AGENCY PRACTITIONER THEORIES OF HOW ADVERTISING WORKS Gergely Nyilasy and Leonard N. Reid ABSTRACT: In-depth interviews with senior-level agency practitioners (creative, planning, and account directors) were conducted to explore their thoughts about how advertising works. The study was designed to add to the understanding of the academician–practitioner gap in advertising by uncovering practitioners’ hypothesized knowledge autonomy in the context of the sociological theory of professionalization. Results provide evidence for the existence of such autonomous practitioner knowledge schemas. Agency practitioners’ core theories include a two-step “break through and engage” process and the longitudinal “mutation of effects” idea. They also believe in the primacy of emotional effects. Creativity is identified as the singularly most important factor in effectiveness, and agency professionals resisted any other regularities that may curtail creativity and result in formulaic advertising. Practitioners also emphasized the importance of defining boundary conditions when making claims about how advertising works, and identified strategic campaign objective, product category, medium used, and historical time period as key domains to consider. Implications for both academia and practice are offered, as are possible future research directions.

In the late 1980s, the American Marketing Association (AMA) convened a special task force to study the divide between marketing academe and practice (AMA Task Force 1988). The divide, known as the “academician-practitioner gap,” has been one of the most recurring themes in the history of marketing (Hunt 2002b, p. 305), and over the years, a sizeable literature has developed on the subject (e.g., see Nyilasy and Reid 2007). Academics and practitioners agree that the divide is unfortunate and detrimental to the interests of both groups. Radically different explanations are offered for the gap’s existence, however. The five most common explanations are: (1) academicians fail to disseminate scientific knowledge appropriately, (2) there are problems with the content and form of knowledge that academics produce, (3) academic social structures and reward systems are counterproductive, (4) questions about the philosophy of marketing science may disorient and prohibit some academicians from applied-oriented research, and (5) practitioners are thought to be incapable or unwilling to process academic information (for a detailed summary, see Nyilasy and Reid 2007). As we argued in an earlier paper, the literature on the subject suffers from three major shortcomings (Nyilasy and Reid 2007). First, the explanations offered are incomplete. The majority of the literature focuses on the discussion from Gergely Nyilasy (Ph.D., University of Georgia) is a senior research and development executive in the New York office of Hall & Partners. Leonard N. Reid (Ph.D., University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign) is a professor of advertising, Department of Advertising and Public Relations, Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Georgia.

the academician side and attributes the problem to academic research: Critics blame academic knowledge-dissemination systems, knowledge forms, social structures, and marketing philosophy for the gap—almost completely ignoring parallel categories in the practitioner world. Even when practitioners are mentioned, they are thought to be imperfect and unwilling receptacles of academic knowledge flows. Second, the positions held in the literature are not supported by empirical research. The debate is formulated as normative directives about the gap phenomenon and not an area of empirical inquiry. Third, and related to the previous issue, no overarching theoretical framework is used for analysis of the problem; the arguments have a strong ad hoc flavor. The research reported in this paper is part of a larger investigation conducted to overcome some of these shortcomings. It grows out of the hypothesis that advertising practitioners’ knowledge autonomy may be part of the reason for the existence of the gap. Practitioners of advertising constitute a distinct occupational group, and as such, they may create their own knowledge forms (to some extent) autonomously from academia. Practitioners may have their own sets of theories; their own sets of boundary conditions and domains of applicability in relation to these theories; unique underlying metatheoretical assumptions and forms of validity/reliability testing;

The authors acknowledge William Finlay and Joseph C. Hermanowicz of the Department of Sociology and Peggy J. Kreshel of the Department of Advertising and Public Relations, all of the University of Georgia, for their helpful guidance on the revision of the original manuscript. The authors also thank the anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions. This research was funded in part by a grant to the first author from the American Academy of Advertising. Journal of Advertising, vol. 38, no. 3 (Fall 2009), pp. 81–96. © 2009 American Academy of Advertising. All rights reserved. ISSN 0091-3367 / 2009 $9.50 + 0.00. DOI 10.2753/JOA0091-3367380306

82

The Journal of Advertising

and independent social systems to negotiate, distribute, and consume knowledge. The notion of practitioner autonomy does not mean that there are no interfaces, links, or transfers with academic advertising knowledge. Indeed, many practitioners have worked in academic settings, and academicians have assumed practitioner roles (see Nyilasy and Reid 2007). Beyond such role exchanges, there may be other forms of knowledge transfer—the gap is not insurmountable. Indirect flows through intermediaries (such as research services, education, journalists, conferences, etc.) seem especially relevant. The existence of exchange and transfer does not undermine the notion of knowledge autonomy; rather, it strengthens it. Interactions, dialogues, and crossovers point to two centers of gravity: one in academia and one in practice. Our approach is to uncover the second center of knowledge, that of advertising practitioners. Our fieldwork provided empirical support for the existence of practitioners’ knowledge autonomy. Markers of this autonomy are visible in three distinct, but related areas: (1) “practitioner theories,” or the content of advertising knowledge and quasi-theoretical notions about how advertising works and what works in advertising; (2) “metatheories,” or fundamental presuppositions about the nature of knowledge in advertising; and (3) “pseudoprofessionalization tactics,” or the pragmatic knowledge projection techniques used by practitioners. In this paper, we focus on the first marker: practitioners’ quasitheoretical beliefs about advertising. Several researchers have expressed the need for empirical research on practitioner perspectives (Ottesen and Gronhaug 2004; Parasuraman 1982; Rossiter 2001; Zaltman, LeMasters, and Heffring 1982), although empirical studies are very rare. With the exception of Kover’s (1995) study of implicit copywriter theories, little is known about practitioners’ theories of advertising. Some poll-type surveys report practitioners’ issuespecific opinions; however, these are not holistic accounts of practitioners’ general theories of advertising (e.g., Reid, King, and DeLorme 1998; Synodinos, Keown, and Jacobs 1989; West and Ford 2001; West, Sargeant, and Miciak 1999). Naturalistic inquiries of agency cultures are also scarce and rarely focus on theoretical knowledge about advertising (e.g., McFall 2002; Nixon 2000; Nixon and du Gay 2002; Soar 2000). Research suggests that practitioners possess “informal knowledge” (Nixon 2003) about the workings of advertising; however, the topic remains underdeveloped. Most ethnographic studies describe a high level of uncertainty evident in the ad industry and practitioners’ skepticism about the possibility of theoretical knowledge. We undertook this research to fill the gap in the literature on practitioner perspectives as well as the academician– practitioner gap. The purpose of the research covered in this paper is to answer the following question:

RQ1: What is agency practitioners’ quasi-theoretical knowledge of how advertising works? The significance of the results is threefold. First, systematically uncovering advertising agency practitioners’ knowledge structures will add to an underdeveloped area in advertising research. The investigation, therefore, has an inherent knowledge-enhancing value: It will provide empirical data about a relatively blank spot on our scientific landscape. Second, understanding the agency practitioner viewpoint will allow practitioner and academic theories to be compared and contrasted. Discrepancies found can be indicative of the knowledge-based nature of the academician–practitioner gap (the existence of practitioner knowledge autonomy) and relevant implications can be drawn to narrow the academician– practitioner gap. Third, uncovering the types of knowledge that advertising practitioners possess, use, and expect from novices entering the profession may help advertising education. Advertising academicians may benefit from this research by using these insights for the development of improved educational programs, ones that do a better job anticipating the realities of advertising work and the needs of the industry. We begin by describing our research approach. The academic literature on how advertising does its work is not reviewed here, but is incorporated later to flesh out practitioners’ theoretical thoughts relative to academic theory. RESEARCH DESIGN Because the study’s basic aim is to understand practitioners’ thinking about the work of advertising in their own terms and then to evaluate those thoughts relative to existing theories on how advertising works, a qualitative design was selected for the inquiry (Babbie 2001, p. 91; Creswell 1998, p. 15; Lincoln and Guba 1985; Pike 1954). The research associates itself with the “grounded theory” approach to qualitative research. A Grounded Theory Approach The grounded theory approach, first introduced in 1967 by Glaser and Strauss, has generated considerable scholarly interest (e.g., Corbin and Strauss 1990; Glaser 1978, 1992, 1998; Glaser and Strauss 1967; Strauss 1993; Strauss and Corbin 1990, 1994, 1998). The approach originated in the positivist tradition and was first cast in objectivist assumptions, including the goal of theoretical verification (Vaughn 1992). Later, the approach moved away from its objectivist, positivist origin and was reformulated in a constructivist template, which conceptualized theoretical analyses as interpretive renderings, rather than objective reports of reality (Charmaz 2005). Grounded theory is now referred to as a general method of

