±±¾©Èü³µpk10

Skip to full table

What makes a great creative idea? Or more specifically, does a great creative idea have to be truly original?

Cravendale's 'Cats with thumbs' is the latest ad in the brand's award-winning creative campaign.

Do you remember Cravendale before it started making brilliant ads? Exactly, nor do I. Here's a brand that has fought off the supermarket straitjacket and used genuine creativity to plough its own furrow. As much as it's fashionable to say that TV advertising is yesterday's news, brands such as Cravendale prove that it can be more effective than ever.

The Cravendale campaign has received the admiration of the public and the ad industry alike. The ads cut through the mundanity of the average commercial break and help create a genuinely differentiated brand in one of the most commoditised of consumer categories.

'Cats with thumbs' is no exception - a TV ad that's gone viral. LOL cats with thumbs. Before I'd even seen it, at least three of my family members had told me about it. Here's a slice of genuine family entertainment. When every news broadcast feels like an excerpt from a Hollywood disaster movie, and newspapers are full of economic woe, Cravendale is helping us see the funny side of life. The brand is laughing its way into our hearts and onto our breakfast tables.

Not everyone in the ad industry is happy, though. You see, cats with thumbs were the comedy invention of Eddie Izzard more than 10 years before appearing in Cravendale's ads. The man who gave us 43 marathons in 51 days also gave birth to the concept of these mutant felines in a stand-up routine. But is this really an issue?

Advertising purists should look away now.

As marketers, we live in the most unpredictable of times. The old certainties are gone. Past performance is no longer a guarantee of future success. There is no handrail.

But the smartest among us are keeping our eyes open. We're looking further afield for inspiration. The world is a button push away.

The smartest marketers aren't just looking myopically at their own categories, but at the world, for insight into everything from business models to comedic ideas. Just because it has worked for someone else doesn't mean it will work for us. In the right hands, though, when used imaginatively, we live in a culture in which ideas learned elsewhere are regularly applied to our own contexts. Creativity is in the application, not just the origination.

So while some in the industry may not like Cravendale's feral output, I applaud it - and 2m YouTubers agree.