Signaling Authenticity: Practitioner Views of the Signaling Power of Creative Advertising in a Digital World

The notion that advertising sends signals to consumers beyond its observable content has a relatively long history. Since the 1970s, economists have modeled advertising’s ability to signal brand and product quality, ability and commitment. More recently, creative advertising has been shown to signal sender effort, trust and credibility to consumers. But in the current digital era, the question arises of whether advertising creativity is losing its signaling potency. Through a series of depth interviews with advertising professionals in Australia, the UK, and the USA, we find that creativity does in fact continue to signal authenticity, trustworthiness, effort and innovation, even in this digital age.