We Need to Talk About Creative
by David Hayes, In the Company of Huskies
Paul Virilio, the French cultural theorist and philosopher best known for his writings about our relationships with technology said that “The invention of the ship was also the invention of the shipwreck.” As we enter a new decade this eloquent explanation of causality begs us to take pause and consider what we have learnt in the past ten years and what will the next chapter be?
For the ad industry, in particular, the ascent of tech companies and the encroachment of consultancies has transformed advertising’s terms and conditions. At the core of this is a battle between data, efficiency and targeting versus creativity.
I think it’s safe to say that in this drive for efficiency, creativity has become the casualty. For companies and brands conversions have trumped connecting. But this short-termism has its implications for brands as highlighted in Les Binet and Peter Field’s paper The Long and the Short of It.
As agencies, we need to continue to help our clients understand the dangers of focusing on short-termism alone and help them understand the importance of creativity in brand building. But we also need to continue to rethink and reshape our agencies operating systems, in particular, the creative process and team structure. So how do we do this?
Nick Law the former R/GA vice-chair and global chief creative officer of the Publicis Groupe who recently shacked up with Apple as the vice-president of Marcom integration believes in moving beyond the copy and art structure towards building in-house capabilities and skills. He asserts, (as we can agree I’m sure) that we have moved from the broadcast model to an interactive/experiential model and as such creative teams need to better understand and be versed in working with and exploring these mediums and interfaces.
Bob Greenberg (Law’s old boss) believes that ‘the agency of the future must be built on a collaborative culture and infrastructure.’ Some of the most successful creative agencies today cite this intersection of collaboration and creativity as their secret sauce. Droga5 proudly boasts that they ‘solve problems through creativity and collaboration’ while Forsman & Bodenfors proudly exclaim that their ‘truly collaborative way of working has over the years unlocked continuous creative excellence and built unusually human brands.’ For sure, collaboration is a labored buzzword within the industry but the fact is, it’s the driving force behind successful agencies and successful work.
At the end of the day if we are to continue to adapt to the continuing rapid pace of change it will require both building in-house capabilities and continued collaboration be in-house or with outside partners. As agency leaders we must learn from the ‘beginning chapters of the Internet revolution’ we must test, prototype and innovate to foster, facilitate and fortify our creative outputs.
Steve Jobs asked us to ‘Think Differently’ and expressed the belief that "the creative revolution didn’t happen because somebody said I will work harder, it happened because of an organizational change".
The benefits for those that explore this organizational change are obvious, the opportunity to create diverse creative work and products while facilitating dynamic ways of working. The opportunity to decrease inflated organizations and rigid systems. The opportunity to grow agency services and expand our client base. And the potential to develop new business models that could replace retainer-ships and project fees.
But most importantly, the opportunity to put creativity back at the heart of brand building and redress the slide into short-term performance-driven, over optimized and super targeted vanilla marketing practices. If this is truly the end of the beginning, we have to — in some way — go back to basics and put creativity back at the heart of our industry.
David Hayes, In the Company of Huskies