Creativity at a Crossroads, Part 2

Thanks again to the team at?Roundpeg ?for the circumstance. Yesterday I outlined?the first ?of three “crossroads” effecting creativity. Here’s a second conjuncture.

I’m older than I look.

Which is to say, I remember meeting artists who built print publication mechanicals by hand—they cut typography with razor blades. There were at least six of them in a room at Martin/Williams in Minneapolis in the early summer of 1992. And when I returned from an internship at Mad Dogs & Englishman in NYC later that same summer, that mechanical artists room at M/W was empty and another room was filled with Macintosh computers and young art directors coaching older art directors how to import fonts.?

The business of creativity ebbs and flows.?

I remain convinced AI will be the dominant force (the first crossroad) woven throughout all facets of the business and the artistry of advertising and marketing now and in the near future. (In fact,?we talked about a lot of this ?with host Chris Farrell on Minnesota Public Radio this morning.) But there are other crossroads we should acknowledge.?

The Internet changed everything. But the element I think we misjudged at the beginning, and didn’t give enough credence was inter-action; i.e. the notion a response might have just as much weight and value as the message which instigated it. We’d spent hundreds of years normalizing a one-way system: Advertisers say something and audiences consume it. The end. If you have an opinion, please write or call the 800 number.?

Then came social.

It’s been well over a decade since. Time enough for user experience and technology to become engrained, maybe even seamless. For habits to form. Expectations set. Career paths delineated. I distinctly remember seeing some of the very first job postings with the words “social media” in the title. I helped write a few. Now those two words dominate many agencies.?

Today 150 million Americans are apparently are on TikTok. Never mind every other social platform. And the hardware powering smartphones and the software enabling experiences and creation are leaps beyond where we started. What’s possible today is a miracle compared to 2005.?

Or as Benedict Evans framed it in his?2023 presentation :

An individual with a social media presence attracts more attention on YouTube than many traditionally produced shows on Netflix. The old models sure seem a lot less valid.

The gravitational center of creativity has shifted to social

That’s the second crossroads.

Advertising and marketing creativity have been premised on a network TV and cable model which is no longer useful. How we measure and define audience, how we strategize insights and connection, how we explain concepts (i.e. storyboarding), how we staff, how we allocate resources, how we brief assignments—are out of date. The writers and actors strikes in Hollywood hint at elements of this disconnect.?

I can’t recall the last time I turned on a TV.

Yes, I watch the news, and ads. But via social (for this Gen Xer that’s Threads, TikTok and YouTube). FYI,?Ashley in Denver ?is my lifeline to the ad world these days.

Put another way: How many views on social might be equal to a One Show Silver Pencil? Or Gold? What if the industry of creative recognition shifted from the votes of an experienced panel to re-posts on TikTok?

I’m beginning to sound like Gary V. But I do believe there’s an industry tension, and it’s playing out across the generations running brands and agencies in terms of strategies, investment, success criteria and creative focus. How long do we maintain a traditional, familiar broadcast mindset when the entire world seems to have gone social?

Clearly I’m jaded in assuming work like?Hilton’s Ten Minute TikTok , or Maybelline New York’s?Long Lash ad ?(the backstory is telling : two clients + one CG artist… no agency!), or the entire McDonald’s Happy Birthday Grimace “Purple Goo” escapade (here’s a super cut , and my favorite?Gen X response to same ) suggest a seismic shift.?

But the times, they are a changin’.?

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