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The Role of Myth in Creative Advertising Design:

Theory, Process and Outcome
Gita Venkataramani Johar , Morris B. Holbrook & Barbara B. Stern
Published online: 31 May 2013.

To cite this article: Gita Venkataramani Johar , Morris B. Holbrook & Barbara B. Stern (2001) The Role of
Myth in Creative Advertising Design: Theory, Process and Outcome, Journal of Advertising, 30:2, 1-25, DOI:
10.1080/00913367.2001.10673634

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 The Role of Myth in Creative Advertising Design:
Theory, Process and Outcome
Gita Venkataramani Johar, Morris B. Holbrook and Barbara B. Stern

In an empirical study using five real-world creative teams from an advertising agency, participants were
given a strategic brief for a new beverage product and asked to design the layout for a print ad. Think-aloud
concurrent protocols obtained from each team's copywriter, art director, and the two working together were
analyzed to examine the creative process and its relationship to the created advertisement. Interpretive analy-
ses of the protocols reveal that the teams access culturally available plot patterns but in different ways. In this
study and with the particular materials and situational context explored here, four ofthe five teams chose to
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pursue a single mythic structure to the apparent detriment of their final product. Only one team engaged in
fully diversified idea generation involving a wide range of alternative scenarios. Not coincidentally, as a
tentative conclusion, this more flexible team produced the ad judged most successful by advertising profes-
sionals. This still-to-be-tested exploratory finding deserves further investigation in future research that
embodies various methodological refinements.

