True creative is no longer an option for branded advertising.
Stuff that makes you go 'wow, that's really arresting. I want some'.
There are too many restrictions. Too much lily-livered law.
We either go unbranded or we leave it to others.
Or we make more drumming Gorillas - and that takes a huge leap of faith.
So most brands just join the dull bandwagon and continue to carp on about stuff that's safe but ultimately goes unnoticed. No-one ever got sacked, but no-one got promoted either.
Information is everywhere - it's the brand's job to pull reassuringly disparate voices together.
Content is cheap, but the trick is to find the right content that works on your behalf.
Creativity is now about editing, sourcing this content (viz. the incipient rise of media agencies), and facilitating ... inspiring those beyond the rule of law be creative for you.
Or just being plain silly (see last post).
Just some very initial thoughts.
I have no conclusion yet.
4 comments:
Creative the drumming gorilla may have been, but he didn't do anything for sales. In fact, Cadbury lost sales to Galaxy.
Interesting point though. Take the job I've been doing for the past 6 weeks - not a jot of creativity in it. BUT - take one of the jobs I was doing before that. A pantomime horse to sell train tickets...?
I don't agree creativity is dead altogether. If it is, we may as well all give up now.
Ha - depends who you believe on the Cadbury front. I've heard stats that say sales went through the roof ... :-)
And did the pantomime horse sell any train tickets?
It's not dead, but my point - roughly formed - is that truly arresting creative - such as the stuff that people actively want to forward to each other - is harder and harder to do. And if it's a question of coming up with 'useful content' - well, it probably exists out there already - and spoken by voices that are inherently more plausible than brands.
Fair point re: contradiction results.
One that says the Gorilla worked:
http://www.brandrepublic.com/News/784573/Gorilla-ad-works-its-magic-sales-Cadbury-bars/
One that says it didn't:
http://www.bpodr.co.uk/2008/10/02/cadburys-gorilla-fails-to-drum-up-sales/
And one somewhere in the middle:
http://community.brandrepublic.com/forums/t/7722.aspx
I think original creative work is getting harder to do just because so much of it has already been done. Mind you (and I'm contradicting myself now) there are always new products being created which will do new things and have their own USPs. Who would have thought of iPODs 20 years ago? Or HD TV? Or the fact that EVERYONE would own a mobile phone? Advertising for these simply didn't exist back then. Maybe in 20 years from now we'll be trying to think of propositions for time machines, flying saucers or invisibility pills.
Re: Panto horse results, don't know but will try and find out.
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