What I’ve noticed from working in advertising, telly and how we can learn something from throwing like a granny.

Next year Jordan Laird and I will have been running Studio Something for 10 years. Bananas. Crazytown. Unthinkable. Many things have changed but during that time we’ve always had a consistent term thrown at us from the advertising industry as a bit of a diss; ‘creative’. Oh yeah, you are creative guys. That idea is too creative. It’s creative for creativity's sake. Maybe it’s because I set the company up when I was a 24 year old junior creative. Or maybe there’s something a bit deeper to it?

Nils Leonard of Uncommon commented on the fact the advertising industry no longer sells creativity but sells client services, and I agree. Most agencies I see are fulfillment agencies, not creative ones. That’s not to nothing or belittle the other parts of an agency, but I find it a little bit of a con for clients. Just call it something different if you ain’t selling creative. We have one designer, I’m not rushing out to call us a design agency.

We like to think that we come up with (and make) ideas our clients couldn’t do themselves. If we don’t, in a few years we will be irrelevant. But most industry events I go to don’t even speak about the creative process or the creative at all. And seem to prize case studies over creative. On my bad days it spirals me into existential dread and on my good days I laugh at the absurdity of it. An industry selling the stuff around the stuff while not prizing the stuff. Like a tile salesman punting grout.

But since I’ve been working in the broadcast industry making telly (y’know, the bit people tune in for) I’ve noticed the polar opposite happening there. A visceral positive reaction to how I am and how I see the world. Creativity is prized, coveted and welcomed. People see it is rare and pay for it. They sit up in meetings when you talk about ideas. People like me are welcome. The creative guy.

Earlier this year I gave a talk to The BBC Board about the company and how a couple of gadgies ended up creating a space to work on brands, broadcast and everything in-between - but importantly how for us ideas would always be prized over mediums. After the talk, a lot of the board came up to me and commented on the fact ‘we need more creative people like you’. One approached me to do a report on the future of sport and fandom which ended up being a large project spanning many months. At the start of it I asked, ‘oh, do you want me to do lots of strategy and research?’ ‘No thanks, we have plenty of that, I just want your ideas. Creative ideas. You’re the creative guy, I’m not’. Wow. Juice me! It struck me that in 10 years I’d never been asked that by a brand. And the sad thing is creativity genuinely works. I believe it can be every company’s unfair advantage and great creativity adds huge business benefits. It’s why scale-ups focus on brand. It’s why the biggest disruptors have a unique tone of voice. It’s how what we do doesn’t get ignored. And how we don’t become wallpaper salesmen punting paste.

So why are people scared of it?

Creativity takes guts, you have to be willing to look silly in the pursuit of being smart. We recently won a pitch for a huge sports brand. A basketball one. So I’ve been learning a lot about basketball. And I happened across an anecdote that reminds me of the reaction and view to bold creative ideas. It concerns a chap called Rick Barry who has one of the highest % for free throws in NBA history. His percentage is around 90%, which is crazy. The thing is, Rick Barry was so successful because he chose to free throw the ball ‘granny style’ aka underarm. He wasn’t scared to look a bit daft or do something that wasn’t the norm, because it worked. And do you know how many people since he set the record have adopted his technique? 0. Because people would rather not look silly than do something different that works.

Sometimes I think the company is at a crossroads. Do we go all in making telly? How do we make brands broadcasters? I can get tied in knots thinking about this stuff when really we’ve always sold the same thing from day one; creative. The creative guys. Too creative? Who cares? I don’t. We are doing creative because we’d get sad if we didn’t and we genuinely believe it works. Bending our knees, putting the ball between our legs and attempting to throw the ball like a granny.

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This article was written by Ian Greenhill who founded Studio Something and is our CEO. We are on a mission to make Something people genuinely like; be that a TV show, piece of branding or a new format no one has thought of. We like to come up with the right solution, not the easy solution for our partners. Give us a follow and tell yer pals we exist