What would you say is the single most important characteristic of an advertising person? Or advertising agency? Or advertising campaign? Most people would answer all these questions with the same, single word answer: CREATIVITY.

There is no denying that creativity is important in advertising. It is considered so important that one of the major departments within an advertising agency is named after it. But is it really THAT important? Or could it be that we have taken the reverence of creativity one step too far?

To address this question properly we first need to discuss the roles of creativity in advertising, and as Goose (Anthony Edwards) says in the movie Top Gun – “the list is long and distinguished”:

1. Much like artists, and particularly poets, advertising professionals try to communicate a lot of information in a concise, and preferably aesthetic, manner. Creativity is very useful for dealing with this challenging task.

2. In a marketplace that is rapidly becoming more and more crowded – advertisers need their campaigns to differentiate their brand from the multitudes of competitors out there. Creativity is certainly a useful tool for developing such campaigns.

3. With the decline in consumers’ attention span for everything – including advertising –agencies strive to find more and more engaging ways to grab & maintain the attention of their audience. Here, again, creativity has an important major role.

The list goes on and on, but you get the picture… Creativity has become such a dominant factor for a very good reason. So can there really be such a thing as an overdose? The answer has to do with a paradigmatic shift in the status of creativity – a change in the way it is used and perceived by both advertising professionals and their clients.

If we review the  list describing the roles of creativity in advertising we will find words like “useful”, “tool” and “role”. These words indicate a functional benefit – a way to achieve something, or get somewhere. Indeed, creativity is a tool – one of the most effective and important tools in the advertising toolbox. It used to be a means to an end… but not anymore.
Over time we have gradually moved from “creatively developing effective campaigns” to “effectively developing creative campaigns.” Creativity has made a full transition - from a means to an end, to an end in its own right. And that transition – ladies and gentlemen of the jury – is where the problem begins.

It becomes a problem when advertising professionals “forget” that they are hired to increase the sales of the product and not to come up with the most creative campaign for the brand.

It becomes a problem when advertisers reject effective campaigns, which would perfectly execute the marketing strategies they themselves have developed, simply because “they are not creative enough.”

It becomes a problem when customers are excited about a particularly beautiful, funny or moving TV ad, but cannot recall if it was for Heineken or Carlsberg the next morning, not to mention the next time they are at the store.

Let’s take a step back from advertising and explore the role of creativity for other professionals. The adjective “creative” or the noun “creativity” appears in many other industries. A simple Google search for the words “creative accountants” will yield over 2 million results. “Creative lawyer” yields around 10 million results. “Creative technology” will get you over 28 million results. And “creative education” tops the chart with over 55 million results. Many professionals in a variety of other industries also enjoy the soaring stocks of creativity. But you can hardly imagine the clients of a lawyer rejecting an effective line of defense on the grounds of it “not being creative enough.” Similarly, very few managers will criticize their accountant for presenting monetary plans that do not adhere to some vague creativity level that they had expected.
In other words – while the importance of creativity is increasing in many other industries – it is still considered a tool for achieving bottom line goals. In the words of Jerry McGwire (Tom Cruise), professionals in these industries are still expected to “show me the money” rather than “show me how creative you are.”

So how come creativity has conquered such a unique status in the advertising industry? At least part of the answer has to do with the intensity & frequency of using creativity within this specific industry – even when you compare it to other, creative-rich, industries.

Think for a minute about high-end Manhattan restaurants. There is no doubt that a creative menu is vital valuable for such an establishment. But the creative courses in such a menu need to be developed once. After that – the restaurant is measured for the exact repetitive execution of each course. There is little creativity involved in this phase. It necessitates very different qualities and characteristics than the ones needed for the development phase .

Now think of successful architect agencies. Many of these have relatively routine projects that necessitate only a moderate degree of creativity. But even in those that deal with more challenging or complex projects – the creative phases are usually limited to the development of the general concept and to the translations of that concept into preliminary designs. Once these phases are over, the rest of the work must be meticulous, precise, practical and aesthetic – but not necessarily creative.

The fact of the matter is that for many professionals creativity plays a major role in only a limited portion of their practice. In other words, while creativity may be crucial in the initial phases of a given endeavor, the following phases usually involve activities that necessitate very different cognitive capabilities.

In the advertising industry the situation is almost reverse. The initial phases of developing a campaign are analytical, systematic and organized. These phases take into account different types of data, strategic or tactical goals, demographics, client preferences and several other factors. It is only after these phases, when it is time for the ‘real work’, that the full-blown creative process begins. Every step of the way (e.g. copy, art, production and media) involves a high level of creativity. In the simplest term - in the advertising industry creativity does not GUIDE the execution. It IS the execution.

