VOL.53•NO.3 September2013 DOI: 10.2501/JAR-53-3-000-000 September 2013 JOURNAL OF ADVERTISING RESEARCH 1 000 Matching Creative Agencies with Results-Driven Marketers: Do Clients Really Need Highly Creative Advertising? SHEILA LUCY SASSER, SCOTT KOSLOW, and MARK KILGOUR • When clients are in difficult situations, they are more open to exploring and thus more likely to buy work that is highly creative. • Organizational politics have a special relationship to creativity since being a champion for a new idea or innovation is deemed as political behavior that makes such innovation possible. • Creative people lament that their most highly creative work never leaves the agency; account executives feel it is better to give up on a creative campaign than risk an account loss. • Copy-testing reduces a client’s likelihood of using a campaign, although the campaigns agencies produce are no less creative when they are expected to be copy-tested, • When clients are open to exploring new ideas, presenting them with mediocre, less creative “safe” ideas is clearly not acceptable since more clients are demanding greater creativity.