Temple Media Project

Temple/London Fall 1999
A Psychological Profile of British Media

Content: Creativity in Advertisements
by
J. Carroll, G. DeIeso, S. Montgomery, and J. Murr

The question examined was how the creativity in British advertisements and overall appearance of the media compares to America. Being creative is defined in the Webster dictionary as "having the quality of something created rather than imitated or assembled: expressive of the maker." This definition was used with the notion of unique ideas to research advertisements in magazines and newspapers and on radio and television. The overall creativity of newspapers was also looked at. It is important to recognize the creative differences between the societies in order to understand other differences.

Nine American and the British equivalent magazines were analyzed in terms of creativity. Creativity in advertisements for magazines can be defined as the amount of graphics, pictures, indirect/symbolic meanings, humor and unique placements of the ad itself. The magazines used were the November issues of Time, BusinessWeek, Cosmopolitan, Men’s Fitness, Shape, GQ, Esquire, Heat, and People. The first seven publications have a British version under the same title. Heat is a British magazine that is similar to the American magazine, People. These magazines were chosen to analyze all ads over a broad section of magazine genres (i.e. Women, men, sports/fitness, business, and entertainment).

There were four main aspects with British advertisements that were significantly different from the American magazine ads. The amount of pictures and graphics used in the ads, on average, were similar for both countries. The differences are in the content of the picture and the words associated with it.

British ads contain models with less clothing on than the models in American ads. The ads also contain more sexual scenes with men and women. There is a big difference in nudity in the last few pages of the British men’s and women’s magazines. The ads about plastic surgery are much more graphic in the British ads. The women are always shown topless and in a thong where as in the American versions they are wearing a full set of underwear.

British ads give usually non-sexual items an under lying sexual twist. The advertisements for mascara, shaving cream and cat food have a sexual overtone in the writing and presentation of the ad.

British ads often use a sexual play on words in the ads. They have sexy phrases to catch the attention of the audience. One clothing line called French Connection uses a sexual play on words in all of their ads. They show a good-looking female model with print that states, ‘Think my clothes off’ or ‘I am naked underneath’. Somewhere else in the ad it will say ‘fcuk’. This is the name of the company in a clever form. Fcuk stands for French Connection, United Kingdom.

The British ads contain fewer paragraphs explaining the product. Many more American ads explain their product somewhere on the page. The British ads make the reader think more about the ad to figure out what the product is. The pictures and words go along less with the product than in American ads. The products placed in the ads are usually not as obvious in the British magazines. They are small, hidden, or incorporated into the background making them more difficult to find.

In British ads the words that go along with the picture are funnier than in American ads. One example shows the back of three men standing at urinals. The caption above states, ‘A full straight 15 inches, every man’s dream, every women’s fantasy’. At the bottom of the ad it states the product name. It is for a wrinkle free product. In the picture the back of the middle man’s shirt is perfectly straight and ironed. The shirts on the men at each end are extremely wrinkled.

There are a lot of stuffers in British magazines. These are ads that are loose from the magazine. These ads must be held and actively thrown out. This is a different approach from that of American magazines. The stuffers in American magazines are usually only for subscriptions to that magazine. They are not for a variety of products, including credit cards, pharmacies, clothing stores, as is the case for British stuffers.

The gifts given with the British magazines are also more unique. They are usually larger and more interesting than the basic cosmetics and accessories that come with American magazines. Many British magazines come with bags, purses, calendars, CD’s, and books.

The placement of some of the two page ads are very different in the British magazines compared to the American. Some of the two page ads require a 90-degree turn of the magazine in order to view them correctly. This was never seen in any of the American magazines.

To analyze the creativity in advertisements and station identification logos, several British commercials and a few channels were taken into consideration. The four channels observed were BBC 1, ITV, Channel 4, and Channel 5. These different channels were recorded at different times (morning, afternoon, and evening) in order to get a variety of ads. The commercials and id logos were then observed and judged on originality. The different types of humor, figurative meanings (saying one thing but alluding to another), and cartoon or computer images used in advertisements were the main concentration. These aspects were looked at to determine creativity because it was determined that they are used more uniquely. It was decided not to evaluate the creativity of British and American programs because it would be too subjective.

Most of the channels had one fairly simple image that they put up during certain programs with either a their channel number or their company initials. Channel 5 has just the number 5 in a circle in a box placed in the upper left corner of the screen. ITV just had their initials in a blue box. BBC 1 had their initials in separate boxes. Most of these are not very unique or creative ideas. In the United States, they have moving station id logos, colored ones, and they even use animal personification (NBC and its peacock). This originality and technology makes these id logos more creative.

The British channels do use a form of id logo, type of promotion, whenever they are moving in and out of a program. BBC 1 uses an image of a hot air balloon flying in over the countryside and Channel 5 uses the color rainbow strip. These ideas are more creative then their regular station id logo. Again, the States have more original ideas for their promotions. ABC recently launched the "We love TV" movement where they have their company initials and a little saying of why television is so great.

Overall, it seemed as if most of the British commercials were more story-oriented and had more of a focus on indirect humor and sex than the American counterparts. In Britain, the more the creative the ad the later it is on during the day, with the nighttime slots having the most original and creative ads. This is very comparable to the States.