This unique dependency of the advertising industry on creativity can be viewed as mitigating circumstances for the confusion around its status. It makes this confusion understandable, but it does not make it OK. It is the responsibility of advertising professionals, and more so, of brand managers and marketing managers, to remember what advertising is meant to do. It is not meant to make us laugh, or to make us cry. It is not meant to move us or excite us. It CAN do all of these things – if, and only if – it serves the real purposes as defined by the customer (e.g. increased awareness, sales, brand recognition etc.). It is perfectly acceptable if sometimes we try to achieve these goals and fail. It is a whole different matter if, for the sake of creativity, we fail to even try.

Amit Mayer is a Senior SIT Facilitator, and a creative & didactic manager at Medidactic Ltd.

Amit and the rest of us at SIT would be happy to talk to you about innovation.

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If you liked this post, you might also want to read Roni’s post on The Importance of Being Innovative

If you read the Wiki link, you’ll see that Open Innovation has its roots in technology. Yet, the concept is fast gaining traction in many FMCG companies from P&G to Kraft.  (Skeptics might say that OI is just a formalization of existing practices, namely: for years consumers-with-something-to-say have been sending companies “great ideas for the next best thing”.  When I worked on advertising for BMW, we’d get ad ideas sent to the agency every few weeks, not by copyrighters but by owners.)

Mountain Dew, the US soft-drink brand aimed at teenagers, are busy taking the Open Innovation trend into new and exciting places.

Smartly packaged, their latest marketing campaign “Dew Mocracy” sees the company getting their 13-25 year old ‘fans’ to:
1. Invent new products and flavors
2. Come up with a catchy name
3. Create an advert to promote it
4. Vote for the best idea.

The chutzpah/brilliance here is that Mountain Dew has managed to get a whole lot more than just a bunch of cool new flavor ideas.

Essentially, they’ve outsourced their whole R&D and Marketing to a bunch of teenagers, while creating buzz, building brand affiliation and consumer engagement at the same time!

In the name of Democracy (sorry Dew Mocracy) every customer has been given the ultimate chance to make their mark and take control:
YOU come up with the product you’d like to drink, YOU give it a name you’d like to see on the label, YOU create an ad campaign that you think is really cool (we’ll give you the techie resources to make it look good), and then YOU vote for the one you want to see make it to the shops!

For someone new to Open Innovation, I like the way that Mountain Dew have harnessed their customer’s collective intelligence not just to products – where it seems to exist today – but expanded it to also cover marketing, advertising and research (why not?!) in the same campaign.

So, yes, I think the campaign will likely win accolades from peers and award committees for its creativity.

But, I hear some innovation conservatives/skeptics say: Is this really an effective way to do new product innovation? Will the new flavor make it in the market or will this be just another fad or flop? Are the home-made ads watchable or irritating? Will MD fans go out and buy Mountain Dew’s latest consumer-generated product?  Dear readers, let’s wait and see. For the time being at least, the Dew-ry is out.

Hats off to Puma and its design agency Fuseproject and ad agency Droga5 for their ‘Clever Little Bag’ film explaining how innovation changed Puma shoeboxes to reduce paper waste!

See for yourself and enjoy a 1 minute 25 second course in innovation and corporate citiizenship!

It’s good to see that innovation can do a significant lot for a much better world.

Full Credits for the work:

Client: Puma Design

Firm: fuseproject

Agency (Video): Droga5

Creative Chairman: David Droga

Copywriter: Adam Noel

Art Director: Jon Kubik

Art Director: Kenny Kim

Head of Integrated Production: Sally-Ann Dale

Agency Producer: Samuel Kilbreth

Agency Digital Producer: Andrew Allen

Production Company: Labour Director: Ryan Dunn

Director: Wyeth Hansen

Executive Producer: Max Knies

Song: “Checkers” By Antfood

Sound: Labour

We recruited Eliyahu, a young MBA student, who has found an interesting way to make a living: Eliyahu promotes advertising campaigns on his shirt. While seemingly a familiar concept (after all, don’t most of our shirts have company logos and advertising messages on them?), Eliyahu took this banal idea and gave it a twist: You can literally buy the shirt for his back. For a fee, Eliyahu sells a “day” in his calendar on which he’ll wear a shirt sent to him by the procurer of his services. Eliyahu films himself wearing the shirt and then uploads the video to youtube along with a post about the brand/event/message in his blog, Twitter, and Facebook. There is already a hype around his t-shirt campaigns, and his follower base keeps growing.

Theoretically, Eliyahu’s advertising idea is perfect for small companies with tight budgets. But there is actually a hidden opportunity for larger companies as well, especially if they spread “Eliyahu’s” word to the masses. Think of the impact if an established Fortune 500 company would hire Eliyahu’s services, rather than the corner falafel store or Joe’s Printing Services (no offense intended). This has the potential for a serious marketing buzz similar to guerilla campaigns. Of course, once a large company uses this “tool” wisely, it will become less relevant for others because of the large exposure – the “coolness paradox”. Eliyahu will then have to come up with a new idea for a living, but based on the abilities that we’ve seen in him so far, this doesn’t seem like much to worry about.
 