Fall 2009

inquiry, a specific mode of analysis, or the product of inquiry (Charmaz 2005), and is not only about interpretation, but also about explanation (Miller and Fredericks 1999, p. 541). Social researchers use grounded theory in one of two ways: (1) to discover theory, or (2) to elaborate (reconsider) existing theory (Burawoy 1991; Strauss and Corbin 1994). The goal of the first use is to generate theory from observations about empirical phenomena. Researchers using this approach typically attempt to suspend presupposed knowledge and work inductively to lay groundwork for the development of theoretical frameworks from patterns that emerge from collected data, that is, from research informants. The goal of the second use is to elaborate and reconsider existing theory or fragments of theoretical ideas relative to collected empirical observations. Researchers using this approach first identify existing theories, and then immerse themselves in collected data in an effort to reconsider and develop what has already been produced—theoretical thoughts that inform existing knowledge (Burawoy 1991, pp. 26–27). In either approach, theory discovered or theory reconstructed emerges from the data (Burawoy 1991, p. 27) rather than being imposed on the data by the researcher. Observations are “grounded” because they are situated in the empirical phenomena from which they emerge, meaning that the “fit” between theory and empirical phenomena is tight (Glaser and Strauss 1967). We locate our study in the “theoretical reconsideration” tradition of grounded theory (Burawoy 1991; Vaughn 1992). In their original conceptualization (1967), Glaser and Strauss did not rule out further empirical tests of theory (Miller and Fredericks 1999, p. 540), nor did they rule out deductive thinking from grounded theory. In their review of important writings on grounded theory, Strauss and Corbin (1994, p. 277) acknowledge that researchers can carry into their inquiries any theory based on previous research (as well as the sensitizing possibilities of their training, reading, and research experience) that might be useful if played against systematically gathered data, provided the theory is relevant and data collection is rigorous (Strauss and Corbin 1994, p. 273). According to Burawoy (1991, pp. 11–12), knowledge of existing research literature is not a contaminating influence, nor is it a sine qua non of research. In doing grounded theory, there is a time “when it is appropriate to turn to existing literature with the goal of improving it through reflection and reconstruction” (Burawoy 1991, p. 11), for there is something to be intellectually gained by participating in and contributing to established theoretical thinking (Burawoy 1991, p. 27). A persistent and unfortunate misunderstanding of Glaser and Strauss’s original work on grounded theory (Glaser and Strauss 1967) overplays the inductive aspects and underplays the potential role of extant theories and deductive thinking in grounded theory. However, as noted by Charmaz (2005,

83

p. 509), “no qualitative method rests on induction alone— questions of the empirical world are framed and informed by existing knowledge.” Hence, there is interplay between “inductive and deductive thinking” both in the context of discovery and justification in grounded theory (Miller and Fredericks 1999, p. 541). For our investigative purposes, we openly acknowledge the interaction of extant theoretical and deductive thinking in grounded research. Some researchers using grounded theory are concerned (whether positivists or constructivists) with discovering new theory from the ground up; we are concerned with examining theoretical thought about advertising from the ground up (Burawoy 1991, p. 8) and then reconsidering that thought relative to existing theories of advertising. As such, we came to concepts inductively, and then compared and contrasted them with academic-driven concepts in backand-forth induction and deduction. This inductive-deductive process, closely affiliated with the reconstructionist school of grounded theory, was the ideal approach, because it facilitated discovery of native (practitioner) knowledge schemas as well as a theoretically enlightened comparison with academic ideas. Data Collection and Analysis In-Depth Interviews Semistructured, in-depth interviews were used as the key field method. In-depth interviewing is useful for gathering rich, complex qualitative data (Creswell 1998; Kvale 1996). Part of the difficulty in understanding the academician–practitioner gap has been the lack of true representation of the perspective of advertising practitioners. In-depth interviews allow the discovery of emic (informant-determined) perspectives and points-of-view (Kvale 1996, p. 1). Data Collection Procedures Preliminary preparations for data collection started well before actual interviewing. Informal interviews were conducted with qualitative-ethnographic experts. E-mail and phone conversations were exchanged about the feasibility of the project, opinions about method, and tips for effective interviewing. A particularly useful series of conversations took place with Dr. Arthur J. Kover (see Kover 1995). Based on these insights and methodological literature, an initial interview guide built on three questions was developed: (1) What is the content of practitioner knowledge? (2) How do practitioners know what they know? and (3) How do they use this knowledge in everyday practice? The interview guide incorporated an opening “grand tour” question as well as more specific probes.

84

The Journal of Advertising

The guide was used in a series of interviewer training sessions. Three practice interviews were conducted with agency-experienced doctoral students and three with agencyexperienced faculty members to allow the principal interviewer to hone his interviewing skills and evaluate the efficacy of the interview guide. Two of the student interviews were observed by interviewing experts to provide feedback and recommendations on interviewing technique. Sampling and Informants Informants were selected using snowball sampling. Faculty and personal contacts were asked to identify potential informants; subsequently, these contacts were asked to identify other participants. The sampling procedure proved practically efficient as the interviewer gained entry to most targeted agencies (major, midsize, and smaller) in the large city where the interviews were conducted. Twenty-eight respondents were interviewed until theoretical saturation was achieved (i.e., defined and operationalized as until no new information is obtained; see Morse 1995, p. 147). Creswell (1998) recommends 20 to 30 interviews for grounded theory studies (p. 122), while Kvale (1996) suggests 15 ± 10 (p. 102). Thus, the twenty-eight interviews satisfy both recommended ranges. As the sample snowballed, purposeful selection (Creswell 1998, p. 118) was made so that many different viewpoints would be represented. Three occupational groups were interviewed: account managers, account planners, and creative directors. Only people at senior levels were asked to participate. At smaller agencies, this meant the owner, CEO, or general manager of the agency. At larger organizations, informants were heads of their functional units. An attempt was made to represent agencies of various sizes in the market: larger (more than 130MM in annual billings according to The Advertising Red Books: Agencies January 2005), midsized (30 to 130MM), and smaller (less than 30MM). A relatively equal balance was achieved across these groups. Table 1 presents the characteristics of the 28 informants. Field Issues Interviews lasted from 45 to 90 minutes. Most interviews took place in the informants’ offices. Some interviews were conducted off-site at the informants’ request. We allowed practitioners to talk freely. Initially, we probed informants about their knowledge of academic theories. Because respondents had virtually no knowledge of these theories, however, we stopped probing as the interviewing progressed. Extensive field notes were composed immediately following the interviews. These reflections helped refine ways of asking

questions and aided in the development of emerging concepts. The field notes were entered into an NVIVO database, software used for qualitative data analysis. Data Analysis and the Emerging Nature of the Data Interviews were transcribed and then assessed by an initial reading to get a preliminary grasp of content. Interview transcripts were then uploaded into NVIVO. We used the constant-comparative method throughout the coding process, coding and recoding the transcripts through many iterations of data analysis (Creswell 1998). In the first step, open coding, we coded loosely, identifying general themes in the data. Our codes were refined many times as recurring themes started to emerge (e.g., “break through and engage”). Next, we used axial coding to compare codes and note relationships between them (e.g., we discovered the theme of “it all depends” by noticing that the strategy domain has similar characteristics to the media domain in that they both are understood as circumstances under which core ideas about how advertising works change). During the third step, selective coding, we noted a deeper story line and hypotheses linking concepts such as beliefs about the mutation of effects and the belief that time is a determining domain, and that ideas about creativity are interconnected with certain metatheoretical beliefs. Finally, we identified theoretical propositions about the system of practitioner thought involving practitioner theories, metatheories, and pseudoprofessionalization tactics. Here we report one of the three main themes discovered—the content of practitioner theories. Member Check As a member check of the veracity of our analysis, informants were given a copy of the findings in manuscript format. They agreed that the content accurately reflected their thoughts. FINDINGS: CONTENT OF PRACTITIONER THEORIES The study’s findings represent and highlight the complex and implicit mental constructs of a segment of agency practitioners (i.e., account executives, account planners, and creative directors). We learned early on that these practitioners’ theories of advertising are anything but simple. Not only are their mental schemas implicit and therefore difficult to piece together from fragmented and half-expressed thoughts; they also manifest themselves in different forms, layers, and levels of generality. The common thread among them is that they all have to do with native knowledge of how advertising works. The results reported below are heavily edited due to space limitations.

account management account management account management account management account management account management account management account management account management account management account management account management planning planning planning planning planning planning planning creative creative creative creative creative creative creative creative creative

Functional role female male male male male male male male male male male male male male female male male male male male male male female male male male male male

Gender yes no no yes yes no no yes n.a. n.a. no yes yes yes no yes yes no n.a. no no yes no n.a. yes no n.a. no

Notes: AM = account manager; AP = account planner; CD = creative director; n.a. = not available.