An example of a creative British advertisement is the Tetley Tea ad. It is an animated cartoon that has a couple making out in the backseat of a cab (sexual reference). The woman asks him to come up for some coffee and he gets offended and says, "What kind of man do you think I am?" Then there is the Tetley tea logo and slogan. This was a very unique commercial and was very humorous with the indirect meaning of the situation.

Another commercial that also showed creativity in British ads was the Woolworth Christmas ad. The ad features a mother realizing she has forgotten to get gift tags and takes her two children to Woolworth’s. Once they step inside, they are transported to this magical snowy land where they receive the presents they’ve always wanted. In the next scene, the mother is wrapping presents and realized she still forgot to get gift tags and then there is a voice over stating their slogan, "Don’t forget what you came in for."

It is hard to determine whether one country has more creative ads than the other does. Both countries have their own way of producing creative commercials. For the most part, it could be said that the United States has a larger quantity of creative commercials because they use more commercials in general. Britain uses commercials very little. Two of their five terrestrial channels do not have advertisements at all. This is the biggest difference between the advertisements of each country.

To analyze and compare the creativity in British and American newspapers various parts

This data was taken from the same materials (newspapers) used for analyzing clutter in

In general, British and American newspapers had the same layout and presentation. There was no difference in the advertisements found in newspapers from the UK and the US. Most advertisements are basic placement ads with company logos and phrases in black and white print. About one-fourth of advertisements placed in both countries newspapers were colored.

Color -Basic newspaper layout (print and photo size and presentation of name and logo outline)

The Financial Times newspaper is colored pink. This not only catches the eye of readers but distinguishes itself from all other black and white print newspapers.

British newspapers tend to be more colorful through the use of brighter colors graphics, pictures and the paper itself, while American newspapers tend to be more faded. Creativity with color is important in newspapers because it makes specific items stand out making the paper more appealing to the eye, therefore more appealing to readers.

Neither British nor American newspapers are more creative when strictly dealing with the use of names and logos.

British newspapers tend to use the idea of newspapers as magazines. Many use a colored bar below the name of the newspaper. Inside the bar a preview of what lifestyle and entertainment articles will be in today paper and tomorrow’s paper. This is a very creative tactic because it popular universal topics to lure readers to buy that particular newspaper and want to buy it the following day.

British Newspapers very creatively place certain photographs next to specific headlines/articles that do not necessarily go with the each other but look like they could. This misleads viewers to get a wrong conception of what the article is about and what it is trying to say. Many times the headlines and photos are placed in a way such as to either shock viewers or to make a statement on an issue they could not openly do in the newspaper. For example in the Friday, October 29^th issue of the Daily Telegraph a picture of models was ‘coincidentally’ placed next to a headline saying "Teenage Girls ‘Rushing Health to Loose Weight." There are so many ‘coincidences in UK newspapers like this, that it is safe to say they are purposely placed in this format. Although misleading, this is a very good tactic for newspapers to use because it stands out to viewers at first glance making the paper more appealing. Overall, American newspapers do not tend to do this type of misleading association of headlines and photos as much. When US do attempt this tactic they tend to be unsuccessful in getting the underlying point across.

American newspapers include a lot of additional information sources following an article that was presented in the newspaper. These sources include various web sites (other than that particular paper displaying the article) and telephone numbers. This is a very good tactic to use because it gains the confidence of the readers by displaying the reliability of the information it is presenting. It also gives the readers valuable information for future and present use; for example, abuse hotline numbers, web addresses for accidents, government policies, etc. UK newspapers rarely add this type of information after articles, unless it is that particular newspaper’s web address.

Four British radio stations were listened to and analyzed in terms of creativity. Creativity was based on the advertisements and radio programs. Stations that were researched for creativity was Radio1 (98.8), Radio 2 (89.1), Virgin (105.8) and Kiss (100). The listening times of most of these stations were in the morning, mid-day, early evening and late night. Since radio is a non-visual medium it is really up to the listener what they consider creative. The research was done to compare the creativity in British radio to American radio.

Creativity is very subjective and it really depends on the person that is listening to the radio. What was found in this research was that there are more differences between British and American radio in terms of creativity.

It is very important to know that British radio has more talk show programs than music played. The creativity in these programs are not very entertaining. In the U.S. we don’t have that many talk show programs scheduled but we do have the DJ’s bringing up some type of conversation. Howard Stern is probably the most listened talk program that we have on a FM station and by many Americans considered a creative genius. Talk programs on radio 1 and radio 2, deal more with everyday issues in the world and are not very original or creative.

Radio advertisements are not very creative. Most advertisements are read by the DJ instead of pre recorded advertisement. The States have more creative ads/ jingles and less advertisements done by the DJ.

The radio station identifications in British radio are less creative. In the US, each radio station has several identifications. They will either have the DJ say what station your listening to or a recorded one that says the radio station with the kind of music played in the background. Most radio stations will also have some famous person/people say what station that you are tuned into. In Britain the station Id’s are done by the DJ or by a recorded voice and that is it.

For the four mediums, radio, newspapers, magazines and television the results that were found were based on whether or not Britain is less or more creative than the US. In all media creativity is up to the observer but the results that were found were as follows. In radio it was said that British radio is less creative in the US. In Magazines British magazines were more creative than U.S. magazines. In Newspapers there was no difference between the amount of creativity for Britain and the U.S.. In television Britain was more creative with commercials than in the United States.