Gita Venkataramani Johar
(Ph.D., New York University) is
Associate Professor of Marketing,
Columbia University Graduate
School of Business.
Morris B. Holbrook (Ph.D.,
Columbia University) is William T.
Dillard Professor of Marketing,
Columbia University Graduate
School of Business.
Barbara B. Stern (Ph.D., The City
University of New York) is Professor
II of Marketing, Rutgers University.
The authors gratefully acknowledge
funding from the Marketing Science
Institute, Rider University, and the
Columbia Business School's Faculty
Research Fund. They thank Asim
Ansari and Hardeep Venkataramani
Johar for numerous inputs at every
stage of this research; Amitava
Chattopadhyay, Jacob Goldenberg,
Arthur Kover, and Don Lehmann for
their helpful comments; and August
Cosentino for his help in designing
the stimuli and obtaining
participants for the study.
Journal ofAdvertising,
Volume XXX, Number 2
Summer 2001
Mawson Avenue is in the business of mythmaking, of creating and perpetu-
ating the myths that reflect and shape our values, sensibilities, and lifestyles.
-Randazzo 1993, p. 1.
Introduction
Organizational theorists consider creativity the cornerstone of competi-
tive advantage (Amabile 1988, 1996; Devanna and Tichy 1990; Shalley
1995), defining it as the production of novel and useful products that en-
hance a firm's ability to respond to environmental opportunities (Amabile
1983; Staw 1990; Van de Ven 1986; Woodman, Sawyer, and Griffin 1993).
Prior research has examined personal characteristics such as general cre-
ative ability, domain-relevant skills, and intrinsic motivation (Barron and
Harrington 1981), as well as organizational factors, such as job complexity
and supervision style (Amabile 1988; Amabile et al. 1996; West and Farr
1989), that facilitate creative performance. Recently, researchers have also
investigated the joint contribution of personal and organizational factors
and have found that high levels of both factors encourage the highest de-
grees of creative performance (Oldham and Cummings 1996).
Nonetheless, creative processes in organizations are not fully understood
(cf Woodman, Sawyer, and Griffin 1993), leaving some key unanswered
questions: "Are there processes that are capable of producing creative
designs, and are these processes different from those that may be used to
produce designs that are not considered creative?" (Gero and Maher 1993, p.
3). Such questions are especially pertinent to advertising organizations, for
despite Ford's (1996) conclusion that domains at the organizational level do
not generally encourage creativity, the advertising domain is singled out as
an exception because of its inherently creative purpose.
Ironically, advertising creativity has barely been studied. Accordingly, in
this article, we focus on the creative process underlying advertising design to
explore certain characteristics of the design process that may foster the devel-
opment of a more or less creative ad. A deeper understanding of this creative
 2 The Journal ofAdvertising
process can help suggest guidelines for creativity train-
ing programs. Specifically, such research can highlight
those aspects of the design process that should be nur-
tured and encouraged so that this process might culmi-
nate more effectively in a successful creative product.
The paper begins with a brief review of creativity in
the design process and then presents a study of ad
agency creative teams, each composed of an art direc-
tor and a copywriter, telling us their thoughts as they
work on the task of designing a print ad for a new
product. The data consist of the teams' verbal protocols
and ads, analyzed by the authors with the ads also
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submitted to "expert" judges for evaluation. The find-
ings suggest that, in this situation, four out offive creative
teams tend to pursue a thematically restricted approach,
only rarely drawing from a more diverse and potentially
fruitful variety ofthemes to achieve a truly creative output
(ef Guilford 1956; Osborn 1963). In particular, the ap-
proaches of these four teams appear to illustrate key
conceptual categories from the mythic framework de-
veloped by Frye (1957). Using material drawn from
the verbal protocols, in the spirit of exploratory illus-
tration within a limited problem-specific context, we
suggest that overreliance on a particular mythic type
might inhibit creativity, hence our title's focus on the
"role of myth" in advertising design.
The Creative Design Process
The creative design process in advertising exempli-
fies a general class of design problems also found in
product development and other organizational do-
mains. Design activity involves the creation of a com-
plete set of specifications intended to ensure the per-
formance of various functions by an artifact-whether
a candy bar, a painting, or an advertisement-in which
design problems are characterized by a task environ-
ment specifying a set of functional requirements and
objectives, a collection of constraints, and a technol-
ogy of components to be employed in design activity
(Chandrasekaran 1990). These elements map onto con-
cepts in advertising design, such as persuasion objec-
tives, budgetary or media limitations, and visual or
verbal components, that are combined to create an ad.
Most researchers posit a link between creative pro-
cesses and products (Alden, Hoyer, and Lee 1993;
Catford and Ray 1991; Csikszentmihalyi 1996; Dahl,
Chattopadhyay, and Gom 1999; Goleman, Kaufman,
and Ray 1992; Holbrook 1984, 1998; Kao 1996; Koestler
1964; Kover 1995; Meyer 1956, 1967; Ray and Myers
1986). In this connection, one popular conceptualization
classifies design activities as routine, innovative, or
creative (Rosenman and Gero 1993). In this scheme, a
"creative" product is not only original, novel, interest-
ing, and unique (i.e., innovative), but also useful and
practical (Dasgupta 1994; Finke, Ward, and Smith 1992;
Weisberg 1993). In other words, going beyond mere
newness, a genuine creation also works. Anything less
may be merely miscreation. Thus, an advertisement is
not considered a creative success in the real world un-
less it achieves a client's communication objectives
(Kover, James, and Sonner 1997).
Despite general agreement about the essentials of
the creative product, there is considerable disagree-
ment about the distinctive nature of the creative pro-
cess. Some researchers consider this process qualita-
tively different from "ordinary" day-to-day thinking,
involving a leap of freedom or a flash of insight that
cannot be reconstructed or analyzed (Guilford 1950;
Wallas 1926). The difference is attributed to the use
of nonformulaic thinking in creative tasks versus
ready-made formulas in ordinary ones. In the former,
many innovative ideas are generated (Campbell 1960)
to extend the space of possible solutions, to move
"outside the box," or to devise an altogether new space
(Rosenman and Gero 1993).
In contrast, reductionist researchers propose that
the creative process involves only ordinary mental
functions and is, therefore, only quantitatively differ-
ent from everyday thinking (Dasgupta 1994; Finke,
Ward, and Smith 1992; Perkins 1981; Weisberg 1993),
with creative thought more meticulous than ordinary
thinking in "staying within the lines." Here, innova-
tive idea generation occurs because (rather than in
spite) of the constraints imposed by preformed men-
tal categories. The underlying premise is that cre-
ativity works within boundaries, for only imaginative
use of formulaic elements results in an elegant out-
come. To compose a sonnet, for example, a poet must
adhere to its strict stylistic rules (14 lines, metric
structure, rhyme scheme, etc.),
A third perspective is integrative, as when synthe-
sizers such as Hofstadter (1985) claim that the sine
qua non of creativity is a balance between freedom
and constraints. The process becomes unbalanced if
there are too many restrictions or too much freedom
(Finke, Ward, and Smith 1992). This integrative view
is consistent with new product development programs
such as Tauber's heuristic ideation technique (HIT),
in which a person is given a structured framework for
generating creative new product ideas and in which
constrained idea generation often outperforms free-
form association (Tauber 1972; see also Goldenberg,
Mazursky, and Solomon 1999a, b).
Perhaps because of disagreement about the global
nature of the process, some researchers begin not
 Summer 2001
with the whole, but with the parts, aiming at identifi-
cation and analysis of the key activity steps (Taylor
1959; Wallas 1926). In advertising research, Young
(1974) proposes a five-step creative sequence: "gather
raw materials, organize them, drop the entire subject
(incubation), wait for the idea to appear, and adapt
the idea to practical use" (Reid and Moriarty 1983, p.
127). More recently, when Kover (1995) examined the
implicit theories of communication used by copywriters
in the creation of advertising, he formulated a post-hoc
developmental sequence based on the copywriter's in-
ternal dialogue with an implied reader. However, no
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further research on the process of advertising creativ-
ity in a real-time, real-world environment has appeared.
Our study begins such an exploration of the advertis-
ing design process as it occurs in an agency setting.
Propositions
The real-world setting actualizes the controversy over
whether the creative process is empowered by freedom
or constraints. Ad design occurs in the presence of pre-
existing external restrictions such as budgets, time lim-
its, competitive positioning strategy, and client satis-
faction. We take these as constants and focus instead
on internal constraints as the variables of interest.
Consistent with the literature (de Bono 1973;
Guilford 1956; Osborn 1963; Wallas 1926; Winston
1990), we claim that too many constraints occur
when-for whatever reasons-s-a team relies on a single
formula or pattern, perhaps one that has proven suc-
cessful in the past or that is temperamentally conge-
nial to the cognitive styles and working habits of the
team members. In formulaic thinking, a team short-
cuts the generative stage of creativity and tends to
satisfice by selecting a convenient story or theme that
allows for completion of a task in the allotted time
span but that negatively influences the outcome. Ad-
herence to one thematic formula may lock creative
partners into self-imposed boxes that limit their free-
dom in terms of the range and flexibility of their
imaginative outputs. The consequence may be a less
successful advertisement--one whose creators have
painted themselves into a corner that not only restricts
the scope of their vision, but also limits the effective-
ness of their expression, resulting in an ad that may be
less than optimally appropriate to the product or less
than fully reflective ofthe brand. Even when such con-
sequences as Clio-type awards ensue, an advertise-
ment may succeed only in meeting a professional prize-
winning standard rather than achieving the client's
communication objectives (Kover, James, and Sonner
1997). In contrast, those who engage in more fully de-
3
veloped idea generation and screening may entertain a
broader range of options that allows them to succeed
creatively and design more impactful advertising mes-
sages. Thus, we believe that creative advertising is
more likely to emerge from a process of iteratively gen-
erating ideas from varying approaches rather than from
confinement to a limited set ofthemes or other appeals.
We examine our proposition in an exploratory em-
pirical setting by studying advertisements produced
by several teams of copywriters and art directors on
the basis of a positioning strategy set forth in a stra-
tegic brieffor a single brand. By holding the product,
brand, and positioning strategy constant, we can ex-
amine differences in the creative process among teams
and how these differences lead to varying ads for the
same product offering.
Method
Preliminary Interviews
Typical ofexploratory research, we began by conducting
in-depth interviews with some experts in the field,namely,
five creative personnel and four account managers at a
multinational advertisingfirm headquartered in NewYork.
These interviews revealed that the major inputs received
by real-world advertisingcreatives are a client background
document and a strategic brief. The latter describes the
target market, the intended message, and the
communication objective. It may also specify such
components as a slogan, emotional tone, brand equity
position, format (e.g., problem-solution), end benefit
demonstration, and/or slice-of-life platform. This brief
provides information needed to facilitate creation of
the visual and verbal message elements, usually by a
creative team composed of a copywriter and an art
director. The way this team functions depends on the
idiosyncrasies ofthose involved. In many cases, following
an iterative process, the team members initially work
together, break up to work separately, pool their results,
break up again, and so forth. Subject to the inevitable
constraints of a simulated setting, we used the
information about client input and team conventions in
modeling the advertising design task.
Overview: Think-Aloud Protocols
Our use of think-aloud verbal protocols follows pre-
cedents in disciplines ranging from architecture and
mechanical engineering to poetry (Goel and Pirolli
1992; Patrick 1935, 1937; Ullman, Diettrich, and
Tauffer 1988). As early as the 1930s, Patrick (1935,
1937) studied the process of poetic creation by select-
 4 The Journal ofAdvertising
ing a group of poets and asking them to think aloud
as they composed a poem. Kover (1995) used a simi-
lar procedure to study agency creatives' internal dia-
logues during the copywriting process. However,
whereas Kover collected retrospective recollections,
we focus on real-time creativity by using concurrent
think-aloud verbal protocols generated during the act
of creation itself (Ericsson and Simon 1980, 1993).
Verbal Protocol Study
Participants. Five creative teams from a midsized
advertising agency in New York volunteered to par-
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ticipate in the study, with all members receiving $50
for their help. Each team consisted of a copywriter
and an art director who customarily worked together
as partners in ad design. Participants ranged in age
from 24 to 39 years and had worked in their creative
departments for 2 to 6 years. Educational backgrounds
included degrees in English, visual arts, fine arts,
psychology, and history. The small sample-typical
of interpretive research in general (e.g., Thompson,
Locander, and Pollio 1989) and design research in
particular (e.g., Gael and Pirolli 1992)-was a practi-
cal necessity stemming from the need to collect a
