What will creativity look like this year?
My gut says it will look a lot like 2019 and probably a lot like 2021.
Calendar years are good for telling us where we are in relation to our orbit of the sun – but when assessing our creative output, it’s wiser to take a broader perspective.
Context and creativity go hand in hand.
Creativity for the UK
Last October, we saw something quite unusual at the 北京赛车pk10 Big Awards.
One overwhelming winner, AMV’s Viva la Vulva, with a constellation of more "modest" wins from a wider variety of agencies that I’d personally ever experienced.
Post global financial crisis, the fear and a focus on survival mostly bred safe work holding up mirrors, but each vintage did bring three or four outstanding pieces of work, almost as if, like sap in a plant, the creative juices concentrate on the rare opportunities that would bear the freshest fruit that year.
The broader context in the last 18 months or so has been quite different.
We’ve seen creativity valued as a lever for business growth again by most stakeholders and decision-makers. Brands have bought more work that is surreal or offbeat – which I see as a sign of newfound confidence.
The standard seems to have raised across the board. We’ve enjoyed newsworthy work coming from all sorts of agencies: household names, new names, long-forgotten names, not-thought-about names and more, which promises to make this year’s 北京赛车pk10 Big even more wide open and exciting.
Creativity for the public
96% of people ignore what we do. 92% find ads annoying. 72% would rather pay not to see ads.
It is impossible to ignore that this is everyone’s responsibility: brands, agencies, media and everyone else between.
Despite the word ‘data’ being bandied around with abandon, there is still a lack of understanding of what our clients’ clients (the public) truly want, need, expect and engage with.
Business problems differ from brief to brief, but the marketing problem we face is always the same: complete apathy. I’m not saying this for dramatic effect.
I’m convinced that if our brands or agencies disappeared overnight, no one would bat an eyelid. People would simply continue to get on with their lives
Every business dies. It may take three years, three decades or three centuries. But whether you’re Facebook or Woolworths, they all have a sell-by date. It is our job to delay this for as long as possible – for our clients and ourselves. And the best defence against demise is relevancy: if we continually do what’s right for the public, it’ll be right for the brand.
If we want people to care more, we need to demonstrate better what they want. We need data that doesn’t just say who, where, when, what, how, and what for, but who exactly, where exactly, when exactly, what exactly, how exactly and for what exactly.
Every touchpoint is an experience and so an opportunity to be relevant and, effectively, remind people why your business shouldn’t die tomorrow.
It’s early days but I think that VMLY&R has that blueprint. A set of skill sets and an ethos which understands how to make a promise (brand experience) and deliver against that promise (customer experience) by genuinely knowing how to connect with the public correctly.
Creativity is magic and always will be, but behind every magic, there is a trick. I could tell you more about the method and the use of empathy leading to effectiveness, but it may cost you a pint.
There’ll never be shame in selling something right, to the right people, with the right frequency.
It’s a question of life or death.