AM1 AM2 AM3 AM4 AM5 AM6 AM7 AM8 AM9 AM10 AM11 AM12 AP1 AP2 AP3 AP4 AP5 AP6 AP7 CD1 CD2 CD3 CD4 CD5 CD6 CD7 CD8 CD9

Pseudonym

College advertising/ marketing education 14 20 20 22 22 27 11 23 n.a. n.a. n.a. 37 24 26 n.a. 28 20 15 22 20 n.a. 35 20 10 30 10 44 16

Years of experience

TABLE 1 Characteristics of the Informants

Agency 1 Agency 2 Agency 3 Agency 4 Agency 4 Agency 5 Agency 6 Agency 7 Agency 8 Agency 8 Agency 8 Agency 9 Agency 10 Agency 11 Agency 4 Agency 7 Agency 5 Agency 4 Agency 12 Agency 1 Agency 7 Agency 6 Agency 13 Agency 6 Agency 4 Agency 7 Agency 14 Agency 7

Pseudonym for agency mid small small large large large mid large mid mid mid large small small large large large large large mid large mid small mid large large mid large

Agency size

independent independent independent network network independent independent network independent independent independent network independent independent network network independent network independent independent network independent independent independent network network independent network

Agency affiliation

Fall 2009 85

86

The Journal of Advertising

Types of Advertising Effects

Rational and Emotional Attitudes

The agency practitioners strongly believe that exposure to ads causes changes in human cognition, emotions, and behavior. The primary way they expressed this belief is with the simple statement, “it works”: “I think it’s kind of understood that you wouldn’t be in the advertising business if you didn’t believe that it worked. So in general, I don’t think you’re going to find anybody who is in an advertising agency questioning whether or not advertising works” (AM4 [Account Manager 4]). Advertising’s effects are not seen as limitless, however. In the view of these informants, the power of advertising is especially moderated and determined by the consumer: Effects are limited because ads are screened out by consumers, whether consciously or unconsciously. “Advertising is not the most important thing—advertising to a lot of people is an intrusion, and an annoyance, or something that they just ignore, like a . . . you know, like a bad housefly. A lot of them wish it would go away, a lot of them just ignore it” (AM2). “By and large, advertising can’t make you buy something that you don’t want or don’t need” (AM11). The informants identified both direct and indirect (i.e., effects on word-of-mouth, internal audiences, and buyer/seller relationships) ad effects. They identified four direct effects as the core building blocks for the work of advertising.

These practitioners believe that advertising causes changes in attitudes toward a brand. They refer to the concept of attitude by different labels: “opinions,” “judgments,” “perceptions,” “persuasion,” “brand image,” “interest in the brand.” In their view, advertising can create or change both emotionally and rationally based attitudes: “The way that I look at it is, there are two components to good advertising. One is a rational sell, and one is an emotional sell. I think the way that advertising works is that it hits on both of those successfully” (AP6). The practitioners declared that emotion has priority over cognition in advertising in both attitude formation and change: “I think it can be more effective if it’s emotional. [If ] there’s an emotional connection, then it’s probably better. I’m not talking about weeping women, but you know, emotional—just in touching an emotional chord” (AP7). In their view, cognitive attitudes play the role of “rationalization” for emotionally formed attitudes. The role of the rational sell is therefore to rationalize what is (although unacknowledged by consumers) an emotionally driven conviction. The underlying assumption about the emotional effect of advertising corresponds to the informants’ theory of consumer behavior. Brand choice itself (irrespective of any advertising) is viewed as emotively based: “we had business-to-business situations, where these are supposed to be very tough-minded people, you know, practical, no-frills businesspeople or farmers who, you know, shouldn’t let emotion enter into it, because you’ve got enough to contend with, with the uncertainty of world markets, and the weather, and all like that. But they do, they still do, we all do” (CD1).

Attention to Advertising The first effect is making consumers stop and look at the ad: Advertising generates attention. “Well, I believe that you, number one, you have to break through what somebody would call the boredom barrier. I mean, because unless you get the consumer’s attention, then of course, nothing’s going to happen” (CD8 [Creative Director 8]). “Attention,” as defined by informants, is a memory-type construct and signifies cognitive input of ad content into memory. Brand Awareness Once “attention” is gained (ad awareness), the ad is thought next to lead to brand awareness—remembering the advertised brand. Increasing brand awareness is considered a key component of an ad’s effectiveness. According to the informants, the ad does not only want to call attention to itself, but rather serve as a vehicle to increase the presence of the advertised brand in consumer memory: “Well, probably, the historic model that I think has become the model that much of the industry has so long depended upon, and they rallied behind, is a model that says, when you advertise, you build awareness levels” (AP1 [Account Planner 1]).

Behavioral Response While memory-based and attitudinal ad effects are important, most of the practitioners interviewed insisted the ultimate goal of any advertising effort is buying behavior: “But ultimately, it’s still going to come back to sales. I started off as a copywriter at [a department store], and they had one rule there, and that was, ‘Move the merchandise.’ It didn’t matter how many people walked in and out of the store, or how crowded the floors were, if the cash registers were not ringing, advertising wasn’t doing its job, and heads were going to roll, you know” (CD1). This effect is especially expressed in direct advertising: “I mean direct response advertising is specifically created to get the phone to ring right now, you know, or get somebody to call right now to buy” (AM1). Two Core Theories Agency practitioners’ theoretical thinking about advertising is not limited to simple relationships between ads and outcomes.

Fall 2009

Practitioners combine the building blocks into more complex sets of propositions. Two main theoretical notions emerged in this research: “break through and engage” and the “mutation of effects.” Break Through and Engage On the basic level, the informants expressed a theory-like conceptualization, which we will call “break through and engage.” In essence, advertising is perceived to work in two simple steps: It creates awareness (of both ad and brand) and then it engages people emotionally or rationally. The only sequentiality of importance to these practitioners is that the ad first needs to draw some level of attention and create some level of brand awareness before it can impact brand attitude or behavior. The vast majority of the informants claimed this simple two-step process to be their basic theory of advertising: “Good advertising would be advertising that is noticed, provocative, engages the consumer, and communicates what you would like to have communicated in your ad” (AM3); “We call it laddering. I mean, basically, you ladder up from awareness, you know, I mean, I’m not aware. You know, then, I become aware. And then, not only am I aware, but I’m somewhat responsive” (AP6); “The most important thing you have to do is get the attention of the viewer and say something that’s relevant and unexpected” (CD4). Beyond these simple two steps, ad practitioners seem to believe that there is no further sequentiality in the order of how potential effects may occur. For example, AM2 stated: “I think that if, again, advertising is . . . if it gets through that barrier of somebody’s not paying attention to it, if it’s through there, and is actually considered by somebody, it’s going to be considered by them in different ways at different times.” Effects beyond getting attention can occur in any order, or even simultaneously: “You know, I don’t think that there is a timeframe; it can happen instantaneously, all these things can happen at once. You know, it’s not the kind of situation where, you know, I’m going to go along, and for a month I’m going to be in the learning phase, and another month I’m going to be, you know, in the liking phase, and in this month I’m going to be in the doing phase” (AP7). Mutation of Effects While these ad practitioners downplayed the importance of the short-term time sequencing of advertising effects, they suggested that time had a relevant impact on advertising effects and effectiveness longer term. In their view, over time,

