In the space of five years, creative thinking and methodology has changed beyond all recognition.
Long gone are the massive mono-media campaigns which took months to take from planning to execution.
And campaign objectives have changed too. There are so many media options, platforms and opportunities to use ideas and imagination to engage with consumers, that creative departments of progressive agencies have had to totally remodel themselves.
This new creative model has created enormous opportunities and challenges.
Instead of thinking in terms of campaigns, we now create ongoing waves of rich creative experiences to give people reasons to interact with a brand again and again.
This is fantastic as there is a greater need than ever for creativity, and technology has given us exciting new ways to expand our creative horizons.
However, this move away from over-reliance on the "one big idea" for a campaign to a strategy that demands a constant stream of engaging ideas can be exhausting.
There’s no more pondering of concepts for several weeks. Indeed, for one of our clients we typically create 15-20 new pieces of content per month – from concept to filming, production and broadcast.
This would have seemed extraordinary a few years ago, but it’s now par for the course for many agencies.
For client marketers this raises an issue. They need to understand that, while communications should always be on-brand, in a world of high volume content creation there is a much higher degree of risk and with it an increased potential for failure.
Some campaigns will fly, others will sink without a trace – and this can be anathema to some advertisers.
Clients need to be more conscious of the bigger picture and adopt a mindset of ‘always on’ content creation.
In addition, they must develop strategies for campaigns that involve high degrees of collaboration and sharing.
Marketing is now a voyage of discovery that marketers take with their agencies. To optimise the use of new marketing tools and avoid suffering an early heart attack, clients need to always be looking ahead, and flexible about their acceptance of new ideas.
Most importantly, they must learn from mistakes.
The other concern brands now have is what partner is best placed to help them deliver the type, volume and scale of campaigns that they need.
Clients must ensure that their agency has the right mix of creative skills
These days, as well as traditional art directors and copywriters, there will also be digital designers, user experience architects, film editors, motion editors, content developers, social media editors, eCRM specialists, mobile marketing professionals, music producers and more.
And these specialists need to have the resources to provide quality creative within tight deadlines.
People used to assume that small agencies would be the agile, flexible ones who could act quickly - but these days it’s about agencies having the right scale to provide enough people with the right know-how to provide a fast turnaround.
However, it’s not just specific creative abilities that clients need from agencies. It’s also a culture of trendspotting and culture-watching to keep them abreast of online innovation, evaluating how this could impact on what they should be reacting to.
Not only that, the agency needs to adapt expertise on an ongoing basis to mirror clients needs as they change.
None of this is easy. Working in an environment that is constantly changing and evolving can be unsettling.
However, there is no denying that our brave new world is an exciting one. For us creatives it provides the opportunity to produce world class campaigns that are more creative, more engaging and more entertaining than traditional media and TV advertising.
For clients, it offers the chance to engage and entertain consumers in a way that is exhilarating and also incredibly effective. Vive la change!
Paul Tullo, creative partner at Tullo Marshall Warren