The equation for perfect advertising

A few months ago Wired ran an article on "the formula that killed Wall Street". It was about an equation (the Gaussian Copula formula) which our financial institutions used to bundle up risk and thereby identify the value of sub-prime mortgages. Self evidently it didn't work, or if you believe the formula's creator David X. Li, the formula was fine but just misused.

In the new(ish) field of behavioural economics there would be some kind of explanation for this. In fact, you could probably write another equation to explain how and why the first one stopped working so spectacularly. Can we then create some sort of formula that would allow us to create the perfect ad?

A friend of mine has small holiday cottage which we sometimes borrow during the summer. Amongst the holiday reading on the bookshelves is an ancient leather bound tome entitled 'How to advertise' from the 1930s. It contains many simple and straightforward formulas for creating adverts that, if followed to the letter, would guarantee success.

Much has of course moved on since then and the word 'formulaic' is often used to describe advertising we find dull and familiar. Rarely is formulaic used positively, especially when applied to the subject of creativity. But whilst there may not be formula, perhaps there is at least a definition of creativity we can agree on. My favourite is "A mental process involving the generation of new ideas, or new association between existing ideas. The result of this (divergent) thinking should be generally both original and appropriate".

It's can't be so hard to build this into a formula can it? In which case formulaic ideas are the best ones, and highly leveraged practitioners can bring the world of communications to its knees by misusing it in the pursuit of unsustainable growth. Sound familiar?