The
Battle For Coca-Cola
Rages On.
Ain't
Nothing Like
The Real Thing, Maybe.
I
Don't Mean To Say
I Told You So, But...
Are
Consumers Smarter
Then We Are?.
The
Four Great Myths
Of Global Branding.
Mr
Bevis Butts Heads
At Mitsubishi
The
Best Laid Plans
Of Mice And Men.
Dare
to Be Great:
The Mad Genius of "The Matrix"
Mitsubishi's
New Marketing Boss
Out Of The Frying Pan.
Concept Is Stronger Than Fact.
Value
Perception In A World
Gone Mad With "Cool"
The
Future of Advertising
The Brand
The
Future of Advertising
The Targets
The
Future of Advertising
The Grid
The
Future of Advertising
The Swarm
Technology
Making The Message
Meaningful
The Only Business That Matters Is The One You're In.
What
Ever Happened To The
Big Idea?
The Post-Advertising Era Is Here
Confessions Of A" Liar For Hire"
Good, Bad and Ugly At the Moment of Truth
A Post-Advertising "Big Idea".
The Value Of A Paying Pustomer.
Emergence Of the "Empire of One".
All customers Are Created Equal
Playing God An Other Atrocities
the
City That Spawned
The Age Of Advertising..
Fear And Self Loathing In Advertising.
The Greatest Success Metric Is Sales.
Foot In (Word Of) Mouth Disease
In the Begining, There Was The End.
Thje Rise And Fall
Of The Creative Class
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What's Love Got To Do With It? It's ten past three in the morning and I'm still at it. My column is 2 days late and a dollar short. All because I am so swamped I can't even see straight. My partner and I decided to start an agency a few months back and we haven't had a decent night's sleep between us ever since. That is how swamped we are. What is it that keeps us going? It certainly is not the money. I for one, think it is the fact that we both love what we do. Love. A four letter word that gives madness and insane behavior a clean pass. Love justifies extreme practices. Love makes us go the extra mile. Love of a thing makes us excellent at doing that thing above all others. Love is what made agency creatives to go the extra mile upon mile that it took to create the landmark work that defined the golden age of advertising. Where did that love go? |
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At one point it became unacceptable to treat the work product of our profession with anything other than financial analysis. At one point we lost our fucking minds. When the calculators and sharp pencils came in, the passion for the work and love of the creative process went out. |
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I AGREE WITH THE PERSON WHO SAID YOU GUYS SHOULD DO MORE OF THOSE "DOUBLETHINK" CAMPAIGNS YOU USED TO DO. . – D. Johnson., Salt Lake City Too bad our lawyers don't agree . – hw |
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What was evident in this transition (during the mid 70's) was that the large agency networks had given up the idea of investing in the creative process. Senior creatives that had been responsible for turning entire corporate monoliths around were now walking the streets, unemployed. In their place were three younger, cheaper "creatives" who generally didn't have a clue about the great work that had preceded them. And didn't seem to care. That was the beginning of the end of Madison Avenue's leadership of the "creative revolution." Within a few short years that leadership would migrate to Hollywood, then Silicon Valley, never to return. Meanwhile, back on Madison Ave., agencies had discovered a new love. Going public. Now these companies had "shareholder value" to assure. Management turned its attention from making great advertising that had the power to change the fortunes of their client's companies, to counting the number of pencils used. The love of advertising had migrated into the love of fiduciary oversight. Instead of the work looking good, the emphasis was on the quarterly numbers looking good. Intellectual capital was out. Capital gains were in. And so it was that the work of Madison Avenue began to become more and more irrelevant to the process of building shareholder value for their clients. So it was that the idea of the agency as "marketing partner" fell by the wayside and the status of "agency of record" went the way of the buggy whip. The "kids" who had been brought in to "save" the creative mandate of the agencies did not bring a love of advertising with them. They brought in a love of film, music, television, fashion and everything else they could borrow to create interest in their tired strategies and shallow selling propositions. The web came (and went) creating yet another series of distractions and siphoning off even more "love" from the creative process. Now ad makers didn't even have to admit to working in advertising. They could allude to being in "New Media" instead. So now advertising is left with nobody to love it. The press is taking Super Bowl Ads to task for being lackluster. Clients are going everywhere but Madison Ave. for their next "big idea." So now what? Where do we go to get us some love? Well, I think we can take a leaf from the world of technology. Look at the spectacular growth of Linux and the "love" that drives the open source movement. Look at the phenomena of "shareware" and the love of programmers who create applications for the sheer joy of it, not the profit of it. Open source marketing that takes advantage of the "creative commons" movement attempts to create a counterbalance to the overly restrictive copyright regime that makes it virtually impossible to include or quote any material for commercial use without enumeration if that material is copyrighted. According to the creative commons movement, some rights are reserved to build a layer of reasonable copyright protection. But editorial use is fair game. Open-source marketing enlists the audience to take a message, an image, or a jingle and "improve" it by creating derivative works. It encourages consumers to not just consume and critique, but to engage, improve, and redistribute improvements if the original doesn't work or measure up. Obviously to engage in such behavior these "uberconsumers" have to "love" the products whose images they are inclined to enhance. In our own way we have contributed significantly to this movement with our own "Cool American" campaign for Coca-Cola Classic. My motive for initiating the campaign (other than being a TCCC shareholder) was a life-long love of the product. And a career-long respect and (in some cases) participation in creating advertising for the brand. The media picked up the "Cool American" campaign and it gained worldwide exposure. Which could only benefit brand Coca-Cola. And Coke brand Sprite picked up the campaign and used it with slight changes in Asia. These days it has become very difficult for creative practitioners to have enough time on a brand to develop a love of the products they work on. There also doesn't seem to be enough tenure within the average agency client relationship to develop the brand culture needed by creative teams and clients to fully develop outstanding creative solutions that come from the product and not some borrowed interest pop icon or hit tune. Many agencies are also suffering from revolving door creative departments and an abundance of outsourcing to freelance teams, which is a deterrent to creatives learning to "love" what they do. Fear is not fertile ground for "love" to grow. Now our industry is fighting for its life. Clients are openly criticizing the lack of inspiration and innovation in their agencies and soliciting new "ideas" from anybody who has them. The writing is on the wall for advertising and I'm afraid it's not a love letter. Let's hope it's not a Dear John. Stay tuned.
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