Since 1994, Rehak Creative Services has developed effective and engaging marketing communications for local and international clients. Rehak Creative Services focusing on identifying an advertising strategy that will increase clients’ awareness and sales. In this interview, Rehak Creative Services founder Bob Rehak describes how the development of advertising and marketing materials requires keen insight into the consumer’s perspective.

Q: What’s the primary goal of an advertisement?

Bob Rehak, Rehak Creative Services: Basically, advertisements—or any form of communication, for that matter—need to grab people’s attention. That’s job #1.

Q: How do advertising agencies make this happen?

Bob Rehak, Rehak Creative Services: Visuals provide the stopping power that will attract and engage the audience.

Q: What obstacles prevent clients from reaching their audience?

Bob Rehak, Rehak Creative Services: In this era of data overload, there is often a huge disconnect between information and meaning.

Q: Can you elaborate?

Bob Rehak, Rehak Creative Services: Consumers often take in a wealth of content on a daily basis, but there’s precious little context.

Q: Who is responsible for reestablishing this connection?

Bob Rehak, Rehak Creative Services: The ability to bond with the audience requires sensitive, innovative work by a whole group of writers, editors, illustrators, designers and photographers.

Q: How has Rehak Creative Services in particular solved the problem?

Bob Rehak, Rehak Creative Services: The experienced team members of Rehak Creative Services have explored what it truly means to convey information with creativity and clarity.

Q: How has the advertising industry changed in recent years?

Bob Rehak, Rehak Creative Services: In this time-pressured world, people further appreciate those who communicate quickly and succinctly.

Q: How can creative people accomplish this task?

Bob Rehak, Rehak Creative Services: Creative people need to say something worthwhile to hold the reader’s attention in order to read the copy.

Q: Will lengthy content help their cause?

Bob Rehak, Rehak Creative Services: Sometimes, especially if people are in the final stages of making a purchase decision. But in many cases, especially early in the purchase decision making cycle, using fewer words is actually a better strategy.

Q: Without words, what can creative people do to draw attention to advertising?

Bob Rehak, Rehak Creative Services: Visual elements provide the initial stopping power.

Q: Can you give us an example from the Rehak Creative Services portfolio?

Bob Rehak, Rehak Creative Services: One of the most downloaded samples on our website is a brochure we did for the American Leadership Forum/Children’s Defense Fund Cradle-to-Prison Pipeline project.

Q: How does photography create stopping power?

Bob Rehak, Rehak Creative Services: Good photography can have an ironic, empathetic quality to it.  In this case, we used a baby in a crib reaching for a pair of handcuffs that were dangling overhead like a toy.

Q: In the grand scheme of themes, what are advertising experts trying to accomplish?

Bob Rehak, Rehak Creative Services: In this case, we were trying to draw attention to community groups that had innovative strategies for helping to break at-risk children out of the Cradle-to-Prison pipeline. Our goal was to help generate support for their efforts.

Rehak Creative Services is a Houston-based advertising agency with a roster of international clients including Halliburton, TransCanada, and ChevronPhillips. Under the guidance of renowned creative director Bob Rehak, Rehak Creative Services has won more than 100 industry awards. For more information on Rehak Creative Services and their advertising campaigns, visit rehak.com.