87

consumers develop resistance to advertising techniques and become less susceptible to overt technologies of persuasion: “I guess the best way to look at it is . . . and the thing it always reminds me of is . . . like vaccination. You know, you get inoculated for polio by them giving you the virus. And then your body becomes immune to it. Well, that’s kind of like advertising. If you’ve seen the Budweiser frogs and now I’m going to come along and give you the Miller Lite frogs . . . you are already . . . you know it’s not going to work. And even over time, that’s the biggest challenge to creative people . . . to keep ideas fresh because they do wear out” (CD6). They envisioned consumers as a somewhat antagonistic group, who actively resist ad influence attempts. At the heart of this resistance is knowledge about what advertisers are planning on doing: “People do come in sort of armed with ‘You’re not going to fool me, you’re not going to . . . you clever advertising folks, you’re not going to make me buy something I don’t want to buy.’ . . . They all get it, they all know what we are up to” (CD1). Consumers’ understanding of advertiser tactics can become rather detailed and exacting: “they feed them [advertising techniques] back to you. They’re getting, you know, they’re savvy” (AP3). As suggested above, ad agency practitioners believed that knowledge about advertising techniques among consumers accumulated over time. The mutation of effects (resulting in decreased effectiveness) can happen in a relatively short period of time: “I think they’re more used to it and they can see through things. . . . I think a lot of ads try to use tricks that have been used in the past that consumers are already seeing through. And I just don’t . . . I think consumers realize that, you know, there are certain ads that try to enforce certain tricks that they can see right through and they are turned off by them” (AP6). The mutation of effects is also noticeable in the very long run, as revealed in generational differences in susceptibility: “You know, one of the things that’s happening is the market is shifting older. So you get more experienced consumers, you know, a consumer twenty years old and a consumer forty-five years old has [sic] a different bandwidth of experience. You know, I’ve seen a lot more commercials, a lot more ads, a lot more selling propositions thrown at me than a twenty year old. I’m discerning on that as a consumer; I know how to block those out. You know, try the same. . . . So you’ve got to be a little different, a little more subtle, a little more intelligent, a lot more relevant” (AP2). Another informant said: “Well, I think today, the consumer today is so cynical. . . . Because of the cynicism and . . . people are so, consumers today are so anti-advertising, and they’re so . . . ‘I can see through all of this BS, and smokescreens, and smokemirrors, and all that stuff.’ So therefore, you know, I don’t think it really has the effect that it used to” (CD3).

88

The Journal of Advertising

Creativity: The Rule of No Rules Knowledge about advertising does not stop at the two core theories about “how it works.” Practitioners also have beliefs about “what works better.” Indeed, the most practically significant knowledge for advertising would be in this realm; it provides very specific directives for the production of creative work. It is interesting to note that the agency practitioners interviewed have a very simple directive for “what works better.” They believe that there is only one rule for advertising to work effectively: It has to be creative. As AP1 asserted emphatically: “How does advertising work, the driver out of all of that is that, literally, it has to be creative. And I don’t mean creative simply in the sense of the way that it is visually presented or filmed or worded, but we have to be very innovative in terms of how that message is going to break through the clutter, as well as break through the mind-set, and be so compelling that it will ignite that brand relationship.” Similarly, CD9 argued: “So I think that there’s a strong parallel between fresh thinking and market effectiveness. . . . Either you can play it safe and be at risk to [sic] losing the marketing war or you can try and constantly come up with fresh ideas.” Practitioners conceptualize creativity as something that denies regularity, uniformity, or formula. Creativity is described as something “unexpected”: “it’s unexpected. And so much advertising is expected; [this] is the downfall of virtually . . . probably 98+% of advertising that you see” (AM3); “unconventional”: “Even though again, I think breaking some of these conventions [is the most important]” (AM3); “different”: “The best advertising out there is making you think about a product, or brand, and a little bit different” (AP2); “break through”: “So the art of good, distinctive communication is breaking . . . you know, now that’s a classic line cliché, breaking through the clutter” (AP2); “interesting”: “And usually, we have a wall full of ideas that will narrow down to a few of our favorites, and the better, the most on-strategy, and the most relevant, and hopefully the most unexpected and interesting [will prevail]” (CD4); and “fresh”: “It is our challenge to keep things fresh” (CD6). Creativity in advertising manifests itself in a “big idea,” sometimes also referred to as a good “concept.” “So finding that big idea is really what we concentrate on. And where great creative work comes from is finding that big idea” (CD3). “Ideas/concepts” are different from the “strategy” behind the ad, the thinking that characterizes the main brand message, the support for this message, the characteristics of the audience to be reached, and sometimes the brand’s character/positioning. The big idea is the translation of this strategy into an unexpected, fresh, attention-getting way of communicating it. If the strategy is not transformed into a big idea, the creatives did not work hard enough: “If your strategy is transparent in

your advertising, then it’s not going to work. Consumers [are] going to see it, so you can’t” (CD5). As a result, unsurprisingly, creativity is perceived as the most important aspect of the advertising agency’s work, the industry’s specialty, that which defines the agency’s character, and establishes agency work as a unique business service that advertisers are usually incapable of replicating themselves. AP4 argued: “I have so much respect for creative, I really do. Because I think that it’s where ad agencies get their leverage. If this business is reduced to a formula, then you don’t need all these agencies.” Not only is creativity the most important rule of advertising, but it is also an exclusive one. Since by definition creativity involves radically new ways of communication, it is antagonistic to rules; creativity means “breaking the rules,” ruling out any scientifically corroborated directives for its production. As these agency practitioners put it, the only rule in advertising is that there are no rules: “In general, you know, one rule is just not to follow the rules. You have to make it fresh” (CD2); “Yeah, there are rules. And the first rule is to break them” (CD6); “No. I don’t think there’s a set of rules. I think it’s different for every category and every product within every category” (AM6); “You know, the old cliché, ‘The only rule is there are no rules’” (AM7); “The more rules, the more trouble you get in. [Laughs] . . . There’s not rules for what makes good advertising, I don’t believe” (AM8); “Because rules break down. And you learn those rules don’t work. I mean, there’s too many exceptions. People make a lot of money breaking the rules” (AP4). In these agency practitioners’ view, creativity is also “subjective”; its interpretation varies from individual to individual: “Well, you know, it’s subjective, I mean, again, that’s why it’s such a volatile business” (AM2); “I think it’s very subjective, you know, I think if you ask two different agencies, you get two different answers, obviously” (AM6). Not only is the genesis of the ideas subjective, but also the decision among possible alternatives, as AM9 explained: “So it’s a very subjective kind of thing. You know, I can come in with an idea that you don’t like and he does like. And then if you’re more powerful than he is, your idea is the one that’s going to get approved. Totally subjective. It’s got nothing to do with whether it’s more effective, whether it’s . . . You know, it’s just a very subjective thing.” Admitted subjectivity, in other words, relegates advertising to the areas of opinion and aesthetics rather than firm knowledge—at least when it comes to figuring out what works better: “And I think when you are dealing with an intangible product like advertising, everybody has an opinion, and you know, there’s nothing wrong with clients using it. Some of the best advertising over the years has been done solely on the basis of good judgment” (AM12); “I mean, it’s a pretty subjective business, I think. You could put six creatives in a room and they wouldn’t agree, sometimes” (AP5).

