Here Be Monsters|blog

media buying, it's an art

Creativity. What's the big deal?

I've been thinking a lot lately about creativity, and what it really means in advertising. It was prompted by a conversation with a top ECD at one those agencies every creative wants to work at.

We were talking about the Stieg Larsson books and he said he had no intention of reading them as they're now so popular. But later went on about how brilliant he thought White Ribbon and Tank Fish were.  Now as good as they are, I suspect what appealed was as much down to their obscurity as their originality.

And then I read this in the Independent this morning.

Why is it an industry that needs by definition to be as popularist as possible tends to shun what the public love? This wasn't the case 50, 30, even 20 years ago. (And don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the public know what's good creatively, just that they do know what they like and for adland that's a good place to start.)

Well, here's my theory.

Unlike the creatives of yesteryear most creatives don't know what they're doing.

Let me explain.

Back in the day, creatives knew what they were doing. They were salesmen, who sold. They were writers who wrote. They were artists who art directed. Today's creatives stumble into advertising very confused about themselves, they can't sell, they can't write and they can't art direct.

And the industry must share some of the blame, Are you aware that not one adland course in the UK teaches craft?  Do you know of any agency that spends time teaching writing skills, or how to create characters, or build a narrative flow, or the principles behind art directing a page, or even the craft of film making - camera angles, or why a film score works or doesn't work, or the principles behind editing?  And before you say surely these are the responsibilities of the professionals they hire, well it's creatives who select them, so without even a basic understanding of their crafts what criteria are they using?  Invariably, what will my peers think of me working with him?

The end result, insecurity and ignorance reign and so they seek out the obscure and the hardly seen as a way of looking like they know what they're doing. And of course appearing cool.