Ever tried singing Karaoke sober?
I have.
Agony.
Last year, judging Andys. In Costa Rica, of all
places (which raises the threat level from a base-line "fucking
miserable" to a full-scale "soul-sucking hell".)
My point is, from a technical perspective, it's
achievable. It can be done. But, trust me; you wouldn't want to sit through it.
A brutal and devilish torture. For both crooner and crowd.
By my twisted logic, it's much the same with
creative briefs. Trying to crack one when you're flat, uninspired and mildly
suspicious that, in the unlikely event you invent something fresh and potent,
there's a spectacular probability it will be castrated by a committee of
savagely righteous heavy-breathers, is about as fruitful as trying to knock out
"Love on the Rocks" in front of an inebriated mob, powered only by
Diet Coke.
Greedily gulping sparse pockets of oxygen, with
a plastic bag pulled tight over your face, would be an improvement to conjuring
up an idea for an ad when bored.
In this painful scenario, the simple act of
laughing is as central to your box of tools as a working laptop and Wi-Fi. It's
not a "nice to have". It's a necessity. The insane arrogance to
believe your brain will spot the narrow gap others before you have missed, is
hugely aided by hulking globs of childish mirth.
Granted, making a guy in a monkey suit resemble
a credible gorilla channelling Phil Collins in order to sell chocolate bars is
no laughing matter. It takes gruelling months of craft, hard labour in chilly boardrooms
and a near pathological attention to detail. But I'll warrant, when Juan first
came up with the idea, he was cracking a thin smile. There may even have been
giggles.
And here's the dirty little secret no-one wants
to talk about, I can only assume, in case we all reach for the ledge...there's
not a lot of chuckling in creative departments these days.
As an allegedly "grown up industry",
it's just not something we like to talk about. Presumably, in case we have to
suffer the ignominy of seeing our hard fought "A-Grade Scientific
Marketing" ranking revised to a lowly "Trust your Gut, Clown Around
& Roll the Dice" downgrade?
Which begs the curly question: how scientific is
"modern" advertising?
There are certainly books which suggest that
it's almost entirely scientific. I've seen them at the airport. I've definitely
seen them on client's shelves. The "How To" of Predictive marketing.
Top 20 Big Data Tips. Pin sharp research tools. Desktop listening gadgets.
Maybe this uber-droid Watson is in on it, too?
According to these steady, reasoned voices, my
chaotically unpredictable brain is about as relevant as MySpace. Yours too,
perhaps?
And what if they are right? What if colourful,
loud mouthed, eccentric, over-opinionated creative types, in reality, are
simply the cosmetic trappings of a bygone age? What if we are simply being kept
around to suggest an air of old-world charisma, whilst, in reality, we are entirely
expendable? Rather like buttoned-up concierges in fine hotel lobbies; the sort
of polished chaperone who makes you feel familiar on foreign soil, when, in
reality, we all know a 2-minute Google search could answer your inevitable
question faster.
Are you really paranoid, if everyone is really
trying to kill you?
If we are to believe most of what we're told by
"those who should know", in the high-stakes poker game of modern
adland, real-time analytics beats a pair of balls every time.
For an idea to claim genuine veracity, it must
first conform to the snug, linear logic of a well-oiled case study film. A
perfect, logical journey: from left to right; A to B. Problem to solution;
insight to execution.
But (and here's the rub) from personal experience,
my best ideas tend to come out of a hot bubble bath. Or, rather, out of me,
whilst in a hot bubble bath.
That's not to undermine a good brief. A pithy,
precise creative brief is, and always will be, a thing of rare beauty. And the
planners and clients who pen them, God-like creatures. But, for all their
intellectual eloquence, they ignore the presence of the most powerful gun in
our armoury: anarchy. The delicious, chaotic crutch that keeps us from toppling
into a heap of festering poop and sometimes points us in the most wonderfully
unexpected directions.
And what is this breed of creative anarchy's
favourite tipple? Fun. Leaded, unleaded, diesel. It matters not. It is the
simple propellant that carries the world's best ideas from brown to gold.
However, the thing about fun is, it's, well,
annoyingly unpredictable. Diarizing fun, for instance, is notoriously tricky.
Back in my early days as circus ringmaster at Saatchi & Saatchi Sydney, I
managed to conveniently compress it into a regular six-hour fun-fix thanks to
my introduction of the FFC ("Fuck Friday Club").
On the last Friday of every month, we would celebrate 30 days of hard slog with
an afternoon of bourbon-soaked debauchery across town that would invariably
produce the kind of stories that newbies in our industry now assume are simply
fabrications; romantic, exaggerated urban fables, born of middle-aged hacks'
lazy nostalgia and looseness with the truth. Whilst, ironically, those who are
still alive to bear witness will recall that, far from exaggerate, we
invariably underplayed our antics by Monday's sober
morning, in fear that HR may finally swoop down and torch our happy play sheet.