voluminous amount of data from each creative team
(actual creative partners in a simulated real-world
task rather than, say, advertising students in a labo-
ratory setting). The study was conducted in the ad
agency after working hours, providing a familiar en-
vironment for the participants and requiring approxi-
mately two hours for each creative team.
Motivating Context and Materials. The study design
used previously established guidelines for collecting ver-
bal data (Ericsson and Simon 1980, 1993),modified to suit
the advertising domain. Task-specific materials were con-
structed in accordance with those used in a marketing
case called "Sodaburst" (Greyser 1970), also modified in
accordance with a creative director's comments. The task
was to create an advertisement for a fictitious new prod-
uct, an instant ice cream soda brand called ''Icy Soda"
The teams were give two documents: (1) a client
background document containing information about
the company, the product, and the competitive envi-
ronment and (2) a strategic brief specifying the brand
name, product attributes, and positioning strategy.
Based on the Sodaburst case, the product and posi-
tioning strategy were described as follows in the cli-
ent background document:
The product is an instant ice cream soda. It con-
sists of a single unit made of ice cream, syrup, and
frozen carbonated water fused together and pack-
aged in a "miniature" cylindrical ice cream con-
tainer. The ice cream soda is prepared by slipping
the single unit (ice cream, syrup, and frozen car-
bonated water) from its cylindrical container into
a large glass and adding tap water. Upon contact
with the water, the frozen carbonated water starts
to release and mix with the syrup. In one minute,
the soda is ready to serve. The product is available
in two flavors-chocolate (vanilla ice cream with
chocolate syrup) and strawberry (vanilla ice cream
with strawberry syrup). The product is to be sold in
two-, three-, or four-soda sizes, from ice cream cabi-
nets in the retail outlet, and it has to be kept in the
refrigerator until ready for use. Research has indi-
cated that 70% of adults and 80% of teens/children
would consider drinking ice cream soda. Usage is
expected to peak in summer and drop off in winter.
To flesh out the competitive environment, three com-
peting products were also described in this document:
a milk shake; a ready-to-drink, milk-based canned
product; and a creamy, chocolate milk-based additive
to make rich milk shakes out of plain milk.
The strategic brief was modeled on real examples
provided by agency personnel. It contained information
about the following: (1) brand name (Icy Soda), (2) the
media plan (full-color print ads), (3) the target audi-
ence (an all-family audience with an emphasis on home-
makers with children between the ages of 5 and 17
years), (4) the advertising objectives (creating brand
awareness by announcing that the familiar taste and
enjoyment of an ice cream soda are now quickly and
conveniently available at home and that the product's
quality and wholesomeness make it suitable for all-
family consumption), (5) the key end benefit claims
(quick, convenient, tasty, and a wholesome treat), and
(6) the emotional tonality of the message (dramatizing
interest and excitement in the new product concept).
Procedure. Participants were told that the study
addressed the advertising process and that the re-
searchers were interested in what they were thinking
as they designed an ad. Even though advance infor-
mation about the process being studied could poten-
tially alter the nature of the process itself, we had to
divulge our interest in thought processes to gain com-
pliance with the think-aloud procedure. The teams
were then given a page of instructions derived from
Ericsson and Simon (1993) describing the think-aloud
task. They were told that their ongoing commentary
about developing the ad would be tape-recorded and
that the tapes would be transcribed. They were also
told that the ads would be evaluated by a panel of
expert judges and that the ad judged to be the most
creative would win a special prize.
The procedure began with three practice problems
given to the creative partners to accustom them to
 Summer 2001
thinking aloud (Ericsson and Simon 1993). Each mem-
ber ofthe team worked on one practice problem alone,
after which the two members worked on another prob-
lem together. They were instructed to think aloud as
they did these problems and, after completing each
task, were asked to provide a retrospective report
about their thought processes.
The study task was more elaborate, consisting of six
separate phases performed partly on an individual ba-
sis (with team members working independently in dif-
ferent rooms) and partly on a team basis (working
together in the same room). This structure is consistent
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with agency executives' views about creative composi-
tion provided in the preliminary interviews. Both indi-
vidual and team protocols were taped to provide a rich
data set ofmonologues and dialogues. Participants were
instructed not to ask questions, to work as they usually
did, and to remember to think aloud in all phases.
In Phase 1, each participant received the client
background document and the strategic brief and
worked alone for fifteen minutes, reading the docu-
ments for understanding while thinking aloud. The
researcher encouraged thinking aloud whenever there
was a lapse but did not answer any questions or
interfere with the participant's thought processes in
any other way. During this time, prior to joint consul-
tation, each team member began to develop ideas for
the ad. In Phase 2, the creative partners were asked
to work together as a team in their usual manner for
fifteen minutes and were reminded to speak aloud if
the conversation lapsed. In Phase 3, the participants
again worked individually, this time for twenty min-
utes, again with reminders to think aloud (if neces-
sary). In Phase 4, the team worked together for twenty
minutes to produce a rough print ad with visual art
and verbal copy. At this point, the researcher collected
all working notes and the print ad. In Phase 5, each
participant provided a retrospective report describing
his or her recollections of thoughts during the process
of designing the ad in the order in which they had
occurred. In Phase 6, participants gave their resumes
to the researchers, completed a questionnaire about
their advertising experience, and evaluated their own
ad on two criteria: (1) the extent to which it met its
objectives and (2) their level of satisfaction with it.
Independent Creativity Evaluations by
Expert Judges
Expert evaluations were collected to provide a more
independent set of ratings than those by the research-
ers or participants. The five print ads were rated for
creativity by three expert judges-a creative person,
5
an advertising research person, and an account plan-
ner-from ad agencies other than the one for which
the participants worked. These judges studied the
relevant materials and then evaluated the creativity
of each ad using seven-point ratings of "originality,"
"meeting strategic objectives," "achieving the desired
tone," and "satisfying the makers of Icy Soda" (Boden
1991; Finke, Ward, and Smith 1992; Gero and Maher
1993; McLaughlin 1993). Clearly, these expert evalu-
ations provided only a small sample of opinion, in-
tended as an informal yardstick as is consistent with
the exploratory nature of the study. In this regard,
"creativity is a subjective judgment made by mem-
bers of the field about the novelty and value of a
product; it is not an inherent quality that can be
measured independent of social-construction processes
within a field" (Ford 1996, p. 1115).
Description ofProcess
To begin analyzing the data, we examined the pro-
tocols from each team in search of commonalities as
well as differences in the approaches taken to ad
design. All participants started by reading the client
background document and strategic brief and gener-
ating ideas and questions as they read the materials.
At this point, the creative effort typically focused on
trying to pin down the product benefits. Also, both art
directors and copywriters tended to generate some
preliminary ideas in both verbal and visual forms.
Aids used to generate creative ideas included visual-
izing the product or the ad, relating the product to
their own experiences, and relating the product and/
or ad to movies and/or art.
In Phase 2, when the team got together, its mem-
bers shared their creative suggestions and evaluated
each other's ideas. In some cases, they jointly elabo-
rated an idea, with both team members building the
copy as well as the art. Some new ideas also appeared
in this second phase as the team members made rough
sketches and wrote down tentative copy. At the end of
this phase, the teams generally short-listed some ideas
for further consideration.
Again, in Phase 3, there was no strict demarcation
of the work. Both art directors and copywriters ad-
dressed the visual art as well as the verbal copy by
generating headlines, tag lines, or body text. Few
new ideas appeared in Phase 3, and only one team
selected an ad in this phase. Finally, when the teams
again worked together in Phase 4, they briefly dis-
cussed all of the ideas that they had considered indi-
vidually but quickly moved toward selecting one idea
and working exclusively on it.
 6 The Journal ofAdvertising
The final ad selected was generated in the first
phase by three teams, in the third phase by one team,
and in the fourth phase by one team. Four of the ads
finally chosen were initially generated by the copy-
writer and one by the art director. Both team mem-
bers constantly discussed the visuals as well as the
different copy elements and the layout for the final
ad. Sometimes elements from ideas that had initially
started out differently were adapted and used in the
body copy of the final ad.
Another general observation is that creatives seem
to share mental models. The teams all picked out
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certain elements from the creative brief, and certain
themes recurred among all of them. For example, all
teams discussed a "retro" approach to the ad, an idea
apparently spurred by the nature ofthe ice cream soda
product category. Furthermore, all teams discussed the
copy line, "Just add water." Finally, all teams dis-
cussed the idea of a soda fountain in the freezer or an
ice cream parlor in the kitchen. The main challenge the
teams faced seemed to lie in pinning down the unique
product benefit (speed? convenience? fun?) and finding
the most effective way of communicating this benefit to
a broad target audience.
Insofar as the teams were somewhat constrained
by the imposed study procedures, the findings reflect
a circumscribed description of the creative process.
The retrospective interviews revealed that, because
many participants customarily worked together all of
the time, some felt limited by having to work both
individually and in teams. Furthermore, the time lim-
its, lack of product availability, lack of interaction
with the client for clarifications, inability to use a
computer, and nature of the product were all viewed
as possible detriments to creativity. Also, some felt
that the creative process defies description because
creation occurs when "the mind wanders" or when
"introspection" takes place. Although we acknowledge
these limitations, we believe that, in the absence of
mind-reading machines, the think-aloud approach
enables us to explore some key dimensions of the
creative process. Toward this end, we now proceed to
analyze the think-aloud data in greater detail.
Analytic Approach
The researchers analyzed the think-aloud protocols
by means of an interpretive method derived from
hermeneutics and modified to include sequential it-
erations among multiple investigators (Hirschman
and Holbrook 1992; Holbrook and Stern 1997;
O'Shaughnessy and Holbrook 1988; Stern and
Holbrook 1994; Thompson, Pollio, and Locander 1994).
This methodology was dictated by the nature of our
research question and responds to the call for rigor-
ous postmodern organizational research (Kilduff and
Mehra 1997) and for hermeneutic investigations of
interpersonal psychology (Packer 1985, 1989). Spe-
cifically, the three principal researchers pursued a
hermeneutic approach to interpretation based on se-
quential refinement of the analysis through multi-
authorial dialogue. Each researcher began by pro-
ducing an independent reading of the team protocols.
All three then engaged in a group session to negotiate
a tentative collective reading. Here, we converged on
an overall interpretation of the texts consistent with
a framework grounded in mythic content (described
in the following section). At this stage, it might have
been possible to pursue some other analytic scheme,
such as a focus on the use of metaphors (Black 1968;
Lakoff 1987; Lakoff and Johnson 1980; Thompson,
Pollio, and Locander 1994; Zaltman and Coulter 1995),
a decoding of implicit allegorical content (Stern 1988),
structural semiotic comparisons (Holbrook and
Hirschman 1993), gender stereotypes (Holbrook and
Stern 1997; Stern and Holbrook 1994), or a psycho-
analytic interpretation (Holbrook 1988). However, it
appeared to us that, as a starting point for subse-
quent refinement, the dominant themes contained in
the team protocols corresponded to categories sug-
gested by the four mythic orientations of Frye's (1957)
taxonomic scheme and later used in advertising re-
search (Stern 1995). Thus, we adopted Frye's taxonomy
as the basis for a tentative preliminary overall inter-
pretation subject to further adjustment through the
back-and-forth process characteristic of the hermeneu-
tic circle wherein an initial overall reading is ''tested''
against detailed evidence from a close reading of the
text, potentially falsified, revised accordingly, further
subjected to detailed scrutiny, further refined, and so
on, in an unfolding sequence of self-corrective elabora-
tion (Gadamer 1975; Hirschman and Holbrook 1992;
Holbrook and Hirschman 1993; Holbrook and
O'Shaughnessy 1988; Ricoeur 1976, 1981).
More specifically, after initial independent read-
ings and joint consultation, we adopted a working
hypothesis based on the myth scheme and used this
tentative framework (described in the next section) to
classify the creative outputs of the five teams by ex-
amining each protocol and advertisement for evidence
of mythic content and structure. At this stage, even
though any given team's protocol contained traces of
more than one mythic category, four teams' outputs
seemed to fall primarily into one or another of the
four different mythic categories, whereas the fifth
team's output revealed considerable boundary cross-
 Summer 2001 7