 
 

“Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, painting, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and your theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery-celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: ‘It’s not where you take things from – it’s where you take them to’.”

A recommendation often heard in advertising classes and or seen in books on advertising creativity: Read the old annuals, study the old ads, dismount the award-winners, look at tourism catalogs, and read everything in sight. And so on.

Something Neil French himself said beautifully in his The Matador and the Adverts video where he likens advertising to bull fighting:

“Creativity in bull-fighting, just like creativity in advertising, is not necessarily doing something that’s never been done before. What it is, is doing something that the audience has not seen before or thinks they’ve never seen before. (…) What El Juli did was to go through all the books of bull-fighting from his father’s library and find passes which haven’t been done for thirty or forty years. He practiced them in front room till he got them exactly right. Then he took them to the bull ring. And people look at that young man now and they say that the man is a genius, he has invented most of it. He hasn’t invented the stuff. What’s he’s done is archeology. He’s reckoned to be the most creative and one of the bravest bull-fighters of the present time”.

Zeal for stealing aside, the wisdom from Jarmusch to French kind of says, re-do old stuff with a pinch of your soul. Maybe that is exactly why Creative Templates are really valuable.

It doesn’t say steal or re-do. It says study what’s on hand and see what else you can do with them. Quotes being quotes, Howard Gossage - another advertising legend - is probably more appropriate for SIT: “If you are stuck with lemons, make lemonade.”

Haluk and the rest of us at SIT would be happy to talk to you about innovation and creativity in advertising.

Click here to contact us

In a recent stunt (a curious fusion of market research and marketing) Burger King made one of their US branches a “Whopper Free Zone”.  Using hidden cameras, they simply recorded the reactions of their customers upon being told “Sorry, we no longer serve Whoppers.” As the clip illustrates, the contorted disbelieving faces tell more of a story than answers on a survey every could. The stunt was aptly named the “Whopper Freak-out!”  So, what we have is an innovative market research approach, using, you’ve guessed it: the Subtraction tool.

For those of you familiar with the “Got Milk?” advertising campaign from Goodby, Silverstein and Partners, you’ll notice an interesting parallel.  This famous campaign managed to convince the milk-drinking public that it was in their best interests to keep an extra carton of milk handy.  In advertising terms, they created a series of TV commercials depicting the miserable consequences that can befall you if you “ain’t Got milk”.  Say, when your mouth chokes up while eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and you’re unable to give the winning answer to a $10,000 dollar radio quiz.  “Got milk?” Well, next time better make sure you’ve got some around.  In SIT’s advertising terminology we call this the Inversion pattern – whereby the ad dramatizes just how bad it is not to have the advertised product.  For those sharp eyed SIT tool-hawks out there, yes, Inversion is very similar to Subtraction.

The Burger King “Freak Out” and “Got Milk” campaigns show how a little Subtraction, can be a powerful way to add value to the challenges facing your product and brand.

The book includes a mixture of systematic analysis of the creation aspect of advertising, together with a taste of the real world of advertising and what makes it work.

Marketing professionals in companies will learn what to expect from their agencies, whilst agencies will be able to explain their work to clients in an analytic language that is easily understood.

Books can be purchased online through the Cambridge or Amazon websites.

So, how can we make our objectives more inspiring?

Take this Cannes Lions winning ad for Softlan Ultra by Y&R Malaysia for example:

Advertising Agency: Y&R, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Creative Directors: Rahul Mathew, Rowan Chanen
Art Directors: Richard Chong, Scott McClelland
Copywriter: Rahul Mathew
Retouching: Magic Cube

One possible way to describe the objective of this campaign is: “Sell more Softlan” or “The softest fabric conditioner”. As a matter of fact, this is one of the most popular ways that clients phrase objectives in their briefs to the agency. But, just think of the poor copywriter who gets yet another brief asking him to “sell more”. These guys get dozens of such requests each week and are expected to come up with a completely new creative idea each and every time.

Now, imagine the same objective written in an inspiring manner, such as: “Make people realize how soft Softlan is by experiencing its benefits when they least expect it”, or “Softlan is so soft that it turns the unpleasant into pleasant”.
These examples, as well as any other practically phrased objective, enable the creative teams a clearer understanding of the objective of the brief and provide them with some creative meat to chew on.

Why not even think about it as a simple formula? Get….by….. (e.g. get the consumers to realize how soft “Softlan” is by demonstrating the extreme benefits of using Softlan, when they least expect it”)?

This can even easily turn into an overall communication strategy!