This past week I have had a few the best conversations I have ever had in my career. Most of those conversations were either marketing and brand advise for clients who think their agency partners lack creativity. this was a running theme all week. Has the agency world lost the market on creative?
Perhaps it has. The way I look at the world - we are all creative - in different ways. But in our profound journey to create the best campaigns have the institutions we worked for set us up for creative success?
Sir Ken Robinson
makes an entertaining (and profoundly moving) case for creating an
education system that nurtures creativity, rather than undermining it.
With ample anecdotes and witty asides, Robinson points out the many
ways our schools fail to recognize -- much less cultivate -- the
talents of many brilliant people. The universality of his message is
evidenced by its rampant popularity online. A typical review: "If you
have not yet seen Sir Ken Robinson's TED talk, please stop whatever you're doing and watch it now."
http://static.videoegg.com/ted/flash/loader.swf
Is your Agency partitioning or siloing people out of their
creativity? Let me hear from you. I am trying to save our collective creative planet.
The “lack of creativity” everyone has been talking about is often bec of silos, but I have found that is more often because of deliverables and reality.
The reality is that emerging media doesn’t have the same ROI models we have established for traditional digital media.
Additionally, too many agencies and marketers are looking for another way to yell their messages AT customers without considering the nature of the interactive environments. Users are there for a reason, and chances are it’s not to see advertisements.
Overall as an industry, we need to do a better job of explaining the emerging media dynamic to clients. Mainstream media loves sensationalism, be it Second Life or the iPhone. The expectations generated are unrealistic. We need to look at Emerging Media as a channel of it’s own, a channel in which we have the opportunity to converse with users in unique and new ways. We need to look at everything as a test and learn with reasonable deliverable expectations. This will only come through strategic emerging media activation.
On the other point, having worked in advertising my whole career, I can point to one consistent theme responsible for a lack of creativity. And that falls squarely on ‘clients’ shoulders. No matter which side of the atlantic I have been on, or what agency I have worked at, one reoccuring theme is clients generally have no vision, no balls, no creativity. They want what they have seen before, unwilling to take risks or break new ground. I guess clients are coming out of the same education system as the rest of us, thus equally discouraged from creative thought. But to place the blame on agency seems unfair from my perspective. I’m sure clients will tell you they are unhappy with creativity, but if they were to honestly look at their input or contribution I fear they would find stifling lack of budget, thought, chutzpah.
But maybe I’m just unfortunate 🙂
Ken Robinson video was great BTW
adam