Table 1
Working Definitions of Themes Pertinent to the Four Mythic Orientations of Northrop Frye (1957)

Comedy Romance Tragedy Irony

Heroic Happy Adventure Struggle Failure
Action pursuit or with to
of new quest serious understand
order issues reality
Source Seeking Seeking Heroic Appearance
of pleasure, peace, suffering versus
Tension fun, or beauty, or and/or reality;
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comfort something doom by surface

special fatal fiaw versus
substance
Outcome Festive Retro- Death, Epiphany,
celebration spection to danger, or under-
idealized avoidance standing,
past or of harm revelation,
nostalgia insight,
unmasking,
demystification

ing. This phase of the analysis progressed sequen-
tially from one to another researcher, with each modi-
fying the others' interpretations. After subsequent
iterations, our interpretations converged on an over-
all reading, namely, the consensus reported in what
follows. Notice that, though we here report the over-
all consensus, this interpretation emerged from a
highly elaborated process of testing, revising, retest-
ing, and further refining sequential close readings of
detailed evidence from the protocol texts.
Frye's Taxonomy ofMyths
As indicated, our collective, sequentially negotiated
reading of the team protocols focuses primarily on
the mythic themes of the relevant textual material.
Consensus led to the choice of Frye's (1957) Anatomy
ofCriticism as an elegant and parsimonious taxonomy
that divides all literature into four pregeneric catego-
ries: comedy, tragedy, romance, and irony/satire. Our
adaptation of this scheme appears in Table 1.
Frye (1957) argues that the basic plot patterns de-
scribe different types of causality and chronological
progression and that the "how" of narration sustains
different values. Briefly, "comedy ends in joy, and its
correspondent value is happiness; tragedy ends in
sadness, and its value is wisdom; romance ends in
nostalgia, and its value is ideal peace or beauty; and
irony ends in surprise, and its value is excitement"
(Stern 1995, p. 167). The theory's explanatory power
lies in the correspondence of each mythos to an as-
pect of the central cultural monomyth based on the
natural cycle of birth (comedy)-growth (romance)-
death (tragedy)-rebirth (irony). This cycle charac-
terizes nature's seasons, the human life cycle, the
product diffusion process, and the narrative struc-
tures found in cultural productions from prehistoric
myths to postmodern advertising.
Although several researchers have previously iden-
tified mythic patterns in consumer and advertising
texts (Levy 1981; Pollay 1986; Randazzo 1993; Stern
1995), none has focused on the link between myth
and the creative process in advertising. For example,
Levy (1981, p. 53) points out that "mundane, secular,
little myths" served the function of organizing "con-
sumer reality in accordance with underlying logical
structures" and studies consumer-generated "little
myths" in terms of binary oppositions. He suggests
that others might "want to explore the nature and
processes of creativity as they go on in creators or as
they are manifest in their productions" (Levy 1981, p.
50). But Levy (1981, p. 55) himself focuses instead on
the underlying mythic structure of consumer stories
about "food preparation, service, manners, and con-
sumption ... all used in symbolic ways," following Levi-
Strauss' (1981, p. 495) theory of cooking as a "lan-
guage through which ... society unconsciously reveals
its structure." Later, Stern (1995) extended Levy's
 8 The Journal of Advertising
analysis of food-related myths by applying Frye's tax-
onomy to organize the structural binaries in advertise-
ments and consumer stories into four major types. Her
data set consisted of Thanksgiving stories first ana-
lyzed by Wallendorf and Arnould (1991) and food ad-
vertisements in the coupon section of a Sunday news-
paper. However, Stern (1995) did not consider the role
of mythic formulae in the creation of advertisements.
The findings reported in the next section extend
Stern's (1995) Frye-based analysis to the creative pro-
cess. Just as mythic elements echo "the values,
lifestyles, and sensibilities of the target consumer
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and/or culture" (Randazzo 1993, p. 33), so too do they
represent the cultural background of advertising
creatives. This shared culture is assumed to be espe-
cially evident in reference to the symbolic meaning of
food products, given the central importance offood in a
society's story stock. The body of narrative forms that
members of a culture inherit shapes the culture's story
stock through creative transmutation, as well as trans-
mission, and provides structure for advertising creatives
as well as poets or playwrights. Thus, because our
team protocols suggest and support the hypothesis that
ad themes embody mythic patterns, our findings focus
on the way that copywriters' creative efforts result in
the reflection of these themes in a finished advertise-
ment. In so doing, we frame our exploratory results
regarding the role of myth in advertising to include the
outcome (i.e., the ad), as well as the process (i.e., the
team task). That is, we explore the relationship between
the advertising creation process and the effectiveness of
the creative product to determine not simply what myths
are used, but also how they come to be used.
Results
Overview
Each offour teams (but not the fifth) exhibits evi-
dence of an orientation toward one of the mythic
types--comedy, romance, tragedy, or irony. However,
the utility of this orientation as a formal creative
heuristic-a set of pegs on which creatives can hang
content elements-appears to be diminished by its
tendency to distort the creative process such that the
final product is suboptimal. Put differently, each of
four teams selects a problem-solving approach that
echoes the members' personal interaction style but
that contributes to a solution flawed by internal in-
consistencies between elements of the ad concept and
its execution or between different elements in the ad.
That is, the tendency of each team to embrace one or
another mythic orientation gives rise to internal contra-
dictions that dilute the effectiveness of the advertisement
produced, and the formulaic myth-centered process en-
genders less effective creation. In this respect, the fifth
team, which does not narrow its horizons to the execu-
tion of one primary mythic theme, appears to be the
proverbial "exception that proves the rule."
Let us now turn to the team interactions and ana-
lyze each phase to support the general interpreta-
tion. Note that, in reporting these findings, we focus
primarily on the detailed evidence from the team
protocols to substantiate our overall reading. Recall
that all such aspects of the global reading emerged
from a hermeneutically circular process. What we
report here is not the sequential steps in this evolving
analysis (any more than we would report each iteration
in an eigen decomposition and varimax rotation lead-
ing toward the selection of a final set of principal com-
ponents), but rather the emerging consensus that rep-
resents our overall interpretation. (Note also that, in
these analyses, the names but not the genders of the
participants are disguised in all cases.)
Comedy Orientation-Linda (Copy)
and Martin (Art)
The orientation toward comedy-the mythic type
that embodies a general atmosphere of fun, happy
pursuit ofa new order, attainment of pleasure, and a
celebratory ending (Table I)-is heralded by a preoc-
cupation with water, the natural element associated
with birth and renewal.
Phase l-i-Linda. From the outset, Linda selects the
theme "fun times off," which is found in the strategic
brief. Having identified a comedy orientation as the
''what'' of the advertising strategy, she considers the
target market to answer the question, "fun for whom?"
Still following the brief, she decides that "This is fun
for your kids ... Fun for kids." She associates water,
fun, and summer as the basis of the product appeal:
"Summertime fun sort of requires water."
Phase l-i-Martin. Working independently, Martin
displays the same comedic orientation and adopts the
same premise as that of his partner: "So it should
basically be fun .... Let's see, should we put something
more fun .... So, add water." His "reason why" (causal
motivation for purchase) grounds the product use in
comedic motivation-the search for pleasure and en-
joyment: "Now, your kids can enjoy the ice cream ...
without having to wait for a truck."
Phase ~Linda and Martin. When Linda and Mar-
tin join forces, they quickly gravitate toward a fun-
related theme, triggered by Linda's question, "Should
I start with the funnest thing [sic] or just some of the
 Summer 2001
other stuff?" Linda states the case for Icy Soda as
"something canned that is [sic] a potential for a lot of
fun" and concludes:
How it is that we define that fun ... will influence
and compel purchase.... It's like fun .... It's fun ....
So it's like, without water, it's nothing. With wa-
ter, it's paradise ... like fun in a can. All you need is
water ... like pools. Pools are fun, but they're no
fun if they don't have water.
As Linda begins to create a verbal simile, the appro-
priate visual image eludes her: "It's like, something
without water. Is there a way of demonstrating that?"
Martin suggests a picture of a surfer without water.
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Although related to fun only in a contrary way, this
suggestion eventually dominates the team's creative
direction.
Phase 3-Linda. Working alone again, Linda con-
tinues to play with the verbal simile and visual image
that she and Martin have developed. She repeats the
refrain, "an Icy Soda without water is like summer
without water," until she produces a more satisfac-
tory verbal form for her analogy: "Adding water to an
Icy Soda ... is like adding water to summer." She
finds this "a nice proposition for people" and con-
cludes, "I think we got it."
Phase 3-Martin. Meanwhile, Martin elaborates
thoughts about the visual representation: "In other
words, when water isn't added, you know, there's no
fun. Surfer in the desert ... just adding water, for the
fun of it ... just drawing a little surfer, he's in the
desert." Like Linda, Martin focuses on the crucial
analogy but, befitting his art orientation, works it out
in pictorial terms.
Phase 4-Linda and Martin. When Linda and Mar-
tin get together for their final joint session, they lose
the logic of their key simile. Linda begins by stating
the analogy quite correctly: "And the point is, adding
water to an Icy Soda is like adding water to summer
[because] without the water, there's no fun." But
Martin objects that "fun" is not stated overtly. So
Linda tries out various word combinations until she
finds one that includes the word "fun": "Icy Soda
without water is like summer without, is like sum-
mer without water, but that's not getting to the point.
It's like, adding water to an Icy Soda is like adding
water to summer.... It's like adding water to fun."
The problem with this revision is that the inclusion
of the word "fun" subverts the logic of the guiding
analogy. When "adding water to fun" is substituted
for "adding water to summer," a non sequitur results.
Linda confounds the two, saying "Add[ing] water to
the new Icy Soda is like adding water ... to either fun
or summer." Martin asks, "Should it be summer or
9
should it be fun?" Linda elaborates on the parallel,
saying ''this thing needs water, so does this.... This
needs water to be fun, this needs water to be fun."
Clearly, guided by their dominant comedic myth, the
two are struggling over the problem of how to pre-
serve the logic of their analogy while simultaneously
adding the word "fun" to their advertising copy.
When the two discuss the "surfboard ... on a sand
dune" or "surfer in the desert" image, Linda's empha-
sis on the logic of the analogy is at odds with Martin's
insistence on illustrating the fun. They compromise
when Martin offers to draw the surfboard in a way
that "might be kind of funny" and Linda agrees. Still
struggling, Linda now condemns her former slogan
on the grounds that it "doesn't make sense": "I'm
literal, but there's something clearer by saying, add-
ing the water to this is like adding water to that....
You know? Meaning you're going to get the same
fun." Linda recognizes that when using the stranded
surfer image, the fun part remains implicit and invis-
ible. To make the notion offun more explicit, they try
out different slogans such as "just add fun," "all you
need is water and fun," "we add the fun, you add the
water," and "adding water to this is like adding fun to
summer." Under time pressure, Linda returns to "it's
like adding water to fun," though she still has doubts
about its logic. Because Martin has already drawn the
surfer, Linda gives in and expresses guarded satisfac-
tion: ''It's kind of funny to equate the two situations to
needing water.... It's like adding water to fun."
Phase 5-Linda. After the ad is finished, Linda
voices the team's commitment to the theme of fun,
even though she recognizes that this focus has led to
the creation of a slogan in which illogic prevails:
The advertising that we ended up with ... deals
with adding things together to make something
better ... meaning the sand dune, the guy surfing
obviously needs water before it's really fun. ... I
mean, he's trying to have fun, but he needs the
water. And this thing is something that is fun, it's
potentially a great deal of fun, but you have that
little key ingredient to make it come to life ... [but]
I think we've probably missed the mark.
Phase 5-Martin. Martin's visual conception drives
the final ad to the point where he does not recognize
its disruption of Linda's originally clear simile: ''But,
you know, new Icy Soda, I forget exactly what we
settled on, but ... new Icy Soda, you know, it's like
adding water, you know, it's like adding water to
summer, adding water to fun or something like that."
Martin has fulfilled his task by providing a pictorial
image for the ad, despite the logical inconsistency
introduced in the bargain.
 10 The Journal ofAdvertising

Figure 1
Linda and Martin's Comedy Orientation Ad

~()-
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r ,
Downloaded by [Texas A & M International University] at 13:28 05 October 2014

New Icy Soda. It's like adding water to fun.

Introducing the world's first instant ice-cream soda. All you need is a
glass, an Icy Soda and a little tap water. And watch your kids react to
the rich, frothy fizz it makes in a minute. In two all-natural flavors:
chocolate and strawberry.

Tag: (Product Shot: Icy Soda.) We add the fun. You add the water.
Note: The copy appears where indicated in the ad.

Linda and Martin-i-Summary Interpretation. In the
present context, Linda and Martin demonstrate a
propensity to force the ideas of fun and water to-
gether in their advertisement, even though this insis-
tence results in an illogical non sequitur: "New Icy
Soda '" it's like adding water to fun!" Figure 1 pre-
sents the ad layout developed by Linda and Martin.
The copy reflects a metaphoric connection based on
the simile "adding water to Icy Soda is like adding
water to summer (because both produce fun)." How-
ever, the statement of the analogy is confused be-
cause the actual claim reads "adding water to fun"
rather than "adding water to summer." As it stands,
this claim does not appear to make much sense, for
there is no way to interpret how water can be added
to fun. Although the team considers a surfer stranded
on the desert as funny, this image can be defended as
"funny" only with some sense of strain. In short,
 Summer 2001
though the comic spirit often emphasizes fun at the
expense of rationality, Martin and Linda's ad ap-
pears questionably logical.
Romance Orientation-Hank (Copy)
and Victor (Art)
The orientation toward romanee----themythic type that
embodies a quest for peace, beauty, or special status and
that often moves toward retrospection or idealization of
the past (Table I)-is centered in nostalgia.
Phase I-s-Hank. From the outset, Hank selects the
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romantic theme of nostalgia: "So you've got ... an ice
cream soda which is an old-fashioned type of des-
sert." He positions the quest for something "special"
as a romantic yearning to relive the past: "Is it just
something different? Something unique, something
new, something different? Is it a retro thing? Maybe
ice cream sodas are old fashioned."
Phase i-Victor. Here again, Victor the art director
echoes the copywriter: "Instantly I'm thinking about
my childhood." Victor also seizes on the benefit of
convenience, a theme that Hank had mentioned, re-
peating "quick" as his key word: Icy Soda is "quick,
convenient.... Quick, convenient ... quick and convenient ...
quick, convenient.... Well, it's quick." On the basis of this,
Victor anticipates a benefit-centered execution: "My mes-
sage is going to talk about convenience."
Phase 2-Hank and Victor. When Hank (oriented
toward nostalgia and "old-fashioned" values) and Vic-
tor (oriented toward childhood and "quick convenience"
as a key benefit) convene, they gravitate toward a
nostalgic fantasy that is more visually accessible than
the concept of convenience. Victor explores the visual
dimension of the nostalgia theme:
That ice cream soda you had when you were a little
kid, you know, your Dad bought it for you or some-
body bought you an ice cream soda and it's a hot
Saturday afternoon and ... you know, it was some-
thing as simple as an ice cream soda was special
when you were a kid .... Say-I mean I like-that
retro comment you said before.... I mean, say you
draw, you get a sepia photo, right? And you get a
little kid, like the Norman Rockwell thing.... And
you talk about ''remember when you had the time to
share an ice cream soda with your Dad?" I don't
know if that's right but.... Remember what an ice
cream soda tasted like? Or do you remember - alsoa
big thing about these soda fountain, ice cream sodas as
a kid, was watching them make it, you know. I mean
there was something really - I mean watching them
make that thing, put the ice cream in.
Thus, when the two turn to personal memories, they
begin constructing the romantic framework by link-
11
ing nostalgia with the quest for something special.
"Remember when" references time past, when ice
cream sodas were special because adults were the
only ones who could make them (soda jerks) and pur-
chase them (to give children a treat). Hank describes
the remembered quest for uniqueness as "a feeling of
nostalgia" and expresses his faith that "most people
think ofthat as a positive."
Phase 3-Hank. Hank elaborates the romantic
theme of nostalgic convenience by role-playing a child
and a parent: 'When you were a kid you always
dreamed about having a freezer full of ice cream so-
das. Now you can.... An old-fashioned ice cream soda
... all you do is add water.... To you it's convenience, to
your kid, it's an ice cream soda." However, when he
vicariously shifts from the adult's point of view to the
child's (last sentence), he overlooks the most impor-
tant thing about a nostalgia appeal to the target mar-
ket; children are not nostalgic, for they have too little
experience of the past to idealize it. Hence, nostalgia
will work in this context only as an appeal in a cam-
paign aimed at adults.
Phase 3-Victor. Whereas Hank thinks about indi-
vidual emblems of nostalgia, such as nickel sodas,
Buffalo head nickels, and Brooklyn in the 1930s, Vic-
tor begins by thinking about the visual gestalt: "Prob-
ably a duotone.... Or maybe an old photo, yeah, maybe
... maybe we have a really nice quaint little nostalgic
photo." Victor repeats the word "remember" eighteen
times in rapid succession, using this refrain to trigger
vicarious identification with the childhood experience
of ice cream sodas. He describes the reconstructed
memory as follows:
That perspective of being a kid and seeing an ice
cream soda on the counter, and you're down here,
and it's up ... there.... You get the old photo, it's on
the counter, it could really be pretty. And the type
says ice cream soda just the way you remember it.
Yeah, that connects. Because that's just the way I
remember looking up at it. Ice cream soda just the
way you remember it.
Victor approves his nostalgic vision, connecting it to
personal memory: ''There's something nice about that.
It brings me back. It brings me back to when ice
cream soda was something special, and it talks about
the benefit of the product, which is convenience and
speed." However, like Hank, Victor neglects a major
flaw in his temporal logic. Neither today's child nor
his or her parent can feel nostalgic about Brooklyn in
the 1930s, for anyone who was a child in 1930 would
be an octogenarian by now. For this particular time
period to make sense, the target market would have
to be grandparents, clearly not part of the strategic
 12 The Journal of Advertising

