I help brands gain new customers and grow market share through more effective strategies, creative, and media. Co-founder of OneBillion! Agency
Our business is wrong about "creativity." I woke up before the roosters this morning to watch Mark Ritson's "Creativity is not enough" presentation. Overall, I enjoyed the talk, particularly (selfishly?) at the end when he pushed people to consider Marketing Effectiveness as the guiding benchmark for our industry. A central theme of Ritson's presentation was that for all the talk about award-winning creativity, when compared to how "normies" view the work, it really doesn't make a difference. The data shows what I've suspected for almost a decade - our business is wrong about "creativity." Why? As an art school kid a quarter century ago, I learned early on that creativity isn't about a wide open field without boundaries. The most creative thinking is done in tightly bound spaces that force you to MacGyver what you have into the best solution. Applied to marketing that means using your distinctive brand assets and differentiated messages to their fullest, most creative expression. Fantastical, celebrity-filled, 30 second scripts get clients excited, but usually leave "normal" people wondering, "who and what was that all about?" Ask yourself, how can you make your next brief tighter, shorter, with less room to move? You'll get much better, more effective, results.
Think this gets into how we look at movies. Are Criterion collection movies the most popular? No way. Are Oscar winners the most popular? Sometimes but usually not. Are the mega blockbusters at times disdained by “creatives”? You bet. I bet there is also an 80/20 split. 80% of the stuff that does most of the work is not stuff creatives particularly like making, while 20% of the work allows creatives to deal with the other 80%. Talk to a sitcom writer and most will complain about the formulaic nature of the work. Well we hate to break to you, most people like formulas.
I disagree with almost everything said on almost every one of these comments. Advertising today is pretty simple, you have to wipe your ass (your friends wont like how you smell if you don’t), you have $.50 in your pocket and you’re out of TP, you’re not going to stand in the TP isle and think, damn, I saw that cool Charmin ad with the bears, so rather than buy the $.50 TP I’m not going to wipe my ass. You’re going to spend $.50 and buy the only 1 ply TP brand you remember. All advertising does at this point is convince you that there’s “good” TP for $.50. Everything else is a masturbatory exercise for a film school dropout. #sorrynotsorry
I wager the 60-something % Mark showed this morning referencing poor briefs is because their positioning is fluffy. BPS nailed to a pinhead gives the creative team scope to flex their creative muscles. It's like the formula for elite sports teams/people. When they forget the basics and try use creativity to win, it flops. But nail the basics, and the creativity flows.
Clear consistent branding! If your ad could get beat out by a flashing logo, it isn't a good ad.
Sorry, one last thing to add: Chuck Heckman writes some of the most intuitive and intelligent briefs I’ve ever read. As he says, good creatives need guardrails, and damn, he’s good at keeping them focused on the prize: selling more of the shit your client makes.
I’d love to give you a heretic’s perspective on ad creativity 😜
#MacGyverSolutions
At its best, advertising is popular culture. A good ad should be like a chart-topping song, this season‘s best-selling fashion item, the standup with the most shares and likes, the Netflix serial everyone is watching. That‘s what the ‘Normies‘ really want: they don‘t give the rind of a dried up shit for the strategy or the creativity, the product or the promotion. They want to be entertained and surprised. To come away with a smile. And to have something to talk about.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts on Mark Ritson's presentation and the true essence of creativity in marketing. It's refreshing to see the emphasis on Marketing Effectiveness as a benchmark. The idea that creativity thrives within tightly bound constraints is spot on. Using distinctive brand assets and focused messages can indeed lead to more impactful and memorable marketing. This perspective is a valuable reminder to refine our briefs and aim for more effective results. How do you plan to implement tighter, more focused briefs in your future marketing projects?
Creativity, Innovation, Advertising Effectiveness, Kindness. Founder/Co-founder of Previously Unavailable, Tracksuit, AF Drinks and Caffeine. Programme Director of the Master of Advertising Effectiveness.
2moCouple points here - (1) the charts shows that creatively awarded ads perform better on system1’s testing. The difference may seem small, but the creatively awarded ads get roughly 1.5 - 2x the 4 and 5 star ratings. (2) all of the research into creativity and effectiveness, (I’ve studied literally all of it) shows creatively awarded campaigns performing better than non-awarded campaigns on commercial metrics. Sometimes it’s a bit better, sometimes it’s many times better. Our business is only wrong about creativity when it tries to claim that creativity doesn’t amplify effectiveness.