visits correlated with media advertising exposure, illustrating the promise of a single-source research panel to measure ROI in terms of store visit behavior, an important driver of retailer financial results.

The intelligence, measurement, knowledge, models, and desktop “best practice” tools discussed in this article are the types of “products” being developed by the 21st-century business researchers who are determined to add quantifiable value to the business enterprise—and the fact-based support being used by the brand and agency teams that are determined to win in the marketplace, quarter-to-quarter and year-to-year. By accounting for, improving, and achieving a return on advertising investments consistent with quarterly business objectives, what is traditionally viewed as a “cost of doing business” can be transformed to “wise investments in the business.”

In this article the authors demonstrate how a customer lifetime value approach can provide a better assessment of advertising effectiveness that takes into account postpurchase behaviors such as word-of-mouth. Although for many advertisers word-of-mouth is viewed as an alternative to advertising, the authors show that it is possible to quantify the way in which word-of-mouth often complements and extends the effects of advertising. The authors provide a simple approach to the measurement of postpurchase word-of-mouth sales effects and demonstrate how firms may be underestimating advertising effectiveness by ignoring such effects. Their approach illustrates how customer lifetime value models can provide an important tool to assess the long-term effects of advertising campaigns.

This study shows that “waste”—the perceived extravagance of an advertisement—contributes to advertising effectiveness by increasing credibility. It draws especially on the “Handicap Principle” in biology: animals use wasteful characteristics to signal their exceptional biological fitness. It hypothesizes that excesses in advertising work in a similar way by signaling “brand fitness.” TV advertisements were evaluated online for perceived advertising expense, message, brand familiarity, quality, reliability, and likelihood of choosing. High perceived advertising expense enhances an advertisement's persuasiveness significantly, but largely indirectly, by strengthening perceptions of brand quality.

Morphological psychology leverages the theory of Gestalt to understand the underlying fundamental, and often unconscious, motivating forces behind brand and product decisions. The Morphological concept of motivation makes it possible to account for the unconscious generators of consumer behavior appropriately. It reveals the hidden symbolic meaning of products. Marketing strategies should limit themselves to one key message—the concept of single-minded proposition—conveying one “core feeling” of “emotional value.” However, successful strategies consider the complex psychological mechanisms, which create the “emotional values.”

Preparing a media plan aimed at opinion leaders requires accurately identifying and describing the attributes of this target as well as measuring its affinities with different media. Our research findings on women's fashion, particularly magazines, reveal that a media plan targeted at opinion leaders can succeed, that these opinion leaders tend to be positive toward and discuss advertising media, and that they read more women's fashion magazines and have significantly more affinities with such media than nonopinion leaders.

This study presents the first analysis of the impact of NASCAR sponsorship announcements on the stock prices of sponsoring firms. The primary finding of the study—that NASCAR sponsorship announcements were accompanied by the largest increases in shareholder wealth ever recorded in the marketing literature in response to a voluntary marketing program—represents a striking and unambiguous stock market endorsement of the sponsorships. Indeed, the 24 sponsors analyzed in this study experienced mean increases in shareholder wealth of over $300 million dollars, net of all of the costs associated with the sponsorships. A multiple regression analysis of firm-specific stock price changes and select corporate and sponsorship attributes indicates that NASCAR sponsorships with more successful racing teams, corporate (as opposed to product or divisional) sponsorships, and sponsorships with direct ties to the consumer automotive industry are all positively correlated with perceived sponsorship success, while corporate cash flow per share (a well-known proxy for agency conflicts within the firm) is negatively related with shareholder approval.

Great creative people in advertising have long known the power of emotion and stories—but had little compelling theory and research to validate their instincts. This new book on the interplay between the conscious and unconscious minds of consumers, marketers, and researchers provides convincing support.

317 Internet and Magazine Advertising: Integrated Partnerships or Not?

327 Decay Effects in Online Advertising: Quantifying the Impact of Time Since Last Exposure on Branding Effectiveness

333 Viral Marketing or Electronic Word-of-Mouth Advertising: Examining Consumer Responses and Motivations to Pass Along Email

349 Will Internet Users Pay for Online Content?

360 Impact of Gender Differences on the Evaluation of Promotional Emails

369 The Relationship between Interactive Functions and Website Ranking

375 The Waste in Advertising Is the Part That Works

Teenagers currently spend an estimated $153 billion a year on everything from computers to cars to clothes (Brand, 2000). Trend conscious teens are very active in utilizing the media and advertising in seeking out the latest products, services, and fashions (Zollo, 1995). A greater understanding of teens' role model influences can help organizations and their advertising agencies more effectively target and communicate to this growing market. In this study, we examine the effect of athlete role models on teenagers' purchase intentions and behaviors. Results from a survey of 218 adolescents are discussed with implications and future research directions for advertising and sports marketing researchers.

165 The Importance of Being Ernest: Commemorating Dichter's Contribution to Advertising Research

170 What Advertising Testing Might Have Been, If We Had Only Known

181 On Measuring the Power of Communications

188 The Definition and Measurement of Creativity: What Do We Know?

202 Capturing the Flow of Emotion in Television Commercials: A New Approach

210 The Morphological Approach for Unconscious Consumer Motivation Research

Split book yellow page tests randomly distribute different versions of the test advertisement in the same market at the same point in time allowing direct assessment of the customer pulling power of different sizes or types of yellow pages advertisements. Using the results from 78 split book tests, we find that including trademarks in small in-column yellow page advertisements can have a very strong influence on call rates. Partially confirming previous work, we also find that larger advertisements do generate more calls than smaller advertisements. However, the increase in call rates is not a straight line relationship.

In October 2002, the U.S. Department of State under the direction of Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and former advertising executive Charlotte Beers launched a first-ever public diplomacy campaign featuring television spots promoting the happy lives of American Muslims. The advertising campaign, known as the “Shared Values Initiative,” ran on a limited schedule throughout the Middle East and Asia through January 2003. This article attempts to assess the reactions and feelings that international viewers have toward the commercials and, to the extent possible, evaluate the effectiveness of the commercials on changing international audiences' attitudes toward the United States.

International students from various countries who were enrolled at Regents College in London, England in the summer of 2003 constituted the sample for this study. An experimental design, similar to those found in World War II propaganda literature, was employed to measure their attitudes toward the U.S. government, the American people, and their perception of how Muslims are treated in America before and after viewing the State Department commercials. The international students' reactions to the spots in the form of an advertising copy test are also reported.

This study measured to what extent consumers used the internet to displace or reinforce the use of other media as sources of advertising information. The sample was 2,032 households from 5,031 households randomly selected from a midwestern state. The results showed that although internet advertising provided many unique features, it has not displaced most media as sources of advertising information. Many consumers found that internet advertising was a complementary medium based on their favorable attitudes or frequent use of other media advertising. The research also indicated that the reinforcement effects will be likely more evident for the future use of internet advertising associated with the use of billboards, direct mail, magazines, and television. However, the displacement effects may continue to occur for the future use of internet advertising associated with the future use of free community papers and weekly paid papers as advertising sources.