Figure 2
Hank and Victor's Romance Orientation Ad
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brief. Thus, when Victor draws on childhood memo-
ries to elicit the feelings of a child looking up at a soda
fountain, he privileges the expression of emotion in
visual terms at the expense of the logical underpin-
nings of the generational relationship.
Phase 4-Hank and Victor. When Hank rejoins Vic-
tor, the two revisit the 1930s setting, and Victor frames
the slogan: "Ice cream soda, just the way you remem-
ber it. You still don't have to make it." While the two
finalize their design, this slogan is reiterated twelve
more times. Meanwhile, Hank comes up with a tag
line that references convenience: "Easy to make, fun
to drink." The two repeat the term "old-fashioned" ten
times as they try to work it into the copy, and Victor
has the final say on the visual: ''I'm the art director."
Although various interpretations are possible, this gra-
tuitous comment seems to imply that Victor wishes to
distance himself from the verbal copy and to accept
responsibility only for the pictorial artwork.
Phase 5 - Victor. In his concluding protocol, Victor
shows little concern about the ad's illogic. He does not
question the appropriateness of a 1930s nostalgia
theme for a market of children and young parents,
nor does he worry about how something can be easy
to make ifyou (still) don't have to make it. Instead, he
turns inward to the creative domain, finding satisfac-
tion in a visual design that uses a child's perspective
to convey admiration of a soda-fountain treat.
Hank and Victor-Summary Interpretation. Hank
and Victor produce a nostalgia-based ad (Figure 2)
that emphasizes "the way you remember ... an old-
fashioned ice cream soda." Here, the invocation of
the good old days when someone else made ice cream
sodas for consumers leads to the slogan, "you still
don't have to make it." However, this slogan is con-
joined with the claim that Icy Soda is "easy to make,"
clearly an internal inconsistency. Hence, in the situa-
tion represented by the present task assignment, the
 Summer 2001
vivification of a guiding myth again comes at the
expense of logic. This time, the promise of "an old-
fashioned ice cream soda without the hassle of mak-
ing it yourself' contradicts the claim that it is "easy to
make." In short, in the present context, adherence to
a mythic form again leads a team to create an adver-
tisement that, in essence, argues with itself.
Tragedy Orientation-Edgar (Copy)
and Karl (Art)
The orientation toward tragedy-the mythic type that
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embodies a struggle with serious issues and heroic suf-
fering, often ending in death or disaster (Table H-is
transmuted in advertising to tragedy avoidance. That
is, the product benefit is that it prevents tragedy by
averting death or other undesirable consequences.
Phase 1-Edgar. From the outset, Edgar expresses
discomfort with the demands of the task, insisting
that he finds it difficult to speak aloud at the same
time as he works through his creative ideas. He is a
bundle of complaints, whether conveyed indirectly by
long pauses, frustrated sighs, and loud noises or di-
rectly by comments such as "I hate this part of the
process [because] there's pressure to perform." Edgar
appears stalled by self-consciousness. Rather than
just getting on with the task, he procrastinates by
dwelling on why he cannot work this way.
Phase 1-Karl. By contrast, Karl is a good deal
more talkative and quickly reveals the tragic side of
his own mythic orientation by identifying a theme
centered on the safety of never having to leave home:
"So basically, we're saying we don't have to go to the
ice cream stand to get this soda." Thereafter, he
repeats the phrase "available at home" four more
times and concludes, "So, we could be saying that you
don't have to drive out." Driving to the store, espe-
cially in the middle of the night, is seen as potentially
dangerous; the relative safety of staying at home ap-
pears appealing by comparison. However, Karl soon
runs out of ideas, a situation familiar to those who
never leave home physically or mentally, and con-
fesses, "Okay. I don't have any thoughts at the present
moment." Thus, working independently, both Edgar
and Karl appear at a loss for creative ideas, espe-
cially when they are asked to think aloud.
Phase 2-Edgar and Karl. When the two join forces,
Edgar first asks Karl if he is hungry, perhaps an
avoidance tactic, and then begins reading Karl's notes.
He finds something about "the flavor of ice cream ...
available at home." Karl elaborates on this rendition
of the tragic theme: "I was just saying that ... you
don't have to go out.... You don't have to take the
13
family out to an ice cream shop." Edgar responds,
''Yeah, save the family wheels," but Karl's object of
concern is more for the family itself than for the car.
Here, without appearing to know why, both Edgar
and Karl sound unhappy about the direction their
creative efforts are taking. Edgar says, "It sucks."
Karl adds, ''Well, we ... can't do anything good." Then,
for several pages of protocol text, their thoughts go
around in circles, until Karl returns to the tragedy
avoidance theme of enjoying an ice cream soda in
safety, "without leaving the house." In this, he gives
the benefit of convenience a tragic twist by saying,
"It's like I'm looking at this thing and there's no ben-
efit to it except you don't have to go out.... You don't
have to go out to the malt shop."
Phase 3-Edgar. Left alone, Edgar mulls over the
theme of danger avoidance, using an imaginary con-
versation with his mother as a means of getting
started: "So let's see .... If I was talking to my mom
what would I tell her if I was going to-what would I
say to her about this? Ahm, you know, I'd say, milk
shake without ever having to leave home. You know,
safe." However, he does not get very far with his
ideas, first belittling his own efforts as "stupid," then
making sounds, sighing, and banging on the table to
signal frustration.
Phase 3-Karl. Meanwhile, Karl pursues the tragic
theme by thinking up an association between the
product and the customer value to which it appeals.
His argument is that the value offamily togetherness
is reinforced when ice cream sodas are available at
home: "Keeping the family together.... Ice cream soda
is now available at home.... You never have to leave
the house.... Just stay home."
Phase 4-Edgar and Karl. Short oftime, Edgar and
Karl now find themselves in a procrastination-
precipitated endgame, having to do most oftheir still-
unfinished creative work at an uncomfortably
accelerated pace. After some false starts, Edgar
suggests an appeal based on the premise that the
product is "Good for pregnant women. And their
husbands.... Serve with pickles." The oddness of these
product appeal associations may reflect an
unconscious parallel between suffering in childbirth
and in the creative process, in which the discomforts
of pregnant women are equated with the labor of
producing an ad. So Edgar and Karl ignore other
ideas and go with the pregnancy execution, devising
the slogan, ''You don't have to leave home to get this
great taste." Edgar combines this idea with the claim
that "Husbands love it," saying, "Dude, that's the
line. New Icy Soda. Husbands love it." And Karljumps
on the bandwagon: "That's kind of funny.... Husbands
 14 The Journal ofAdvertising