Fun. It's an unpredictable mistress. Certainly,
as is so oft underlined in these fiscally strident times; absolutely un-billable.
And, let's be honest, if CFOs ain't diggin' it, it ain't happening. Not these
days. In that same poker hand I mentioned earlier, an indignant pair of CFOs
beats a straight flush of idealistic CCOs. Any day of the week.
So, there you have it:
Sugar is bad for you.
Toys aren't made the way they were.
Oh, and advertising isn't fun anymore.
Not really fun. Unless wearing cargo pants to
work and having house music play in reception is all it requires to make you
smile. If it is, then cease reading now. If you seriously think working in an
ad agency creative department is "fun", you're lost to me. You're
also, I must assume, a regular partaker in class-A drugs, in which case, no
drama. Hats off. Have a nice day. Pass the dutchie to the left hand side. Enjoy
your BBQ Pringles.
For those still Xanax-free and, like me in
recent years, painfully sober, I can only hope I've tweaked your empathy nipple
enough to indulge me a little longer in this circuitous ramble.
Don't get me wrong. It's not that I think
working in a creative department is unbearably bleak. Not in the sense working
in an underfunded triage in Somalia is bleak. But, the fact remains, I've yet
to meet a senior creative director, anywhere in the world (and trust me, I
travel) in the last few years who doesn't freely admit that, should a, yet
unknown and unfeasibly wealthy, distant relative pop their clogs, they'd be out
the door of adland faster than you can say "procurement directors favour
marble-wash denim".
So, where exactly did all this fun go? Some of
it, admittedly, could be attributed to forces wider than our own small
industry. The PC revolution had little to do with Bill Gates, and more to do
with toning down the more colourful end of the conversation.
Granted, some of that shift was wholly warranted
and, frankly, overdue. Case in point: Diversity; big tick.
But, somewhere along the way, we lost the baby
with the dirty water. Where once, eccentricity and emotional excess was a badge
of honour for a jobbing CD, it's long been an anchor around our collective
throats.
Being a Pirate rogue may still sell tickets for
Johnny Depp, but you'd be wise to keep your skull and crossbones under the bed
if you have ambitions to rise up the corporate ladder of Adland. What's the
phrase du jour? "Falling Upwards". The near guaranteed accent of
polite mediocrity.
At the end of the day, it all comes down to the
same maladie that has elevated Trump
to baffling levels of popularity and ISIS to similarly cosmic heights of
infamy...abject fear. In their case, fear of the unknown, the foreign, the
unfamiliar. In our case; client's fear of overshooting our consumers’ IQ and
fear of under-branding our product's name.
In fairness, that's nothing new. Over 50 years
ago, George Orwell dismissed what we call a profession with characteristic
acidity: "The public are swine; advertising is the stick that rattles the
swill bucket". George Carlin was equally damning, if, arguably, a lot
funnier.
I can only assume you could locate plenty of CDs
who would voraciously disagree with my wanton pessimism. Like you, I've read
many a piece by a highly respected "Creative Leader" basking in the
riches this shiny new media and technological landscape afford to us as
"modern, creative thinkers".
Really?
Bollocks.
All I see is less time, less budget, less
respect, less trust. And, tangibly, a lot less fun. (Did I mention less
time?) Sure, VR is a blast. Yes, we have some crazy-cool new toys to play with.
And, yes, clever data can empower smarter insights. I'm not completely nuts.
But, creativity, that chaotic stuff that some of us still like doing in the
bath, that's the bit that doesn't submit to coding. Without it, all the tech
savvy in the world is anaemic, at worst; decaffeinated, at best.
Then again, maybe I'm just not that modern.
Perhaps I'm putting too much value on craft? And the time and latitude it
demands. Perhaps I'm mad? It's certainly been suggested. Why for instance am I
even still in advertising? Still trying to ape a half decent creative director?
Well, put simply, two reasons: the aforementioned
unknown relative hasn't been good enough to die yet. And, much to my genuine
shock, I've managed to maintain a smattering of clients who appear to have
bucked the prevailing trend and actually trust me and the guys to do what we do
best. Or, at least, do what they hope we do best. That's rare. "As rare as
hen's teeth", as we say down under. So, I guess I'm staying on this
bucking bronco a little longer than anyone, including me, predicted.
Thankfully, the French have a soft spot for
Johnny Depp movies.
Hope springs eternal.
David
Nobay is Founder/Creative Chairman of Marcel Sydney. You can watch David's Artbreaks series here.
In 2017, LBB launches his podcast
"ADjacent": things we do on the side