Fall 2009

Given that there is virtually no room for any rules for creativity other than that there are no rules, are there other directives that would “make advertising better”? Agency practitioners discussed this topic in detail, but for the sake of parsimony, only a very short summary is given. Directives identified can be classified into groups, according to their compliance or noncompliance with “creativity above all.” The first might be termed “creativity compliance.” Rules such as “entertainment and humor are effective in advertising” are naturally compliant with creativity and are described as desirable: “I will say this right now, point blank, if you’re in television right now, with the advent of remote controls, and clickers, and TiVo, etc., if you’re commercial is not entertaining, first and foremost, you’re going to get killed—it’s as simple as that” (AP2); “You have to be somewhat entertaining and not just be, you know, rambling attributes. Because unless you’re somewhat entertaining, you may get their attention initially, but they really won’t tune in” (CD8); “So, you know, I mean, humor—we use it all the time in the ads around here. Humor is very effective” (AM5); “You know, when you write headlines, it’s very much like telling a joke. So you want to study the masters. You want to study the cadence, the way sentences begin and end, and the way, you know, word economy. The best joke goes this way” (CD7). The ideas that advertising is better off if it is “relevant” and “differentiating” are also creativity-compatible rules, since they have more to do with the strategic bases of advertising rather than the executional surface: “Advertising that is relevant . . . is one key component of it working. . . . And unexpected without being relevant doesn’t accomplish very much. You really need the two working in combination” (AM5); “I think the advertising needs to communicate a difference between the competition and/or other factors in their choice, and present that position. . . . You’re wasting your money if you don’t show them the difference between your product, or show what your product stands for” (AM3). Finally, recommending “simplicity” and “consistency” are broad and commonsensical enough not to interfere with the creativity directive: “So, anyway, it needs to have . . . it needs to be consistent, and it needs to be consistent from, you know, one look to the next, to the next, to the next, so that you have to use the same typeface, you use the same look, you use the same format, whatever” (AM1); “I’m of the mindset that, you know, ‘keep it simple, stupid’” (AM4). The second group of directives constitutes what we could characterize as “shameful knowledge,” theories that everybody in the ad industry seems to know but in which nobody believes. They do not comply with the superiority of creativity because they are believed to lead to “formulaic advertising.” Some examples of such “theories-in-denial” are the use of mnemonic devices: “I’ve got clients who think the Aflac duck is the greatest advertising in the world. I mean, that’s just

89

stupid. . . . But Linda Kaplan Thaler did that, you know, she’s got that formula. . . . She’s got this, this hook, this mnemonic hook that’s in all her commercials” (CD3); or the dictate to use attractive spokespeople: “By the way, there’s another change in advertising, it used to be, all these Barbie dolls and pretty faces, and now if you just record an hour of TV . . . Maybe less aspirational. Or maybe the aspirations are more subtle. [A] little more achievable. I mean, you’ll see fat people in ads, bald people. That was unheard of before” (AM8). It All Depends The agency practitioners interviewed spent a lot of time discussing how “it all depends” when it comes to describing the workings of advertising. Practitioners’ theoretical ideas about how advertising works (advertising effects and core theories described above) are dependent on the specific conditions in which the advertising is used. While these conditions are potentially infinitely diverse, in these practitioners’ view, there tend to be common patterns in the workings of advertising according to four types of circumstances: (1) the strategic campaign objective, (2) the product category of the advertised brand, (3) the ad medium used, and (4) historical time periods. Strategic Campaign Objective “Sometimes it’s designed to get you to get up and go, you know, buy something, sometimes it’s designed to get you to change your opinion, sometimes it’s designed to make you go vote. Sometimes, it’s . . . You know, the actions that you’re trying to cause, sometimes they are not even really true actions. Sometimes they’re just, as I said, changes of opinion” (CD9). Trivial as this practitioner indicated it is, not all advertising is designed to work alike—and as a result, not all advertising does work alike. Different campaigns have different objectives and these are considered one of the best predictors of how advertising will work. Objectives focus on primary effects or any of the steps in the core “break through and engage” process. Brand awareness is often the only goal of introductory campaigns; it may also be the objective for campaigns for older brands, where awareness levels are low despite previous advertising activity. As CD4 explained, how advertising works “depends on the goals. I mean, obviously if . . . there are some campaigns where your whole goal is awareness. You’re a new company, got a new product, awareness is key, alright?” Therefore, there are potential scenarios where brand awareness (“break through”) is the only effect that is assumed and attitudinal shifts (“engage”) or sales results are not expected to appear, or at least not immediately. Another typical scenario is when the main goal of the advertising is attitudinal change (“engage”). These practitioners

90

The Journal of Advertising

commonly refer to these campaigns as “image” or “brand” campaigns. In such cases, while the brand still needs to be mentioned, the focus is on attitudinal change toward the brand: “But if your objective is, let’s say your product that has tons and tons of awareness . . . You know that you have tremendous brand awareness, what is more important to that particular advertiser is brand likability, favorability, and preference in some way” (AM4). Image advertising is indeed the most common type of advertising, and it is what practitioners appreciate most highly: “There are different ways. The most fun is when you’re after an emotional connection to a brand; you try to build a brand. Nike or whatever, you know, Mini is a great example of that, the whole advertising is about creating a personality about that brand. That’s when it’s the most fun, and it’s most exciting” (CD2). Finally, advertising may be designed to generate sales directly. The interviewed practitioners refer to this kind of advertising as “direct advertising” or “direct marketing” (e.g., “I mean, the easiest example from all the advertising out there that has a 1-800 number on it. Where it says call today and buy. . . . So yeah, that absolutely sells” [AM10]). A further example is what the practitioners refer to as “price advertising,” where the main focus is the product’s retail price. In the “direct” domain, practitioners’ advertising theory becomes quite simple: Advertising simply makes people buy. Product Category Ad practitioners also have different variants of their core theories based on broad differences in product categories advertised. They have a number of dichotomies about product categories: impulse versus considered purchase, categories where specific versus only generic benefits are available, emotional versus rational categories, and visible (“badge”) versus invisible category use. These practitioners believe in the distinction between impulse and considered purchase products. Ads for the two product types are thought to work differently. For impulse items, the role of advertising is to create a certain level of brand awareness, which in turn leads to purchase. In contrast, for considered purchases, the full “break through and engage” model is thought to be activated: “Awareness is a significantly more important part of advertising communications for what I’m going to call the impulse items. More studied purchases, like a car, you know, an expensive appliance, something like that, generally speaking, they are going to need more information” (AM12). Certain product categories are thought to emphasize an emotional or attitudinal alignment, while others are consumed based on performance characteristics, rational benefits, or functional superiority: “But I think, I think there are categories certainly like the fashion industry, to a degree the beverages, the beers, and the soft drinks and everything are very . . . you know, it’s

what you want to be associated with, seems to be the motivating factor. Whereas I think if you go into other categories, like I worked in, you know, like home building products, on [brand name], and there it’s an aesthetic appeal to the consumer, but there’d better be some hard facts supporting because it’s an expensive purchase. And people need validation for it. . . . And those are factual based things, but still . . . emotion is a huge part of it” (CD6). Engagement can therefore take a more rationally persuasive or more emotionally motivating character based on the product category advertised. A similar pattern is observed regarding whether it is possible to claim a unique benefit in a product category, or if the category is largely commodified. In commodity categories, where there is very little perceived rational differentiation between brands, advertising is more likely to be emotionally based, and thus affectively processed, whereas in highly differentiated categories the unique rational benefits are going to result in cognitively based engagement: “Yeah, kind of depends, the more the product falls within a commodity category, then the more emotion plays into the decision making process. If you’ve got some new or unique thing, then sometimes the rational side can overplay” (AM9). Finally, the respondents made a distinction between “badge” brands—brands that are consumed in a way that is visible to others—and brands that are less visible. Ads for badge brands are thought to impact sense of self and attitudinal alignments, which are understood as emotional rather than cognitiverational concepts: “The car category is very emotional, very high interest. . . . It’s also a badge. So, you know, it’s like . . . wearing a logo on your shirt or something. It means something, you know, it describes something about that person. It’s very emotional” (AP2). Medium Used The practitioners interviewed also believe that advertising works differently in different media. Television, for example, is perceived by the informants as a medium for emotions (engagement is therefore more emotional), whereas print is more informative (engagement is rational): “You know, broadcast advertising is more the fun and emotional, where the print is the more informative” (AM6). Outdoor advertising works like an “iconic flash” (AP3), reminding consumers of the brand: “So many times today . . . [it’s] a one-liner or something like it, and it really . . . we have a billboard, and as being a two-page spread even, so it even looks like a billboard. That’s building awareness; it’s keeping the name in front of you” (CD1). History as Domain Finally, a very significant finding is that practitioner theories are always situated in history. The agency practitioners often

