Is advertising dead? Uncommon’s Nils Leonard thinks so

Incredible thoughts put down on paper for us all to see by Nils Leonard . I don't think even he realizes how profound his words are - and I'll explain why.

Is advertising dead? Uncommon’s Nils Leonard thinks so The Drum

(Except for the last section that I didn't notice the first time around - once again AI is to blame for all our woes. As if the machines are an entity equal to us humans who are the highest level of this system we exist in.)

The truth of the matter is that we're all slowly dying inside, because over the last decades we've gradually stomped out our most natural internal tendencies.

Nils Leonard is talking about the external creativity advertising professionals use to produce brilliant content.

But I'm talking about internal creativity - our most natural inclinations that direct us to what we're supposed to be doing here. In the old days that was very clear. One person was attracted to heal people with herbs and spent a lifetime perfecting that skill. Another was drawn to books and spent a lifetime honing their intellect and contributing more knowledge to the world. Some felt a powerful internal drive to teach and did that their whole lives.

We've taken things so far at this point that we actually think the development of tech is more important than our own natural development.

Today is a whole different story. Because instead of us each doing what we were born to do, we're suiting ourselves to what the world is dictating to us. We've taken things so far at this point that we actually think the development of tech is more important than our own natural development. We're all living in this bubble where we're constantly being "brainwashed" that coding is the most important thing we can do with our lives. So even young people with extremely artistic inclinations feel the need to go learn coding. Which, ironically, the machines can do both of those now. If we had played our cards right we would have put far more emphasis on nurturing creativity rather than teaching kids the exact same things we were teaching 200 years ago.

What Advertising Execs Can Do

If Nils really wanted to do something about this, he could. First of all, he's a pretty big deal in the advertising world. Second, he's the founder of his own agency, Uncommon Creative Studio . He could invest his time and energy in awakening that internal creativity we've extinguished over time, or possibly have never really been aware of. Lighting that spark we all have inside is the key to us performing at our best. Because when we work from that deep inner point we do it for completely different reasons than now. We do it with completely different intentions.

Yes, we currently don't know how to do this, but as the most sophisticated beings on the planet, we can learn.

There are many methods out there about increasing creativity but they are all about increasing it within the limited confines of the human ego. The results will also be limited - as we can see all around us.

What I'm talking about is unleashing our inner creativity beyond the limitations of our ego. At that point we'll no longer need to ask who killed what - we'll all know that it's not the big bad wolf called AI. We killed it ourselves, and the only way to light that inner spark of creativity again is on our own volition.