The cult of adland is no more
Creative departments’ old-school way of working is over, and it’s not just because of the consultants, writes Anna Karena.
When I was a young copywriter in the late 90s, my art director and I were asked to come up with a recruitment ad for our creative department. Instead of “Creatives Wanted”, the headline we ran was “Join our Cult.” On reflection, this was a sign of the times.
And perhaps we weren’t really a cult, but creative departments of the 90s – and some of the same kind still exist – did operate on a few consistent cult-like principles. Intense hierarchy. Leaders with gangs of desperate followers. Hard places to get into. Ever-so-slightly dysfunctional, when you did.
From cult, to collaborative creativity
This year at Cannes, Publicis Groupe global CCO Nick Law noted: “We’ve gone from arrogant to under siege. It’s a strange over-reaction.”
Over-reaction maybe, but the fact this conversation was happening at Cannes signals definite disruption in our long-reigning bulletproof creative establishment.
Law himself, is famous for transforming creative working norms – he challenged the notion of the creative twosome during his decade at R/GA and got people solving in cross-functional teams instead. This drew a more diverse crowd into the creative fold. Technologists. Data people. Engineers. Not just Mr Art, Mrs Copy and God.
But Law wasn’t the only one cottoning on to collaborative creative approaches during this period. Another advanced gang of fairly serious operators were running along the ‘design thinking’ curve at the rate of knots: the consultants. They were busy replacing insular creative processes with research, ideation, prototyping, testing, optimising and rapid iterating.
As it turns out, we were about to learn a thing or two from them.
War against waste
A weakness of the advertising industry over the years has been just how much interesting, on-brief and slaved-over creative work we’ve happily flushed down the loo. The creative pitches alone could kill half a rainforest in print-outs, not to mention drown a village in sweat and tears. Six-figure photo shoots that never saw the light of day. Gallons and gallons of wasted Artline ink.
And why? Largely because our clients’ worlds were actually so far removed from our own. Them sitting in one building; us in another across town, solving problems in time- and money-devouring layers.
This is something a consultancy firm would never do. During the one ‘consultancy-with-creative-shop’ integration that I’ve lived through, I remember the horror on our new consultant CEO’s face when he encountered the notion of creative ‘re-work’.
“You do the work and it’s done!” he’d say. He wasn’t talking about projects where feedback didn’t exist, it was simply that all the feedback happened along the way, as those doing the work co-created in huddles with those paying for it. No account managers traipsing across town with art-bags full of red pen to queue up with traffic departments and have feedback lost in translation. No working for free.
Another thing my consultant CEO taught me, was about the origin of Agile as a solution to digital projects so large that they were out-living the tenure of the CTO that started them, and getting canned with the new guard. I realised another reason for the collaborative and practical creative processes of consultancy: to get things into the world this century. Sprints – not pints, table napkins and ready-to-be-rejected big ideas. Some of that made sense.
So where does all this leave our cult?
Over the past year and a bit, the bubble of creative change that’s been blowing over a decade, has burst – into our clients’ orgs, onto our own floors; it’s inescapable. I swiftly realised that ranting about it would be a career-limiting move, as did many of my income-needing compadres.
And in fact, the big thing at risk here isn’t just us: it’s our work. Because those who dwelled in this cult for all those years, weren’t normal people.
In honour of my creative brethren, in agencies, design teams, agile squads – wherever they may hide – let one thing of our establishment remain: a respect of actual, rare as hens’ teeth, creative talent. The introverts who see the unseen. Artists. Designers. Illustrators. Writers. Quite literally, dreamers. The brilliantly ironic. The hilariously funny. Those with eyes for fixating design. Those with ears for hypnotic rhythm and tone. With non-vocational degrees or no degrees. Bits of minorities. Kinds of outcasts. People with little hope of any other kind of employ. What will become of us if we dissolve our craft and leave it to a product owner, in a workshop, brandishing a pad of post-it notes? What will become of the work?
Staying today’s most wanted
I was once asked as an ECD, by a team who were assimilating it in their work practices, to define creativity. My answer was this: Creativity is the force by which we take the status quo, and shift it. Anyone can come up with a formula, and wind a handle to make profit. Creativity is changing the formula.
For today’s – and more importantly yesterday’s – creative practitioners, now is not the time to waste energy licking wounds and reminiscing about the good old days. We need to remind ourselves that we’re at the front end of what people are calling the Fourth Industrial Revolution. A time in history where there are new raw materials and creativity – our special skill – has rarely been in hotter demand.
It’s time to become a different kind of rock star. Use new practices of collaboration and co-location to wow our clients and their customers in evolving ways. Question the notion that ‘there’s no such thing as a bad idea’, as our cult-leaders (love ’em or hate ’em) so passionately taught us to. Use our creative fitness, trained in over-long careers, to be the leaders of innovation and creative excellence, in whatever environments – today and in the future – we find ourselves.
Anna Karena is chief creative officer at CX Lavender
Cool.
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Brilliant writing Anna. So right about the waste in advertising. Bloody KFC had 4 teams each coming up with 3 ideas for a tvc brief. And typically there would be 3 re-briefs. That’s 36 scripts and boards for what would inevitably turn out to be another lame KFC campaign . Didn’t help that the idiot Group Head took delight in making the teams compete.
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Hard to argue with but hard to change unless we start to develop leadership skills in the deepest sense within the creative community to enable them to have the confidence and skills as well as the vision . Top down thinking should start with that to enable bottom up thinking to truly emerge .
Dear mumbrella. Can we have Anna write regulalrluy for you. What a delightful read. Beautiful writing.
Thanks.
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There’s nothing wrong with striving for excellence. Re-writes and re-briefs are fine; the big thing that dogs this industry is having to do them within ridiculous (and often artificial) time-frames, for free.
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Thought i’d clicked on an old Op-Ed.
Nothing new here. Was true as far back as 2010 or earlier, particularly when you cite Nick Law (or in actual fact, Bob Greenberg)
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Great article, Anna.
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The writer clearly stated the time period was the late-90s in the first paragraph.
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Fantastic article.
Would be very interested to hear any similar thoughts you may have on the channels and media aspect of the mix.
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Wonderful. What a breath of fresh air Anna writes with. And what a great perspective and solution orientation. There’s never been a better time or greater need for creativity.
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“You do the work and it’s done!” he’d say.
Nuff said really.
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Bit more time on your hands these days Stan?
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