Leo Burnett - Cultural Fuel

Forgive me for the philosophical rant. It’s one of those foggy days in Frankfurt, and I get philosophical when it’s foggy outside.

Apart from being a nice animation showcase, for me, the below move immediately became a metaphorical insight for how some agencies work (or try to work).

A Mystery: Why Can’t We Walk Straight? from NPR on Vimeo.

Mostly, the creative process of getting to ideas (new ideas, that is!) resembles being blindfolded because you usually don’t yet see the solution. It takes guts to venture out and begin the process. Still: how, where and when ideas come to you is usually random, uncontrolled, and, well, blind. Plus, a lot of the times, even when you suddenly see the idea, it is hard to reproduce how you got there and you can never use the same methods of getting there twice. You just don’t know. It’s not linear, not straight.

Meanwhile, though, we’re being asked to walk in straight lines (metaphorically speaking) by the client’s briefing or constraints, always tugging at us and trying to fence us in, in order to (or so they say) reach certain objectives at the end of that straight line.

Unfortunately, if we continued this simile based on the outcome of the movie, it would mean that we never quite reach those objectives because we end up walking in circles instead.

Unless of course…

1. … we stubbornly believe that objectives aren’t the point to begin with, but rather that being creative itself is because, screw it, straight is boring anyway and great creative is all about not being boring. So there!
2. Or, we lift the blindfold by using strategic tools and techniques that help us see the straight line and walk it.

The moral of it for me is: a good creative process does both. Neither is it about just lifting the blindfold of seeing the straight line of the purported solution (which is rarely creative), nor is it about doggedly walking in creative circles in the hopes of sudden epiphany revealing itself before the creative mind (which is creative, but, let’s not muddy the issue, falls into the domain of uncompromising artists, not communication artists).

Maybe it’s about seeing what you can see, but not just to see the straight line (and then walk it), but also seeing the creative opportunities lying within walking the circles. Use your insights as a conscious permission or even exhortation to allow yourself to venture off and walk in circles.

Because, as most people would agree, sometimes what’s at the end of the line isn’t the best solution anyway. Rather, it may be hidden in a stump somewhere. *THUD*

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From David Armano, a lovely little way to look at how an idea agency lives and breathes:

Via: Little Red Book

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Recently, say over the last years or so, planning and strategy has gained sex appeal. Lots of clients are all about “insights” these days and seem to have developed quite a hankering for that one inspirational bit of information that can transform business ideas, product ideas, marketing innovation ideas. Oh.. and, I almost forgot: communication ideas. Meanwhile, the agency landscape seems to be filling up with a formerly less commonly heard title: Chief Strategy Officer.

So, understandably, the trade press comes out with articles entitled “Is strategy the new creative?”.

But what does this really mean? I believe a headline like this is a great eyecatcher. But really, it is written that way to make you look. Strategy is not the new creative. It’s simply that the definition of strategy and creative and how both have to work together has changed.

However, what the headline really does, too, is to ignite a conversation. And conversations, or rather making sure that people talk about your brand and brands themselves are part of those conversations is what is actually behind the fact that the definition of strategy and creative has changed.

In a communications landscape where marketers have begun understanding that people aren’t interested in your messages  obviously the old form of creative product, i.e. the delivery of ads, is losing importance. Or, at a minimum, ads need to be complemented with different creative products that provide context-relevant experiences, content and participatory elements alongside before they can be effective again.

Arguably, before strategy and creative were seperated, creative directors or account people did the strategy. Now it looks like everyone has to do strategy and creative. Why?

Having moved from the brand era to the people era has not only increased the need for agencies to offer a different or extended creative product, it also forces agencies to change the way they work to achieve the delivery of idea platforms that work channel-agnostically. Agencies have been offering full-service for decades, but in siloes and all services and creative executions tied back to the might big brand idea.

The most apparent differences of doing creative work now vs before is what happened to team structure and process: the traditional art director / copywriter duo who was responsible for “the big idea,” and represented the creative fulcrum of the agency, now has to live with the fact that the team responsible for creative output just got bigger. In order to deliver idea platforms that work in all channels, it does not suffice to come up with a “communication idea” and then adapt it into channels. You have to have ideas about experiences, content, functionalities, technologies and the brand’s product or service itself. Also, to be creative for those kinds of deliverables you need to do more than call your brand planner for some “consumer insights” about people’s attitudes: you need behavioral insights, channel insights, technology insights, experience insights. As a result, you need more people adept at a lot of different things to get the job done. And yet another result is that you need to completely step away from the linear process of research -> creative -> production. Your process needs to iterative and co-creative, from writing the brief to coming up with little ideas that tie into one idea platform instead of just one big-ass communication idea.

So, in order to accomplish all the above, you need someone to keep provide a bigger sandbox for everyone to play in. And guess who stepped up to the plate for that one? Strategists. Being that “sandbox provider” means that the traditional research and briefing job of a strategist has become much more about actually staging the discovery experience of the whole team and making that experience visceral. In a way, the frame in which an entire team of art directors, copywriters, concept developers, content strategists, social media strategists, interface designers, technologists, motion designers, experience planners, and brand planners tries to solve for a communication-, brand-, business- or product issue has to be staged and stewarded. To me, this doesn’t mean the strategist also has the creative ideas, but it means he provides the environment in which it happens. This means that strategist can’t sit in their office and pump out a creative brief anymore and that’s it. It means that they have to become a part of the creative process itself. And vice versa, creatives being part of the discovery mean they have to think a lot more about insights, as well.

So it doesn’t just look like everyone has to do strategy and creative. This is the way it has to be. In fact, if you do things right, you could also ask “Is creative the new strategy?”

To me it looks like after a long hiatus, you have to get ready for strategy and creative to move in together again. Just don’t let the strategist pick the furniture.

A little clip here on how strategy (and to me creative) has to move beyond the world of communications).

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