Creatives’ brand attitudes affect the type of ads they produce

Consumers and professional creatives often produce creative
work for brands, such as new product designs or TV commercials.
Several factors influence the production of marketing materials, such
as creative managers’ leadership style (Mallia, Windels, and Broyles
2013) or the level of collaboration between client and agency (Calderwood, Koslow, and Sasser 2021). However, research has overlooked
the impact of creatives’ brand attitudes on the outcome of their work.
Advertising creatives are consumers themselves; what distinguishes
them from other consumers is that brands are also the object of their
work.
We investigate how creatives’ brand attitudes affect the type of
advertisements that creatives produce for a brand. Specifically, we
propose that creatives who have negative brand attitudes are more
likely to produce functional advertisements, appealing to rationality, and less likely to produce emotional ads, appealing to emotions
(Aaker and Norris 1982; Holbrook and Batra 1987; Zarantonello,
Jedidi, and Schmitt 2013). We propose that this happens because
individuals who dislike a brand believe that their attitudes have a
negative impact on their work and that they try to correct for this perceived bias by staying rational and suppressing their emotions. This,
in turn, inadvertently spills over onto their creative output. We tested
these predictions in four studies, in laboratory and field contexts. All
studies were preregistered, except study 2 (...)