Creativity just wasn't made for these times

It's morning again in America. Why do I feel as if I just woke up to an alternate reality where the good guys are bad and the bad guys are good? Why do I feel as if everything that was normal is now whacked and everything that was whacked is the new normal? 

It reminds me of the scene in the film Sleeper when Miles Monroe awakens to a world where things like milk and college are considered unhealthy (prophetic, no?) -- a country where everything we thought was good for us is actually quite bad and even deadly.

In Sleeper, science and data informed this opinion shift paradigm. Science and data drove the Revolution (the "Aries Project")

When did a good education, ambitious career & a moral vocation begin take on the sinister tone of "elitism?" Exactly when did intellect become an enemy of the people? Did it begin in the post-war McCarthyism of the 1950's? Did it get its name in the early 1960's?

The effects of anti-intellectualism are deadly to an inspired and creative world. In the advertising industry, creative salaries are shrinking in a time of unprecedented financial prosperity in America. What does that tell you?

It tells me that creativity is actually more important than ever. It tells me that creativity is scarcer than ever, therefore more valuable to client advertisers -- because they still need it and because the "commodity of creativity" (now that's an oxymoron for you) is vaporizing. In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is King (or Queen).

It explains why the hot agencies are providing BOTH solutions -- combining data and creativity for business results. Ad agencies are, above all else, in the solutions business. Creativity is a proven solution. Fight for that. Commit to data & science, yes; but, fight for creativity -- because today, it's more wobbly than Mike Tyson in Tokyo.