Figure 3
Edgar and Karl's Tragedy Orientation Ad
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love it." Then the two realize that they need some body
copy and ask themselves what copy will fit with the
execution.
At this point, a telling bit offorgetfulness-a tip-of-
the-tongue hesitation-occurs, when they scroll
through synonyms like "urge," "fetish," and "desire"
before hitting on the term they are seeking, "crav-
ing." This inability of the two to think of a common
household word is noteworthy. Perhaps the reason is
that the word and the state to which it refers, that is,
"craving," indicate a desire that is out of control and
potentially dangerous. Danger avoidance as the domi-
nant motif in Edgar's and Karl's thinking on this
particular occasion signals a propensity toward trag-
edy, echoed by the frustrating creative struggle they
experience when seeking a hook for their ad in the
present context. The idea of a craving, a loss of control
in the face ofan overwhelming desire, may be repressed
because it reminds them of their own discomfort with
the creative assignment and their difficulty in satisfy-
ing its demands. Furthermore, "craving" suggests "cra-
ven" ("cowardly"),a potential reminder to the members
of this team that---despite their bravado (calling each
other ''Dude,'' crackingjokes about going out for chips,
making fun of the researchers by implying that they
are fools trying to write a dissertation about the cre-
ative process}-they might nonetheless feel somewhat
insecure or even less than fully adequate to the task
 Summer 2001
at hand. Ultimately, they produce a far-fetched print
ad that grabs at (soda) straws to convey a feeling of
security.
Phase 5--Edgar. Edgar describes his own creative
process as one in which "I kind of flounder around"
and elaborates on his feelings of inadequacy:
Yeah, right, my typical thinking in, whenever I'm
confronted with a project.... I'll try and like do it
logically, you know, and rationally and get very
frustrated by that and feel, you know what I mean,
start to get feelings of apprehension and anxiety....
Lot of times I'll just kind of like just blank out....
Most of the initial ideas are really pretty stupid
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and then I feel kind of-you feel kind of crummy
about that but it's inevitable.
His phrasing-the "inevitable" agony of "confront-
ing" a creative task with its feelings of "frustration,"
"apprehension," and "anxiety"-implies a temperamen-
tal affinity with the tragedy avoidance theme in his ad.
Phase 5--Karl. Karl takes a more positive view of
creativity, seeing the process as one in which he gen-
erates a lot of ''bad ideas" so that he is able to "shed
those and move on to better ideas which come out
more often at the end of a process than at the begin-
ning." His "better idea" for this ad consists of avoid-
ing danger and seeking security by staying at home:
We have this woman who is pregnant, and, obvi-
ously, pregnant women have certain desires for ice
cream, pickles, whatever.... And the twist is, the
wife [likes] it, but the husband [loves] it because he
doesn't have to leave the house to go out and get this
thing.... You don't have to leave the house to get this
thing because you have it at home.... So the key
benefit was you don't have to leave the house....
Now you can stay at home with dad and make this
thing ...not going out.... The main thing, from this
ad, we think the takeaway should be you don't have
to leave the house. It's right there for you.
Edgar and Karl-Summary Interpretation. Edgar
and Karl produce a tragedy avoidance ad (Figure 3)
in which the motivation for product purchase hinges
on the quest for safety. The decision that the benefit
is avoidance of danger leads to an essentially nonsen-
sical execution. The premise is that husbands love
Icy Soda because it permits them to cater to the food
cravings of their pregnant wives in the middle of the
night without leaving the safety of home. This suffer-
ing-related execution as the thematic purchase out-
come of a dessert treat appears to sublimate concerns
over the anguish of a difficult birth, with this team
betraying its own creative labor pains in every phase
of its work.
15
Irony Orientation-Sam (Copy) and
Tim (Art)
The orientation toward irony-the mythic type that
takes ignorance as its enemy, bemoans the failure to
understand, emphasizes the discrepancy between sur-
face (appearance) and substance (reality), and works
toward an epiphany or insight based on the unmask-
ing of true revelations (Table I)-is centered in de-
tachment. Authorial distance sustains the outcomes
of satire (making fun of the product/consumer/ad) or
self-parody (making fun of the self).
Phase l-Sam. From the beginning, Sam adopts an
irreverent and even negative attitude toward Icy Soda:
"It sounds incredibly unappetizing.... Can't think of a
worse idea for a product.... I also can't imagine who
would possibly want to buy this." Just as some teams
used key words such as "fun" or "remember" and
another used key phrases such as "don't leave home,"
Sam's key signifier is the question mark. In this spirit,
Sam produces a list of interrogatives: ''What is the
cylinder made of? How does it come out of the cylin-
der? Does it freeze?" He voices "doubt" that anyone
would buy the product, sees it as something from
which "there's not a lot of benefit," and even deems it
"disgusting." Sam is a skeptic, expressing doubts
about the viability ofIcy Soda in the marketplace. He
finds the client's brief "confusing," keeps "wondering
what they mean," and concludes, "I don't know.... I
don't know.... I have no idea."
Phase l-Tim. Tim's remarkably similar refrain
echoes Sam's skepticism:
I don't know I don't know.... I wouldn't know.... I
don't know I don't know a lot of things about
this.... I guess ... I guess I would also need to know....
This is the kind of stuff I would have asked the
account people to answer for me and be a lot more
clear, because like most strategies and briefs,
they're way too vague and I have to guess on most
of the stuff.
Clearly, Sam and Tim are on the same wavelength, in
that both are concerned about not having enough
information and are suspicious about hidden at-
tributes of Icy Soda that make it unappealing. Their
job, as they see it, is to unmask the hidden reality:
I would also like to see what the stuff tasted like,
that would make a difference to me. How much does
it really taste like an ice cream soda? It sounds like
it, but who knows? Who knows what the quality of
their ice cream is?... And without seeing the packag-
ing, I'm having a hard time envisioning this descrip-
tion of a miniature cylindrical ice cream container.
 16
Tim is also concerned about "price, another ques-
tion that's not answered." Furthermore, he questions
the claim of convenience because "1 don't think it's a
convenience having it at home." Finally, he points
out the limited choice of flavors (chocolate and straw-
berry), "which really doesn't make for any kind of
exciting, compelling product."
Phase 2-Sam and Tim. Their irreverent detach-
ment and quizzical skepticism orient this team to-
ward irony. Whereas the other creative teams ac-
cepted the reality of the product and simply took its
existence as a given, Tim does not: "The description
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is very incomplete.... 1 feel like there's a lot of other
things that 1 would need to know about this. I mean,
obviously it's fictitious." Suspicions aroused, Sam
and Tim conclude that purchase ofthe fictitious prod-
uct provides no clear advantage over assembling the
ingredients separately-ice cream, milk, seltzer,
syrup-and mixing the drink. Tim asks, 'Where is
the main benefit in this?" The two agree that they
are working with "a product that's destined to fail"
because it is based on "a bad concept."
The team engages in postmodern reflexivity by sug-
gesting that perhaps they ought not aim "to be ...
interesting or intelligent about it at all." Tim is
tempted to be "wacky," in part because, in his view,
"nobody cares." This approach reflects the ironist's
unwillingness to misrepresent the offering by violat-
ingthe truth or subverting reality. Sam says, "1think
we sort of have to ... pretend that we actually would
want to buy this." To which Tim adds, "True enough,
but I don't want to lie." Ultimately, Sam concludes,
"Oh, it doesn't matter, it's not a real product," which
reinforces the notion of a disparity between their atti-
tudes toward "make-believe" versus the "real thing."
Although Sam and Tim toy with some of the same
ideas as the other teams (Norman Rockwell, 1950s
nostalgia, homeyness), they discard a straight (that
is, nonironic) approach to the ad. Unlike the romantic
team, they realize that "nostalgia" is "not for kids"
and turn their attention to visuals more potentially
appealing to a target market of children. Admitting
that he is "still confused ... a little confused," Sam
suggests, "How about a cow that's like being shaken
up, you know, like carbonated." Tim adds, "Or maybe
it's like a cow who looks like he's blowing bubbles,
like a fish."
Phase 3-Sam. In Phase 3, Sam is blocked by his
lack of understanding of the product reality. He ex-
plores the magic idea of "something amazing' about
to happen to an ordinary "glass of water" but con-
cludes, "I don't know, I think the basic problem is I
just don't understand-I sort of have a hard time
The Journal ofAdvertising
visualizing how this product even really works.... It
may look like an ordinary glass of water, [but] actu-
ally it's about to become an ice cream soda.... What
the heck is it?" So, preoccupied with the problem of
appearance versus reality and with the difficulty of
dealing with something he does not understand, Sam
produces nothing.
Phase 3-Tim. Meanwhile, Tim elaborates on the
parodic image of a cow blowing bubbles to indicate
carbonation: ''My visual was a cow that looks almost
like it's under water, but ... he's [sic] got bubbles
rising up from his [sic] mouth the way a fish would."
Tim decides to go with a visual image that will appeal
to children on the basis of its silliness:
Visually, visually, visually, let's see. What do you say
with that? The difference is the bubbles, for the oow.
Thedifference is the bubbles ...the bubbles risingfrom
his mouth [sic]. It would probably first ofall make the
oow look drunk, but that's not my problem.
However, Tim recognizes the difficulty of creating
verbal content to accompany his "stupid" cow visual:
Lines to playoff ofthat.... What to say with that....
You need copyhere. What kind of cowdoes it take
to make Icy Soda? .. What kind of cow would we
use for IcySoda?Or what kind of a cowdoes it take
to make Icy Soda? What kind of cows? How can
you tell? How can you tell an Icy Soda cow from
any other?... How to tell an Icy Soda cowfrom any
other. Youlook for the bubbles.
Tim first generates a visual image and then verbal
copy that makes sense of the visual. It may be a
frivolous sort of sense, but at least it is coherent.
Nonetheless, despite internal coherence, the benefit
to the consumer is not clear. Thus, Tim's work sug-
gests that because he cannot think of anything posi-
tive to say about the brand, he will make fun of it in a
way that he thinks will appeal to a child.
Phase 4-Sam and Tim. On a roll, Tim takes over in
this session, tapping into Sam's previous visual/verbal
ideas. Tim's suggested visual is a "cow with the bubbles
coming up," and his verbal copy is designed to lure the
reader into the ad with a question and answer: ''How
can you tell an Icy Soda cow from any other? You look
for the bubbles." The copy is ironic, for it references the
discrepancy between appearance and reality by point-
ing out that it is necessary to unmask falsehood to
reveal truth hidden below the surface. In other words,
at first glance, all cows look alike. But the moment of
truth occurs when one sees that the Icy Soda cow (un-
like the others) is blowing bubbles. Although this saves
the team from hypocritical praise of a product about
which they are deeply skeptical, it does not give rise to
a convincingly relevant ad.
 Summer 2001
Sam agrees that "the cows are good" because they
"are really aimed at kids." In need ofa headline, Tim
repeats his question "So what does an Icy Soda cow
look like?" But this time Tim answers his own ques-
tion as an ironist seeking to demystify the world:
'Well, actually.... Oh, actually ... actually, they look
about the same as most other cows." The team seizes
this idea as its main copy point: 'What does an Icy
Soda cow look like? Actually, they look about the
same as most other cows, it's what we add to their
milk that makes all the difference." Thus, ultimately,
when they strip away surface appearances to reveal
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the hidden reality underneath, the irony turns out to
be that there is no irony: "Actually, they look about
the same as most other cows." However, undermin-
ing the irony subverts the visual (cows in a field, with
one blowing bubbles), which depends on the premise
that you can recognize the Icy Soda cow because it is
the one blowing carbonated bubbles. In fact, it is
present in the background of the team's visual execu-
tion, which makes no sense when the copy claims
that all of the cows look alike.
Phase 5-Sam. Sam defends his tendency to ask ques-
tions about misleading or unclear items in a client's
brief, claiming that skepticism facilitates clarity:
I would say that from the beginning I had a lot of
problems with the description and the information
I was given. And I kept feeling like-I mean, [I]
think it's sort of misleading in the way this was
designed.... Usually it's when you start to dig deeper
and ask questions ... you see ... what the crucial
elements are in understanding a product and mak-
ing advertising for it.... And I think that really
bugged me the whole time because I think if you
listen back to the tape, I kept having problems -
you know, a lot of things that were said on the sheet
I had questions about, or seemed misleading to me,
or I wanted it to be clarified. And that really, I
think, clouded my ability to tackle the problem.
Here, Sam acknowledges that his ability to create an effec-
tive ad was "clouded" but blames poor product design for
this outcome. Note that Sam responds negatively to a facet
of the task that was constant across teams.
Phase ~Tim. Tim is a bit more satisfied with the
creative output. Realizing that he "wasn't going to
get a great impactful headline, something that's re-
ally intelligent," Tim claims that he has selected an
appeal that he thinks will amuse children:
So at that point I realized it's just got to be some-
thing that was like image, something that a little
kid would be just drawn to or amused by or, you
know, something that a little kid ... would be en-
tertained by, and therefore would want that prod-
uct. Which is why I came up with the cow, because
17
cows are generally stupid-looking creatures and
would be interesting graphically on paper.... The
bubbles sort of added to the humor of it, because it
is something that just makes a stupid animal look
even more stupid and more amusing.
Nonetheless, this ad is as beset by internal contradic-
tions as the others. The pictorial content features a
number of identical cows, with one differentiated by
blowing bubbles, whereas the copy claims that an Icy
Soda cow looks "about the same as most other cows."
Ultimately, Tim undercuts the team's basic premise---
an appeal amusing to children-by admitting that
children are unlikely to be the target audience of a
print ad: "Again, a problem that we discussed in the
other room was that it is going to run in magazines,
and kids don't really read magazines.... So that's a
problem right there with the ad, which if I was a
creative director, I would kill that ad just because of
that." Why the team did not instead focus on creating
a print ad to appeal to young parents who read maga-
zines Tim does not say, but this lapse may stem from
the partners' deeply ironic, even cynical, posture.
Sam and Tim-Summary Interpretation. Sam's and
Tim's ironic detachment from the product is evidenced
by their insistence on poking fun at it. Although the
other teams begin by making fun of the product, Sam
and Tim engage in mockery throughout to the exclu-
sion of anything positive. Thus, in the present con-
text, Sam and Tim's ad (Figure 4) reflects the ironic
impulse carried to extremes. As a result, it too is
confusing and internally self-contradictory.
Multimythical Idea Generation-Anne
(Copy) and Jack (Art)
Unlike the approaches illustrated thus far, what
we would call "multimythical idea generation" draws
inspiration from more than one of the mythic types
(Table 1).
Phase 1 -Anne. Early on, Anne proposes the idea
that "ice cream soda is a kind of a nostalgic thing
because it used to be that people got those at soda
fountains." She tries out various phrases that cap-
ture this focus: "Something about the old-fashioned
ice cream soda ... old-fashioned goodness at home ...
the way it used to be ... or old-fashioned taste." Her
immediate project is to come up with an idea for a
headline: "So maybe something about ... you know,
put a soda fountain in your freezer or something."
Unlike other teams that began by considering global
issues, such as the nature of the product, or personal
issues, such as responses to this mode of advertising
creation or memories related to the product, Anne
 18 The Journal ofAdvertising