Fall 2009

pointed out that advertising had worked differently in different periods of advertising history. These time boundaries are not of sharp contours, however. The two domains are: a roughly circumscribed past (often reminiscent of a mythical Golden Age) and the present (often believed to be a less advantageous environment for the advertising industry). Among the practitioners, there is a sense of limited effectiveness in the present compared with earlier decades. They complained that ads do not affect consumers as strongly as they once did. Mass media advertising in particular is believed to be losing its power: “I think there’s probably a place for the television commercial, to just let people know we’re still that brand, it’s out there, and whatnot, but as far as . . . being as effective as it used to be, you know . . .” (CD5); “I don’t think it [advertising] really has the effect that it used to” (CD3). These practitioners believe that one of the main reasons advertising works less effectively today is the increase in “advertising clutter”: “Because there’s more advertising out there, and the majority of advertising is bad, so there’s more of it, and most of it . . . It becomes worse and worse and worse” (AP6). In their view, the sheer volume of advertising that competes for consumer attention greatly reduces the effectiveness of any one single message: “And there are much, there are many more ad exposures out there that you compete with. . . . So you’re bombarded by ad messages. Which makes it, I think, all the more challenging to stand out and be remembered” (CD8). Another explanation for historical variation resides in the practitioners’ “mutation of effects” theory. Over the course of ad history, consumers have become more “cynical” toward advertising (i.e., a genetic-like resistance has built up over time): “You also, on top of that, have consumers that are more advertising or marketing savvy than they used to be, and I think there’s a little bit of cynicism, because . . . they are being bombarded constantly by messages left and right. They’re smart, they’re educated about it, and that makes [it] even more . . . tough to impact them with credibility” (AM4). Partly as a result of these changes, practitioners interviewed believe that the core model of how advertising works has shifted from rational to emotional: “I grew up in a packaged goods environment, which was in the sixties and the seventies—it was, you know, USP. But I think today more than ever you need to communicate . . . more of the image of the product. How does it relate, instead of this is a better product. And that’s more important” (AM3). DISCUSSION This research sought to examine the long-standing gap between academia and practice in advertising. The objective was to situate the disjuncture in the context of practitioner knowledge autonomy rather than communication problems,

91

personal attitudes, or organizational structures (Nyilasy and Reid 2007). Results corroborate Kover’s (1995) research on implicit practitioner theories and demonstrate that agency practitioners do have complex mental schemas about how advertising works, schemas we can reliably call theories. The results replicate Kover’s finding that agency practitioners’ beliefs about how advertising works center around the two steps of “(1) breaking through to attract interest, and (2) delivering a message” (p. 599). We also found, similarly to Kover, that subverting typical message formats is often an important goal of agency workers (see findings about creativity and the mutation of effects). Our results, however, go beyond these relatively simple conceptualizations. The more detailed findings of our study indicate that agency practitioners have theory-like ideas on many levels: (1) simple building blocks of advertising effect, (2) core theoretical ideas about how advertising works, (3) factors that make advertising work better, and (4) circumstances under which these core ideas may take different shapes. Furthermore, practitioners also reflect on their own theories (“metatheories”) and have refined technologies to launch them in key work scenarios to reassert their professional stature (“pseudoprofessionalization techniques”). But does practitioner knowledge autonomy exist? To be able to answer this question, we need to compare and contrast academic and practitioner thoughts on advertising’s workings to determine whether practitioner theories are significantly different from their academic counterparts. These data provide part of the answer of knowledge autonomy (for a full understanding, metatheories and pragmatic application must be considered as well). Table 2 presents a comparative summary of academician and practitioner theories based on our findings. Agency practitioners are able to articulate theoretical beliefs because they believe that “advertising works.” However, they also recognize that the power of advertising is severely limited by other factors, especially by the consumer. The limited effects paradigm has been long considered the dominant paradigm of mass communication research (McQuail 2000). Yet this is very seldom applied to advertising research, as testified by Vakratsas and Ambler’s (1999) definitive review of academic advertising theory—“limited effects” theory is never mentioned in their text. The individual building blocks described by the practitioners as the different types of advertising effects are much closer to academic accounts. The main difference is practitioners’ much greater emphasis on emotional effects. Regarding the core theoretical beliefs of the agency practitioners, there are both differences from and similarities with academia. The “break through and engage” model described by practitioners resembles a theory group described by Vakratsas and Ambler (1999) as “hierarchy-free” theories of advertising. These theories (just as those of the practitioners interviewed) do not assume any strict sequentiality of advertising effects and

92

The Journal of Advertising TABLE 2 Does Practitioner Knowledge Autonomy Exist? Similarities with academia

Differences from academia

1a. Limited power

Mass communication research is often characterized by the “limited effects,” “dominant paradigm.”

In advertising research specifically, however, this theory is not widely applied.

1b. Types of advertising effects

The basic building blocks of advertising effect are similar between academicians and practitioners.

Emotions receive much stronger focus in practitioner thinking.

2a. “Break through and engage”

Hierarchy-free models in Vakratsas and Ambler’s (1999) typology.

Practitioners’ theories differ from the hierarchy-of-effects models in that (1) there’s no strict sequentiality assumed beyond “break through and engaged” and (2) under different scenarios, even this core model takes on radically different forms.

2b. Mutation of effects

Persuasion Knowledge Model (PKM) (Friestad and Wright 1994) discusses a similar territory.

Advertising research as such is usually not understood as a historical academic discipline. PKM is not a dominant advertising theory, especially in a longitudinal form.

3. Creativity: “The rule of no rules”

Creativity research exists in academia.

Academic research into creativity is not research about creativity as a moderator variable in advertising effectiveness. Practitioners’ theory of creativity denies the possibility of one of the core research streams in mass communication and advertising research: the quest for quantifiable moderators.

4. “It all depends”

Some acknowledgment that advertising may work differently under different circumstances and basic theories need to be understood within boundary conditions. Some research into differences in media types and product categories.

These boundary conditions, however, are habitually ignored in standard research studies. Typically, there is no discussion of strategic advertiser intent and history as variables moderating effectiveness outcomes.

they suggest that emotive, cognitive, and behavioral effects can occur in any order, once consumers encounter advertising. In this regard, practitioners’ theories depart substantially from the hierarchy-of-effects (HOE) theory, in that they do not subscribe to a think-feel-do hierarchy. Practitioners do not believe that behavioral effect must be preceded by affectively based attitude change, which in turn needs to be preceded by cognitively based attitude change. Furthermore, practitioners insist on always qualifying theoretical beliefs by describing boundary conditions (“it all depends”), which is not at all true for HOE conceptualizations and research. It is interesting to note that the original formulation of the HOE theory was written by an advertising practitioner (Colley 1961), before it gained popularity in academia. Yet the contemporary professionals interviewed in this sample do not subscribe to this idea. Practitioners’ other core theoretical beliefs about the mutation of advertising effects over time has little support in

academic advertising research. First, academic advertising research as a discipline is primarily affiliated with psychology, a field that is traditionally nonhistorical in nature. Indeed, psychology aims to discover the immutable regularities of the human psyche, and does not deal with potential historical variation. The same applies to academic advertising research, which is largely conceived as ahistorical. Second, the closest academic relative of the “mutation of effects” idea, the Persuasion Knowledge Model (PKM) (Friestad and Wright 1994), focusing on consumers’ knowledge of advertisers’ persuasion attempts and consequent adverse reactions to such attempts, has a relatively weak level of diffusion among all academicians. Furthermore, PKM studies do not provide longitudinal evidence (or even a solid historical/longitudinal conceptualization) of how consumers’ reactions to advertising change over time. The mutation of effects idea is hardly present in academic advertising research.

