Slick, savvy commercials are popping up through your television screens like scions every day. Clips of supermodels parading around in a mud ring promoting the latest brand of potato chips, three flags on lily pads chattering about beer, and a full screenshot of Lance Armstrong's head with the words "Just do it" on the screen fill our screens. How does one go about implementing creativity into their ads to generate customers? Is it a natural born skill or the product of intense research? One of the most popular advertising books of all time, Rhetoric and Ideology in Advertising by G. Andren in 1978, creates a checklist of effective guidelines for setting the creativity bar in adverts. Here they are:

Eye Catching Graphic - a picture that takes up more than 50% of space

Sex - Leaves out the informational in favor of sexually arousing marketing (i.e. bikini clad women holding bottles of beer)

Slogans: phonetically pleasing phrases that is easy to remember

Paradox: Pleasing language

Value transference: product or service conveys a quality that "can be had" by using it (i.e. Red Bull commercials that claim the drink will give you wings, a connotation to energy)

Product demand: the illusion that the product is in high demand, suggesting customers to buy it quick (i.e. CD player commercials that are replaced by commercials bragging "stylistic tunes")

100% natural: Products that boast about being 100% natural which gives customers an illusion of purity.

Flattery: ad heaps praises at viewers in different ways

Temptation: ad forces buyers into believing they can achieve something attainable that’s out of this world (i.e. Axe commercials with women flocking to Axe wearer)

Testimonial: a popular celebrity admired by many who endorse the product (i.e. Bad Boy Entertainment CEO P. Diddy offering a sit-down testimonial in the Proactiv Acne Solution commercials. Interesting note: he brags about having to always “drive a certain car” and "wear a certain shoes" and how he must have Proactiv as well - very effective!)

Entertainment: commercials seeking to attract viewers through humor (i.e. quickly uncorked beer bottles that spray in someone's face in a drink commercial)

Using any of the above techniques, you can tug at a customer's emotions and get the results you want.