Figure 4
Sam and Tim's Irony Orientation Ad

WI-IAT DOES AN ICY SODA

COt,.! LOOK LtkE~
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···.
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\ .'

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~.

What does an Icy Soda cow look like?

Actually, they look about the same as most other cows. It's what we add to
their milk that makes all the difference. Flavored syrup and carbonated
water, frozen together with rich, tasty ice cream. All you do is add water and
you've got a great-tasting, refreshing drink. You can pick one up in your
grocer's freezer section. Icy Soda. The ice cream soda comes home.

Note: The copy appears where indicated in the ad.

 Summer 2001
starts small, tackling the manageable task of writing
a headline. To this end, she tries out a number of
competing ideas including several visited by other
teams and thinks about alternative mythic orienta-
tions, benefits, and values. For example, she men-
tions 'just add water" and "it's fizzy too," echoing
Linda and Martin's comic thoughts; "the taste you
thought only your grandfather would know," echoing
Hank and Victor's nostalgic execution; ''the sundae
has met its match," at least a potential tragedy aver-
sion appeal; and "something exciting for your freezer"
other than lima beans, echoing Tim and Sam's irony.
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The difference is that Anne thinks not in vague gener-
alities, but in specific short phrases, coming up with
alternatives limited to no more than nine words. From
among this palette of available options, her final choice
is "the soda fountain that fits in your freezer."
Phase l-Jack. Jack is also fluent in specific idea
generation, focusing more on the benefit as a slogan
than as a headline. He also recapitulates options con-
sidered by the other teams: "quick and convenient,"
"wholesomeness," "a delicious drink," "a quick enjoy-
able thing," and "have one in the summertime after ...
playing out in the yard or something like that." After
listing these and other alternatives, he selects the
romantic theme of nostalgia to position the product
as something associated with favorite past summers:
Because like most people probably have a summer
in their past that is more fun than the summer
they're currently having.... Icy Soda is the flavor
... of your favorite summer ... like '50s illustra-
tions of kids playing. Maybe, not illustrations, pic-
tures even. Pictures of kids in the '50s.... Okay,
'50s illustrations and pictures ... to place it in his-
tory.... And of course not everyone grew up in the
'50s, so there'd be one for a '60s... could be into the
'40s too .... Okay, I would say '30s and '40s .... Yeah,
maybe this whole thing has a nostalgia feel to it.
Thus, working independently, Jack ends with the ro-
mantic ethos of nostalgia with which Anne had started
(though, from the viewpoint of current young parents,
one might argue that he would have done better to
push his nostalgic orientation in the direction of the
1960s and 1970s as opposed to the 1940s and 1930s).
Phase 2-Anne and Jack. Rarely digressing from
the task at hand, Anne and Jack talk through a num-
ber of ideas generated while each was working alone:
'just add water," "it's so exciting," ''basically an ice
cream float," "turn your tap into a soda fountain,"
"Hp ... the incredibly difficult, rare, hard to find item
you need to make Icy Soda work," and "little happy
kid faces" coming like droplets out of a faucet. They
find this almost surreal idea appealing but reject it
19
along with multiple competing themes in favor of
what they both label "a nostalgia kind of thing."
To actualize the ad, Anne and Jack need an imagi-
native vehicle that will turn a nostalgic focus into a
visual and verbal execution. They find this in a
multimythic combination of a comic and a romantic
idea. Anne's verbal theme ("The soda shop that fits in
your freezer") is fleshed out by means of Jack's visual
scene (nostalgic imagery from the 1940s, 1950s, and
1960s) to depict a replica of an authentic soda foun-
tain in miniature. Jack describes the general content
of this picture: ''We could actually show that, like a
freezer, there's a freezer open and there's a little soda
shop inside." Anne follows with a more specific descrip-
tion: ''That's it, that's what we should do. Okay. Let's
do that then. So there's the freezer, and then the door's
open. And then inside you see the soda shop, and .,.
then we'll say the soda shop that fits in your freezer."
They jointly decide on anchoring the nostalgia in
the 1950s-with Jack saying, "Yeah, it's counting
strictly on the '50s photos"-to which Anne adds,
"Right, and with the '50s kind of type and all that,
you know, to convey the feeling." (Again, one might
argue that this temporal orientation targets current
grandparents more successfully than young parents.
Perhaps the point here is that, during the 1960s and
1970s, ice cream sodas were already seen as old-fash-
ioned evocations of the 1950s and earlier times. This
potential extrapolation never becomes explicit in the
Anne-Jack protocols, but it may well have represented
a tacit agreement between the two below the surface.)
Phase 3-Anne. Alone and still reviewing multiple
options, Anne replays some of her previous ideas,
including one similar to Linda and Martin's just-add-
water appeal. However, unable to find something "re-
ally simple to do" in an execution, Anne turns to
nostalgia and to visualizing the details with which it
can be actualized in print:
Or nostalgia... after drinking it you'll want to put on
your poodle skirt and head for the sock hop .... Ahm,
just a sip and you'll ... want to put grease in your
hair and penny loafers on your feet. Ahm ... bringing
the '50s into the '90s ... there's something old-fash-
ioned in this house. Something old-fashioned ... old-
fashioned ice cream sodas for modem times.... Hmn.
There's something old-fashioned in this house.
Phase 3-Jack. Jack buys into Anne's "idea of the
little soda fountain inside the freezer" and turns his
attention to executing it with nostalgic visuals: "It's
a freezer, of course.... And we have bar stools right
there. I've never been in a soda fountain myself. I
only know what they look like from Norman Rockwell
pictures.... Little man back there with one of those
 20 The Journal ofAdvertising