Fall 2009

The belief in the omnipotence of creativity in agency practitioner thinking is especially important. While creativity has been the subject of academic inquiry (see, for example, El-Murad and West 2004), it has been difficult to quantify. Thus, academic research does not shed much light on the concern of practitioners that creativity is the most important variable in predicting advertising outcomes. Indeed, what makes an ad creative seems an insufficiently subjective concept to be involved in predictive scientific models. Furthermore, practitioners’ paradoxical notion of “no rules is the only rule” in advertising denies the possibility that—with the exception of creativity and a few creativity-compatible variables—there are any variables that can positively moderate (Baron and Kenny 1986) the relationship between advertising stimulus and ad effectiveness. It is interesting to note that the quest for quantifiable moderator variables (“who says what to whom, with what effect”) has been one of the core research streams in mass communication and advertising research (Lasswell 1927; Hovland, Lumsdaine, and Sheffield 1949). In this sense, practitioners’ thinking about the role of creativity in advertising directly rejects the raison d’être of a large proportion of the academic research output. It is important to note here that there may be an important difference between practitioners’ idealistic mind-sets on creativity and the actual creative output. As many practitioners noted, even though creativity is the most important imperative in advertising, the output often ends up being subpar (as a result of client interference). The mutation of effects idea has a similar consequence for moderator-focused academic endeavors. Since the practitioners interviewed believe that consumer resistance builds up over time to any overly formulaic techniques aiming to achieve better outcomes (precisely what generalizable moderator variables would be in academic research), the quest for such moderators is of limited value for practitioner-oriented research. According to the mutation of effects idea, the effectiveness of any discovered regularity can only be temporary (at best): Over time, any such technique loses its power and therefore ceases to be a generalizable regularity. In practitioner thinking, it is creativity that guarantees that the mutation of advertising effects phenomenon does not “kick in”: If persuasion attempts are “made fresh” (i.e., without considering the dictates of moderator-focused regularities), consumer resistance and subsequent loss of effectiveness are less likely. Practitioners’ insistence on boundary conditions (“it all depends”) is also somewhat contrasted with academic theories. While some academic theories (“integrative theories” in Vakratsas and Ambler 1999) acknowledge that advertising may work differently under some circumstances (such as product class or media forms), many theories such as HOE or the low-involvement model claim, implicitly or explicitly, universal applicability. This is in sharp contrast with practitioners’ thinking: They always place theoretical ideas within

93

the bounds of applicability. As discussed above, they claim that even basic theoretical ideas about how advertising works need to be fundamentally reconsidered in the case of different strategic intents, product classes, media forms, and historic time periods. To summarize, the study found some initial support for the hypothesis of knowledge autonomy. Practitioners, who do hold theory-like constructs about advertising, view advertising working differently from how academic theory views it. The differences are especially expressed in the areas of creativity and the mutation of effects. Furthermore, agency practitioners seem to pay more attention to the limitations of advertising effect, emotive response, and their theories’ bounds of applicability. These contrasts are further corroborated by differences in metatheoretical notions and uses of theory. All three key components of practitioner thinking (practitioner theories, metatheories, and pragmatic use) need to be considered for a full understanding of practitioner knowledge autonomy. Implications Where do these findings leave us regarding the academician– practitioner gap—our original starting point? We found evidence that practitioner “knowledge autonomy” exists. Agency practitioners indeed do think about how advertising works and their theoretical thoughts differ from academic theory. This finding complements earlier explanations of the gap, which mainly focused on academic knowledge. Indeed, it does not sound too surprising that there are communications problems between academicians and practitioners—if they understand how advertising works in significantly different ways. Our argument also has a deeper theoretical meaning. Traditional recommendations for narrowing the gap implicitly assume that advertising, in a sociology of occupations sense, is a full-fledged profession. What distinguishes professions from occupations is that they have an esoterically complex and academically validated “theoretical knowledge base” (Abbott 1988; MacDonald 1995), normally contained within academic theory and research. Furthermore, since professions benefit greatly from this theoretical knowledge base (in the form of highly elevated social status), a seamless flow of academic theories and research are sought out as ultimate forms of legitimation. Ideal professions have minimal gaps between theoretical knowledge base and practice, and those attributing the gap in advertising to circumstantial factors, which are relatively easy to correct (such as knowledge dissemination methods, academic focus, and incentives), implicitly assume that advertising, too, is a profession. While a theoretical knowledge base may exist in advertising academia (for an interesting approach to map this knowledge base, see Beard 2002), our findings suggest that agency practitioners disagree with its contents. Our data show that

94

The Journal of Advertising

there is a multiplicity of advertising knowledge. It would seem that agency practitioners, one of the key constituents of the advertising occupation, have developed relatively autonomous conceptions about how advertising works. So can the gap be narrowed? Can advertising move closer to a professional ideal? In our view, the answer depends on whether or not practitioner knowledge autonomy can be brought closer to the academic knowledge base. Implications for Academics If it wants to be relevant to advertising practitioners, academic advertising research should concentrate less on moderatorfocused theories and more on basic or mid-level theories of advertising effect. Because of practitioners’ strong belief that creativity is the only moderator that matters, any moderatorfocused academic research will be resisted on a fundamental level. Perhaps it is time to dismantle the Lasswellian program and focus less on the “who says what to whom” and more purely on the “with what effect.” It seems that the misconception that advertising professionals are atheoretical is sourcing from not seeing clearly this distinction between basic theories of advertising versus moderator-focused theories. For the program of problem-oriented research (Hunt 2002a) to succeed, somewhat ironically, basic-level theorizing (uncovering more fully how advertising works) seems to have a better prognosis than moderator-focused inquiries (prescribing what works better in advertising). Academic research could explore topics within the basic and mid-level realms that have higher priorities among practitioners; the realignment of topical interests could certainly be of great value. It seems that exploring practitioners’ mutation of effects theory could be a very fruitful academic endeavor. The steps taken by the PKM tradition referenced above are very valuable in this sense. There is a lot of opportunity to further test PKM (and the mutation of effects) with empirical research. The exploration of domain-specific boundary conditions is recommended for research. As our findings have shown, practitioners strongly believe in basic model variability based on domain-driven scenarios, and more domain-specific theorizing is needed. Academic research needs to pay special attention to the domain of time. The factor of timeliness, and the idea that ads work differently across time domains, offers a particularly significant topic for investigation. Implications for Practitioners Ad practitioners need to be more aware of the potential consequences of prescribing creativity as the sole dictate for advertising. The “only rule is no rule” argument has the potential to “overflow” its natural boundaries. Such overflows may result in blanket denials of regularities in advertising. As our data

have shown, practitioners do believe in basic and mid-level theories, but even these may become “under denial” among less discerning ad practitioners. It is our view that basic and mid-level theorizing should be welcomed by ad professionals as they do not threaten their understanding of creativity or their firmly held belief in the mutation of effects triggered by formulas. Ad practitioners should fight anti-intellectualism in the industry, supported by the realization that basic or mid-level knowledge does not endanger their perceived effectiveness in doing their job but rather improves performance—and ultimately leads to increased professional status. Research Limitations Like all inquiries, this research suffers from limitations necessitated by research design choices. First, practitioners were defined as people working at ad agencies; other advertising industry constituencies (advertisers, researchers, media professionals, etc.) were not interviewed. It is reasonable to assume that practitioner knowledge is heterogeneous and different practitioner constituencies (such as advertising and brand managers or research consultants at independent research firms or on the client side) may have expressed different views. Media planners and client media personnel in particular might have unique theories about the workings of advertising. How people are exposed to messages seems to be an increasingly relevant subject of practitioner interest. Thus, media informants would be the best source to uncover practitioner thinking in this domain. Second, the investigation was limited to a single geographical area. While a qualitative study would never have the same paradigmatic requirements for representativeness as a quantitative investigation, arguably, research conducted on samples from other ad centers (even international ones) would add depth and enhance the validity of the findings. Finally, only the “oral tradition” of advertising practitioner knowledge was sampled by this research. While it was a very conscious decision to conduct in-depth interviews, written sources could complement the account of practitioner thinking. Research Directions Future research is recommended to advance these exploratory findings. First, the theories discovered (such as mutation of effects) should be complemented by broader-scale research, using survey methodologies to evaluate and provide further evidence for the uncovered models. Second, comparative occupational differences within advertising should be investigated. There is reason to hypothesize that practitioner knowledge may differ based on agency size, occupational group, industry segment, and informant background. Third, the investigation of printed data forms (a pseudoprofessional “second knowledge

