Jacob Goldenberg

When Deep Structures Surface: Design Structures That Can Repeatedly Surprise

Coauthor(s): David Mazursky.

Abstract:
Recent findings in the creativity and marketing literature have revealed a seemingly unexpected phenomenon: Creative ideas frequently share similar design structures and patterns. The present study extends recent research regarding the impact of creative design structures. It addresses the question of whether ads that use the same structure that appears repeatedly in various ads would consistently be judged as original and favorable or whether such judgments would diminish over occurrences of ad exposure. The studies show that, by and large, subjects do not discover the formula of the design structure. Moreover, even if subjects are informed about it explicitly, the impact of ads matching a single design structure shown consecutively is not undermined over exposures. As a result, despite the repeated use of a design structure in series of exposures to ads with unrelated contents, originality evaluations remain high.

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