Figure 5
Anne and Jack's Ad
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little paper caps on ... it's kind of '50s looking, '50s as in
time period." His self-reflective thoughts are positive:
I think that's, by far, the best idea because it de-
fines exactly what-it gets that nostalgia feel that
we had talked about earlier, because it is a 1950s-
looking soda shop.... The 1950s soda shop ... ad-
dresses that quality of wholesomeness ... the '50s
motif kind of suggests wholesomeness, definitely.
And the quality as well. '50s kind of have a qual-
ity.... This has a lot going for it.
Jack also enunciates the similarity in thinking that
binds team members together: "Normally we would
do like ten ads and show it to our creative director
and then let him pick. But, ahm, actually, we usually
have the same taste in a final product."
Phase 4-Anne and Jack. When Anne and Jack
combine forces again, they review the full range of
options one more time before making a final selec-
tion. Unlike some ofthe other teams, they show adher-
ence to procedural rules for facilitating the creative
process and consider numerous possibilities before set-
tling on the romantic nostalgia theme. From this point
on, they focus mostly on refining the execution. They
talk about the style of the lettering and the costume of
 Summer 2001
the soda jerk. They provide pro and con arguments for
the addition of more copy and for the explicit mention
of'just add water" or "chocolate and strawberry."
Anne and Jack end by discussing the difficulty of
verbalizing ideas (thinking out loud) when alone. Jack
explains that he did this by pretending that he was
talking to Anne, using an imaginary partner as a
means of generating authentic self-talk: ''You know
what? It made me revert back to the way I work with
a partner, though, talking like this. Because I think
differently when I talk out loud.... 'Cause it was more
like I would just sit here thinking like, oh, I'm just
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going to kind of like pretend like I'm talking to you."
Phase ~Anne. Retrospectively, Anne focuses on
the ideas that culminated in the nostalgic execution:
I movedon to thinking about, ahm, like what are ice
cream sodas all about, like they're kind ofnostalgic
and they're from the past and ... now you can have
this piece of the past in the present day ... this old-
fashioned thing '" an old-fashionedicecream soda....
The nostalgia seemed richer ... tapping into what '"
people felt about ice cream sodas from before.
Phase 5-Jack. In this last phase, Jack points out
that the final product reflects memories drawn from
his own life that overlap similar memories on Anne's
part, enabling both to "kick start" the ad:
So I started thinking about how, like, oh, how has
the product, anything like this, ever affected me in
my life? I was thinking of when I was a little kid,
you know, I might have something like this '"
referring back to old-time summers that I would
remember. And then actually Anne was kind of
going in the same direction. So when we met to-
gether we were-we had kind of ended up in the
same area like bring[ing] the past into the present
through this product. So, like once we finally got
that little kick start from each other, then we-
then our thing kind of took off from there.
Anne and Jack-Summary Interpretation. As docu-
mented at some length, the previous four teams ap-
pear to have subverted the creative process by hew-
ing too closely to one or another formulaic mythical
approach. Each team was confined by "in the box"
thinking, which led it to pursue one mythic orienta-
tion at the expense of others that, singly or in combi-
nation, might have led to a more effective solution
based on more flexible ideation. In consequence, the
four teams' rigid adherence to monomythic themes
led to advertisements that were self-contradictory,
logically inconsistent, nonsensical, or confusing. In
contrast, the fifth team of Anne and Jack pursued
"out ofthe box" thinking by visiting a variety of mythic
orientations before selecting a romantic approach cen-
tered on nostalgia as the mythos of choice (Figure 5).
21
Evaluation
Despite some potential confusion in the temporal
period of its nostalgic orientation, we consider the
fifth print ad created by Anne and Jack the only
successful one with respect to its likely effectiveness
for at least four reasons. First, this is the only ad that
is internally consistent and makes sense on its own
terms. Second, two of the three expert judges (the
account planner and the copywriter) ranked this ad
as the most creative. Third, the mean expert ratings
of this ad were the highest of the five on an index
comprising the dimensions of "originality," "meeting
strategic objectives," "achieving the desired tone," and
"satisfying the makers of Icy Soda" (these ratings are
an admittedly rough, inherently nonrigorous, and
highly exploratory basis for assessment). Fourth (with
similar methodological caveats), Anne and Jack were
the only team whose members were satisfied with
their own ad, self-rating it noticeably higher than did
the other four teams their own ads in terms of "own
satisfaction" and "meeting objectives."
Discussion
General Summary ofExploratory Findings
In contrast to the view of creativity as a mysterious
"spark" that is difficult to pin down, our analysis suggests
that the creative process involved in advertising design
can be interpreted and understood. Creative output is not
the result ofsome magical process but rather can be linked
to specific underlying mechanisms. The notion of creativ-
ity as dependent on sampling from a large number of
concepts coheres well with the ideas popularized by Wallas
(1926) and with the aspects of "divergent thinking" dis-
cussed by Guilford (1956). Advertising textbooks also ad-
vocate generating a large number of ad concepts (Batra,
Aaker, and Myers 1996) on the basis of the assumption
that the rewards of producing numerous ideas will out-
weigh the costs (Winston 1990; see also Campbell 1960).
Our exploratory findings lend further tentative support to
this argument. Our interpretation of the concurrent ver-
bal protocols suggests that four out of five creative teams
were oriented toward one mythic type to the exclusion of
others and, consequently, opted for less than truly creative
solutions. Illustratively demonstrating the self-imposed
constraints underlying these "failures" can facilitate an
understanding of the type of more divergent creative pro-
cesses needed to engender more effective advertising.
With respect to our specific illustrative case examples,
Linda and Martin were obsessed with fun at the cost of
logic and ended up subordinating the creative process
 22
to the cause of comedy centered on the idea of adding
water to fun. Hank and Victor revisited the days ofyore
only to come back with a nostalgic advertising theme
that was deeply flawed by an almost embarrassingly
illogical notion of (still) not having to make something
that is easy to make. Edgar and Karl's pregnant woman
was the focal figure in a tragedy avoidance ad that was
perhaps more reflective of their own painful struggles
with the creative assignment than of any potential
benefits to the husbands of expectant mothers. Sam
and Tim engaged in ironic commentary to such an
extent that their ad nonsensically portrayed a cow that
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both does and does not look like other cows. These
teams confined themselves to one or another formu-
laic, inflexibly applied, or even standardized mythic
approach and, as a result, produced advertisements
that were self-contradictory, logically inconsistent,
nonsensical, or otherwise ineffective. In contrast, Anne
and Jack generated ideas across a number of mythic
orientations and shaped their creative output around
a romantic approach chosen after an open review of
various competing possibilities. In this sense, they
exemplify Osborn's (1963) insistence on the connection
between idea quantity and idea quality. Although their
ad seems to focus on an arguably inappropriate nostal-
gic time period (the 1950s versus the 1960s or 1970s), it
seems to dominate the other four contenders on the
various informal bases for evaluative assessment.
At the same time, the winning team constrained
themselves in some ways during the creative process.
Specifically, after generating ideas from a myth, ex-
ecuting these ideas (e.g., as headlines), and then
screening them, they then circled back to draw on a
different myth as a source of additional ideas for sub-
sequent screening. To the extent that they systemati-
cally tapped diverse myths and were disciplined in
screening resultant ideas before making selections
for further exploration, their process reflects the ob-
servation that freedom balanced by constraints tends
to result in creative output (cf. Finke, Ward, and
Smith 1992). In contrast, the other teams were
overconstrained in that they failed to explore differ-
ent myths systematically or evaluate them critically
prior to settling on a specific execution. In this con-
nection, we propose that creative directors develop-
ing advertising ideas can enhance effectiveness by
encouraging creative teams to sample from multiple
domains to achieve a better balance between freedom
and constraints than displayed by four of the five
teams studied here. Organizations can also design
creativity training programs to emphasize the impor-
tance of sampling from multiple domains in the idea-
generation stage of creativity.
The Journal ofAdvertising
A second important observation regarding the cre-
ative process concerns the finding that each individual
member of a creative team appeared to start out from
a mythic orientation similar to that of his or her
partner. Although this finding might be colored by
the particular context of the simulated situation ex-
plored here, it is an interesting commentary on cre-
ative relationships and could reflect a "meeting of
minds." Of course, the two could have chosen to work
together because of this compatibility (Tsui and
O'Reilly 1989), or each one could have come to re-
semble the other after a long working relationship.
No matter the explanation, it is striking that the
copywriter and art director in a team so consistently
came up with similar ideas even before they discussed
the strategic brieffor the first time. Clearly, this lack
of intragroup diversity can be a strong impediment to
creativity (King and Anderson 1990; Nystrom 1979).
Consistent with the literature, this exploratory find-
ing suggests limits to the benefits of team tenure
(Katz 1982). Specifically, as a tentative proposition in
need of further empirical support, it appears that
some creative teams that work together over a period
oftime might tend to become inward focused and rely
on patterns that have succeeded in the past rather
than scanning the entire solution space for ideas. If
corroborated, this tentative finding also might carry
straightforward implications for the organization of
creative effort. For example, teams might periodi-
cally be broken up and rotated or, if that proves coun-
terproductive, multiple teams might be assigned to
dialogue on each task to ensure the consideration of
competing perspectives.
In addition to the exploratory findings that (1)failure to
sample from a variety of alternative orientations reduces
creativity and (2) copywriters and art directors come to
resemble each other so as potentially to limit the team's
creativity, some other observations are worthy ofconsider-
ation. First, as indicated by self-assessments, the mem-
bers of our winning team were the most satisfied with
their ad and felt that it was effective in terms of meeting
the objectives in the strategic brief. Note that each team
member filled out the questionnaire separately, yet Anne
and Jack provided identical high ratings. Clearly, this
team felt vindicated by its exploration of multiple
themes prior to settling on a theme that the others
had abandoned. Second, our exploratory ad design
study mirrored reality as far as possible by using
real-world creative teams that worked together and
by simulating the way in which they cooperate in
practice through individual and joint sessions. Al-
though thinking aloud may be somewhat constrain-
ing, the conversations between copywriters and art
 Summer 2001
directors nevertheless offer a penetrating glimpse into
the thought processes underlying advertising design.
Limitations
With respect to limitations, as already mentioned,
our results are based on a single observation of five
teams engaged in an artificial task. Several aspects
of the task and experimental procedure may have
restricted creativity. For example, a two-hour time
frame to design an ad is tight even by the frenzied
standards of real-life advertising agencies. The time
Downloaded by [Texas A & M International University] at 13:28 05 October 2014
limit may have provided insufficient scope for four
teams such that efficiency triumphed over effective-
ness. Furthermore, somewhat unrealistically, partici-
pants were prevented from asking questions that
might have clarified the nature of their creative as-
signment. Also, alternative channels for developing
multiple approaches (e.g., a client briefing session, an
internal agency meeting, informal interactions around
the water cooler) were foreclosed to the creative teams
in ways that might have truncated the usual breadth
of their typical focus. Moreover, the creative briefs
omitted various details pertaining to company iden-
tity or brand equity considerations that would often
appear in real-world creative assignments. In addi-
tion, the fact that participants completed the task at
the end of the day may have resulted in fatigue and
thereby hampered creativity. Finally, some partici-
pants (especially Edgar) felt apprehensive and con-
strained by having to think aloud as they designed
the ad (though our data suggest that most recovered
from this problem rather quickly). In short, even
though the creative brief and task assignment were
designed in consultation with advertising experts, the
fuzziness inherent in the new product idea plus vari-
ous departures from real-world agency life may have
hampered creativity in various ways.
Conclusion
For these reasons, we do not claim that the degree
of creativity in our study reflects the extent to which
ad designers are collectively creative as a profession
nor do we mean to pass judgment on the typical cre-
ativity of the specific teams in the study. Rather, our
interest was in examining the relationship between
the process underlying creativity and the outcome of
this process in the context of a particular and inevita-
bly quasirealistic advertising creation task. Given that
a creative team produced an ad that was judged to be
more creative, what processes appear to explain the
successful outcome? Similarly, given that some ads
23
were judged to be less creative, what can we say
about the underlying process? Our tentative explor-
atory answers to such questions represent only a start-
ing point in the investigation of creative processes
and creative outcomes in advertising design.
Further research is needed to examine the relation-
ship between a consideration of multiple approaches
(mythic as well as metaphorical, allegorical, and so
forth) in the creative process and the potential reflec-
tion of this process in the creativity of the resulting
advertisement. Toward that end, future studies should
include depth interviews of team members concern-
ing their approaches to creating ads and reflections
on the creative process; larger samples of creative
teams; more realistic, less time-limited ad creation
tasks with more representative and fully developed
creative briefs; better simulation of the real-world
agency-situated conditions in which creative teams
actually work; more refined measurement procedures
for the evaluation of creative outcomes by advertising
experts; and if possible, corroborative assessments of
how consumers actually respond to the ads produced.
Clearly, in these and other ways, more work is needed
to build on the exploratory study reported here in the
direction of understanding the elusive processes lead-
ing to creativity in advertising.
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