The outlook among brand marketers and ad agency staff on the state of creativity in today’s advertising is, overall, pretty good, although they’re more critical of their own work. Radio marketing and promotions company CRN International polled brand marketing and ad agency personnel for its recent “The State of Creativity in Advertising” report, and found that 76 percent rated today’s advertising creative as either excellent or good, and only two percent of those surveyed said that the advertising community’s creative was poor. Furthermore, 27 percent of respondents said that the quality of creative has improved over the past year—12 percent said it has gotten worse.

When queried on their own brands, the response was more muted, with 63 percent describing the creative work as excellent or good. Broken out between corporate brand marketing staff and agencies, the corporate respondents described their own brand creative as excellent or good, while 59 percent of agencies said the same. In contrast, the two groups have similarly positive attitudes towards the general industry’s creative.

Brand marketing staff and ad agencies also have differing views on what type of creative content is the most effective for reaching their objectives. Overall, respondents identified “informative” ads as the most effective way to get their message out—at 65 percent—but support was much stronger among brand marketing staff at 75 percent, versus 54 percent at agencies.

CRN’s survey did identify areas for improvement. Overall, 37 percent described identifying what resonates with consumers as their No. 1 challenge; 31 percent said the same about the lack of a proper corporate culture or environment to foster and support creativity. Other areas of attention noted in the survey include too many priorities (13 percent), the availability of quality talent (six percent) and the fear of failure (three percent).