Social Responsibility in Advertising Creativity

Social responsibility is increasingly more and more relevant in the circles of advertising creative professionals as the consumers' demand for businesses to take actions grows. In recent years, this has become integrated into the customer demands to the point where brands and their advertising agencies are expected to produce ads with positive impact on the society, consumer culture and the planet. As a result, creative professionals in advertising agencies are increasingly presumed to generate creative outcomes with social responsibility initiatives at the core of their creative conceptualization. This becomes continuously more difficult, as they also have to juggle client and monetary expectations at the same time. The aim of this thesis is to explore the connection between social responsibility initiatives of advertisers and its role in their creative processes. This was researched by means of the motivations of ad professionals to produce creative outcomes rooted in social responsibility and the internal and external factors that weigh in on their creative process. The research was conducted in one of the international advertising agency networks in Amsterdam, using semi-structured interviews and ethnographic participant observation in the field. To gain an insight into the understanding and role of social responsibility in the creative production of the agency teams, seven interviews were conducted and participant observations were carried out during the span of three months. The results develop an overview of the individual role social responsibility plays within a creative process of an advertising practitioner as well as the various aspects that determine the extent to which such initiatives are free to be present in a brand campaign. Moreover, the data suggest that there are specific factors, internal and external, that are required in order for creative advertisers to develop SR-driven campaigns. These findings reveal that the way social responsibility emerges within the creative process of advertising agencies is unclear and there are specific characteristics that are required for both agency and clients to produce such campaigns in order to have a positive impact within the society.