DISQUS

loebster1 · 3 months ago

Very true. The power to come up with a kickass idea isn't locked up in some magic creative-department box.

In fact, now more than ever, wisdom and insight come from people who can look at a problem and have a wise insight. And those people can come from anywhere.

True creative professionals shouldn't feel threatened by this; we should feel lucky that someone on our team cracked it, and then we should roll up our sleeves and get to work, applying the skills we bring to the table: the ability to execute skillfully; to write directly and engagingly; to design things that appeal.

We're communicators, and communication is essentially the ability to understand the commercial audience and say something that'll move them. It's an art that's rarely perfected in portfolio schools; often, the only audience young creatives learn to impress is old creatives. Value everyone's perspective, and learn to recognize a good idea when you hear it.

Jetpacks · 3 months ago

Alan: I've never met a creative department that wasn't trumped by the suits, in the end. It's about sales. Always will be.

If an idea is good, as loebster1 says, I hope we recognize it when we see it. The eternal war rages on when those outside the creative department determine that their ideas are superior.

I would welcome an idea from the cleaning team if it works. As I've said many times, EVERYONE is a creative, but once in awhile it's nice when the creative department is trusted with creative. Likewise, it would be nice if those in "strategy" would trust the "artists"to know what makes a good strategy.

Portfolio schools aside (and I am not formally trained in such) the end result is neither department's domain. It is a collaboration. Meet me in the middle.

Stuart Foster · 3 months ago

Suits usually win. PR and creatives are forming an interesting team though in the forging of ideas in the modern agency.

I'm excited to see what kind of new developments (good or bad) this trend will continue on. I'm guessing if it comes down to dollars? More crowdsourcing.

Jetpacks · 3 months ago

and isn't "crowdsourcing" just an elaborate new way to say "focus group"? The more people involved in the production, the more watered down the product. Trust someone, or at the most, TWO someones, (one from the Creative side, one from the Account side) to create something that grabs - and sells. Social Media is one thing, but let's not try to turn everything, including brand strategy and ad creation, into some "everyone gets a say" democracy.

imagetext · 3 months ago

I totally agree. In some ways it's a harder sell for an agency to persuade clients that they can do lots of different things. The skills required to manage a complete campaign nowadays are so diverse that clients are dubious that one agency can do it all.

I think there will be a polarisation between VERY focused companies that just do Social Media design or Google keywords optimisation and polymath agencies that really can do just about anything. The latter really need to sell themselves as a first port of call if they're going to be successful in this way and develop good relationships with the specialists for work down the line.

@Jetpacks I really agree with your point too. This "crowdsourcing" thing is often just a lack of original ideas dressed up as Web 2.0

markneustadt · 3 months ago

Alan: Nice post. My questions are about the theoretical issues your argument raises. There is a popular idea that the rise of social media will mean the end of traditional advertising models based on image projection. But I just don't know. The brands we all talk about don't have ontological reality. They are constructs based on image projection. I'm not confident that this will or can go away, and if it doesn't, the need for talented, disciplined creative departments will not either. I worry that rather than new media leading to the the end of conventional image projection, it will just bifurcate the world further into two parts: the big multinational corporation + hollywood versus the rest of us.

Subbu · 3 months ago

Agencies have a dug a hole by creating these silo's and deep-mining them. In the last ten years or so, I have seen the devaluation of suits role completely. You are spot on when you say that "everyone else is there for just silent support". In fact, this aspect of the business has reached epidemic proportions in India with good 'suits' either leaving the business altogether or staying clear of the business. What we are left is suits who do not have the passion for the business and play as important a role as that of the lift-operator. This has affected the business very badly.

I do not have a solution. But I can tell you from my experience that whenever I had a good chemistry with my creative partner, the results were sheer magic. This happened because the creative person was 'open minded' and I tried to be as helpful without breathing down his/her neck. And this requires enormous amount of hard work on the part of the suit and one used to wonder whether it was worth all the trouble!

Alan Wolk · 3 months ago

Hey- thanks all for keeping the conversation going on this.

@Carl (Loebster) - "in portfolio schools; often, the only audience young creatives learn to impress is old creatives" - exactly. And so rather than speaking to the people buying the product, who are likely not all that hip, they're talking to a bunch of CDs, who are.

@Dave (JetPacks) & ImageText - Crowdsourcing seems like it's just the ultimate "gang bang" (may need to do a whole post on that) - but it's that notion that if you throw enough monkeys with enough typewriters at a problem, they'll eventually stumble upon it. Anyone who's been through an agency that loves gang bangs knows that the final result is rarely more than a few degrees away from the initial efforts and is often actually worse.

@Stuart - Direct Response : Web 1.0 = PR : Web 2.0 -- agencies can learn a lot from PR agencies, particularly how to charge for their time and expertise rather than charge for "making something"

@Mark - I think familiar packaged goods are very much about image, but the Real Digital Revolution (the ability to research products and DWOM about products online) has changed the ability of brands to create images without products to back up the image. (see my post about VW the other other day) The whole premise of social media is that you will be able to build brands off of buzz and fan-love, slowly but surely vs having a giant ad budget. Truth is currently somewhere in the middle I suspect.

@Subbu - thanks for sharing your experiences in India. They are not very different from what I see in the US, where the problem is compounded by lower salaries for what's becoming an increasingly female-dominated side of the business. The solution is that the internal structure of agencies will change and old titles like "copywriter" and "account manager" will be replaced by different, as-yet-to-be-invented ones that match the new responsibilities agencies will have.

Subbu · 3 months ago

"Problem is compounded by lower salaries for what's becoming an increasingly female-dominated side of the business." Ditto in India! I wonder why no one is interested in doing anything about it.

Matt Daniels · 3 months ago

Does that mean that all of the targeting and positioning stuff isn't effective either? Surely the same product but positioning differently would be a mere aesthetic change, on par with a non-convincing TV ad.