Fall 2009

base”) has great promise. Although the use of such sources was impractical for this exploratory investigation, future studies could expand our findings and uncover the “written tradition” of advertising practitioner knowledge. REFERENCES Abbott, Andrew D. (1988), The System of Professions: An Essay on the Division of Expert Labor, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. The Advertising Red Books: Agencies January 2005 (2005), New Providence, NJ: LexisNexis. AMA (American Marketing Association) Task Force on the Development of Marketing Thought (1988), “Developing, Disseminating, and Utilizing Marketing Knowledge,” Journal of Marketing, 52 (October), 1–25. Babbie, Earl (2001), The Practice of Social Research, 9th ed., Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning. Baron, Reuben M., and David A. Kenny (1986), “The ModeratorMediator Variable Distinction in Social Psychological Research: Conceptual, Strategic, and Statistical Considerations,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51 (December), 1173–1182. Beard, Fred K. (2002), “Peer Evaluation and Readership of Influential Contributions to the Advertising Literature,” Journal of Advertising, 31 (Winter), 65–75. Burawoy, Michael (1991), “Reconstructing Social Theories,” in Ethnography Unbound: Power and Resistance in the Modern Metropolis, Michael Burawoy, Alice Burton, Ann Arnett Ferguson, Kathryn J. Fox, Joshua Gamson, Nadine Gartrell, Leslie Hurst, Charles Kurzman, Leslie Salzinger, Josepha Schiffman, and Shiori Ui, eds., Berkeley: University of California Press, 8–27. Charmaz, Kathy (2005), “Grounded Theory in the 21st Century,” in Handbook of Qualitative Research, 2nd ed., Norman K. Denzin and Yvonna S. Lincoln, eds., Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 507–535. Colley, Russell H. (1961), Defining Advertising Goals for Measured Advertising Results, New York: Association of National Advertisers. Corbin, Juliet, and Anselm Strauss (1990), “Grounded Theory Method: Procedures, Canons, and Evaluative Criteria,” Qualitative Sociology, 13 (March), 3–21. Creswell, John W. (1998), Qualitative Inquiry and Research Design: Choosing Among Five Traditions, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. El-Murad, Jaafar, and Douglas C. West (2004), “The Definition and Measurement of Creativity: What Do We Know?” Journal of Advertising Research, 44 ( June), 188–201. Friestad, Marian, and Peter Wright (1994), “The Persuasion Knowledge Model: How People Cope with Persuasion Attempts,” Journal of Consumer Research, 21 ( June), 1–31. Glaser, Barney G. (1978), Theoretical Sensitivity, Mill Valley, CA: Sociological Press. ——— (1992), Basics of Grounded Theory Analysis, Mill Valley, CA: Sociological Press. ——— (1998), Doing Grounded Theory: Issues and Discussions, Mill Valley, CA: Sociological Press.

95

———, and Anselm L. Strauss (1967), The Discovery of Grounded Theory: Strategies for Qualitative Research, Chicago: Aldine. Hovland, Carl Iver, Arthur A. Lumsdaine, and Fred D. Sheffield (1949), Experiments on Mass Communication, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Hunt, Shelby D. (2002a), Foundations of Marketing Theory: Toward a General Theory of Marketing, Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe. ——— (2002b), “Marketing as a Profession: On Closing Stakeholder Gaps,” European Journal of Marketing, 36 (March), 305–312. Kover, Arthur J. (1995), “Copywriters’ Implicit Theories of Communication: An Exploration,” Journal of Consumer Research, 21 (March), 596–611. Kvale, Steinar (1996), Interviews: An Introduction to Qualitative Research Interviewing, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Lasswell, Harold D. (1927), Propaganda Technique in the World War, New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Lincoln, Yvonna S., and Egon C. Guba (1985), Naturalistic Inquiry, Beverly Hills: Sage. MacDonald, Keith M. (1995), The Sociology of the Professions, London: Sage. McFall, Liz (2002), “What About the Old Cultural Intermediaries? An Historical Review of Advertising Producers,” Cultural Studies, 16 (4), 532–552. McQuail, Denis (2000), Mass Communication Theory, 4th ed., London: Sage. Miller, Steven I., and Marcel Fredericks (1999), “How Does Grounded Theory Explain?” Qualitative Health Research, 9 ( July), 538–551. Morse, Janice M. (1995), “The Significance of Saturation,” Qualitative Health Research, 5 (2), 147–149. Nixon, Sean (2000), “In Pursuit of the Professional Ideal: Advertising and the Construction of Commercial Expertise in Britain, 1953–64,” in Commercial Cultures: Economies, Practices, Spaces, Peter Jackson, Michelle Lowe, Daniel Miller, and Frank Mort, eds., Oxford: Berg, 55–74. ——— (2003), Advertising Cultures: Gender, Commerce, Creativity, London: Sage. ———, and Paul du Gay (2002), “Who Needs Cultural Intermediaries?” Cultural Studies, 16 (4), 495–500. Nyilasy, Gergely, and Leonard N. Reid (2007), “The Academician–Practitioner Gap in Advertising,” International Journal of Advertising, 26 (4), 425–445. Ottesen, Geir G., and Kjell Gronhaug (2004), “Barriers to Practical Use of Academic Marketing Knowledge,” Marketing Intelligence and Planning, 22 (5), 520–530. Parasuraman, A. (1982), “Is a ‘Scientist’ Versus ‘Technologist’ Research Orientation Conducive to Marketing Theory Development?” in Marketing Theory: Philosophy of Science Perspectives, Ronald F. Bush and Shelby D. Hunt, eds., Chicago: American Marketing Association. Pike, Kenneth L. (1954), Language in Relation to a Unified Theory of the Structure of Human Behavior, Part 1, Glendale, CA: Summer Institute of Linguistics. Reid, Leonard N., Karen W. King, and Denise E. DeLorme (1998), “Top-Level Agency Creatives Look at Advertising Creativity Then and Now,” Journal of Advertising, 27 (Summer), 1–16.

96

The Journal of Advertising

Rossiter, John R. (2001), “What Is Marketing Knowledge: Stage I: Forms of Marketing Knowledge,” Marketing Theory, 1 (1), 9–26. Soar, Matthew (2000), “Encoding Advertisements: Ideology and Meaning in Advertising Production,” Mass Communication and Society, 3 (4), 415–437. Strauss, Anselm (1993), Continual Permutations of Action, New York: Aldine de Gruyter. ———, and Juliet Corbin (1990), Basics of Qualitative Research: Grounded Theory Techniques and Procedure, Newbury Park, CA: Sage. ———, and ——— (1994), “Grounded Theory Methodology,” in Handbook of Qualitative Research, Norman K. Denzin and Yvonna S. Lincoln, eds., Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 273–285. ———, and ——— (1998), Basics of Qualitative Research: Techniques and Procedures for Developing Grounded Theory, 2nd ed., Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Synodinos, Nicolaos E., Charles F. Keown, and Lawrence W. Jacobs (1989), “Transnational Advertising Practices: A Survey

of Leading Brand Advertisers in Fifteen Countries,” Journal of Advertising Research, 29 (April/May), 43–50. Vakratsas, Demetrios, and Tim Ambler (1999), “How Advertising Works: What Do We Really Know?” Journal of Marketing, 63 ( January), 26–43. Vaughn, Diane (1992), “Theory Elaboration: The Heuristics of Case Analysis,” in What Is a Case? Howard Becker and C. Ragin, eds., New York: Cambridge University Press, 173–202. West, Douglas, and John Ford (2001), “Advertising Agency Philosophies and Employee Risk Taking,” Journal of Advertising, 30 (Spring), 77–91. ———, Adrian Sargeant, and Alan Miciak (1999), “Advertiser Risk-Orientation and the Opinions and Practices of Advertising Managers,” International Journal of Advertising, 18 (February), 51–71. Zaltman, Gerald, Karen LeMasters, and Michael Heffring (1982), Theory Construction in Marketing: Some Thoughts on Thinking, New York: Wiley.