Advertising best practice, evidence and insights

Superimposed text size and contrast effects in DTC TV advertising: Bigger is better, high contrast not so much

Research Paper • Ryan S. Paquin, Amie C. O’Donoghue, Bridget J. Kelly, Kevin R. Betts, Mihaela Johnson, Christine N. Davis, Alyssa Jordan, and Peyton Williams, Journal of Advertising Research, Digital First, September 2020

Direct-to-consumer prescription-drug television advertisements often contain superimposed text (supers) to convey information about the advertised product.

Re-evaluating iconic brand assets in a post-pandemic world

Article • Dr Gemma Calvert, Win Ee Chun and Dr Eamon Fulcher, WARC Exclusive, June 2020

Distinctive brand assets have a powerful role to play in ensuring top-of-mind recall with consumers – but in a world changed by COVID-19, a strategic reassessment of assets is needed.

Stay Alert: How the UK Government accidentally launched a meme

Article • Sam Peña-Taylor, WARC Exclusive, May 2020

Explores how the UK Government’s messaging change from ‘Stay Home’ to ‘Stay Alert’ created the conditions for its own mocking and remixing.

Will AI dehumanise advertising’s creativity?

Opinion • Irene Joshy, March 2020

Artificial intelligence occupies a contradictory place in the advertising imagination: at once a potential creative catalyst while also threatening sameness – Kantar’s Irene Joshy explores this evolving landscape and what it means for creativity.

Cosmetics ads should avoid scientific jargon

News • 24 January 2020

Cosmetics brands may benefit from steering clear of claims around artificial ingredients and avoiding scientific jargon to make a greater impact with print ads, according to a study in the Journal of Advertising Research (JAR).

Assessing scientific claims in print ads that promote cosmetics: How consumers perceive cosmeceutical claims

Research Paper • Jie G. Fowler, Les Carlson, and Himadri Roy Chaudhuri, Journal of Advertising Research, Vol. 59, No. 4, 2019, pp. 466-482

The area of scientific-related claims in advertising is ripe for additional investigative endeavor. This article aims to access the nature and potential deceptiveness of scientific-related claims that appear in cosmetics advertising.

Department for Education: Fire It Up – Effecting a seismic reframe of apprenticeships

Research Paper • MRS Awards Papers, Finalist, Jeremy Bullmore Award for Creative Development Research, 2019

The Department for Education, a UK government department, promoted apprenticeships across the UK by launching a mixed methodology research study that facilitated its campaign.

JP Morgan Chase taps AI copywriting tech

News • 01 August 2019

In a move that may unnerve copywriters across the advertising industry, JP Morgan Chase has announced that it has struck a five-year deal with a tech firm whose AI-generated marketing copy is said to be more effective than that written by humans.

Powerful patterns in punctuation – what it could mean for the future of marketing

Opinion • Alex Darmon, June 2019

Marketing efforts tend to be focused around images, videos, stories, and few people give a thought to the role of the humble full stop or comma. Alex Darmon explains why there’s more to punctuation than you might think.

Footnotes to Aristotle: Modern Modes of Persuasion

Opinion • Faris Yakob, June 2019

Certain ideas, though ancient, have retained their power. Faris Yakob explores the ways in which Aristotle's Ars Rhetorica has influenced this industry.

Four lessons to help brands sing in other languages

Opinion • Catherine Barr, January 2019

Catherine Barr shares the four golden rules of transcreation she’s learnt setting up creative translation agency franklyfluent.

How to craft memorability in multi-platform advertising

Article • Orlando Wood, Admap, September 2018, pp. 10-14

With campaigns with short-term aims on the rise and an ever growing amount of platforms to run them on, this article offers marketers guidance on the best way to create effective multi-platform work.

What creative experts can learn from classical rhetoric

News • 31 May 2018

NEW YORK: A deeper appreciation of classical rhetoric could help advertising practitioners and scholars improve their understanding of what makes for strong creative, according a paper in the Journal of Advertising Research (JAR).

How iconic brands use design for maximum consumer recognition

Article • Low Lai Chow , WARC Exclusive, April 2018

Well-known brands including McDonalds, Samsung and Oppo are using colour, logo and multichannel branding to boost their brand recognition and saliency with consumers.

The pratfall effect: How flaws make advertising more appealing

Article • Richard Shotton, Market Leader, Quarter 2, 2018, pp. 36-39

Examines how marketers can make use of the pratfall effect, where flaws make a thing more likeable, to improve brand image.

Back to the future

Opinion • Malcolm White, March 2018

In the creative communications industry, it feels vital to find exactly the right words but, Malcolm White asks, why not use malapropisms as a resource to define a brand’s essence and values?

Fluent Devices and the forgotten art of memorability

Article • Tom Ewing, WARC Webinars, December 2017

Tom Ewing, Head of Communication at System1 Group, explains how to use Fluent Devices to deliver brand-building impact and why these long-term brand-building strategies continue to deliver better business returns.

Do Resonant Advertisements Resonate with Consumers? The Interaction Of Wordplay, Regulatory Focus, and Need for Cognition and Its Impact on Persuasion

Research Paper • Jieun Choi, Charles R. Taylor and Doo-Hee Lee, Journal of Advertising Research, Vol. 57, No. 1, 2017, pp. 82-93

Resonant advertisements—which employ a twist or deviation to create multiple meanings—commonly are used by marketing practitioners.

The power of brand properties

Article • David Taylor, Market Leader, Quarter 1, 2015, pp. 49-51

This article discusses the the importance of brand familiarity, and argues that any changes to branding should be carefully considered and gradually implemented to ensure valuable brand associations in the memories of consumers are not lost in the change.

Mythbuster: Is it ownable

Article • Les Binet and Sarah Carter, Admap, November 2014, pp. 9-9

This article argues that brands should not worry about if a campaign endline is 'ownable', but instead focus on creating a distinctive and consistent brand voice.

10 top tips for copywriting

Article • Ian Stockley, Admap, April 2014, pp. 42-43

This article details 10 tips to improve copywriting, all supported by the key principle of enjoying it.

Point of view: The long and short of it

Article • Molly Flatt, Admap, October 2013, pp. 17-17

This article discusses the role of copy-writing in marketing, using an example of a long copy campaign from Apple, the electronics company, as a 'how not to'.

The seven deadly sins of business writing

Article • Laura Mazur, Market Leader, Quarter 2, 2013, pp. 56-57

This article argues that clear, concise and correct writing is an essential part of how the world sees your brand or organisation, and lists and expands on the seven chief writing mistakes to avoid.

Are You In Good Hands? Slogan Recall: What Really Matters

Research Paper • Chiranjeev Kohli, Sunil Thomas and Rajneesh Suri, Journal of Advertising Research, Vol. 53, No. 1, 2013, pp. 31-42

Slogans are very important in brand building, and recall is considered one of the most effective measures of slogan success.

How to shoot yourself in the credibilities

Article • Jeremy Bullmore, Market Leader, Quarter 4, 2012, pp. 20-20

If controversial recommendations are to be taken seriously, they need to come from a credible source or the would-be experts risk shooting themselves in the credibilities.

Copywriting & slogans