Hacker, Maker, Teacher, Thief: Advertising's Next Generation

by Creative Social

today’s best advertising talent are not one thing, but can assume multiple identities, sometimes at the same time.

“Hacker, Maker, Teacher, Thief” to summarise the kaleidoscopic identities that advertising’s “next generation” is inspired (and forced) to assume.

these topics are like concentric circles: at the very centre we have advertising and creativity. Around them is culture, and then further around education. Innovation is the next layer, and then the future.

advertising, as we know it, is simply not working. It has failed to change as fast as culture and as a result is becoming increasingly irrelevant to people, business and the talent we need to attract and retain.

Clients are asking us to grow their business and solve big, tough, complicated commercial problems. Yet our default behaviour and niche obsessions with the ad makes the link between the commercial imperative and the creative solution far too weak and indirect. We have to become more obsessed by the outcome we create rather than the output we make.

Great communication ideas act as a bridge. A bridge between what people are interested in and care about and what you make/ sell. A bridge between your world and theirs; real life/culture and commerce.

In today’s ever accelerating culture we are setting ourselves up to fail every day we walk into work. We don’t move at the speed of culture and thus are becoming irrelevant. We have to try and remove the pointless quest for perfection.

a hack is the most ingenious and effective solution to a problem.

I. Hacks, by definition, are more effective. They take big complicated problems and break them into smaller problems that can be more easily solved, whatever form that solution takes. As a result, they remove the

Somewhat perversely, we need less advertising people in order for advertising to flourish.

“I’ve been looking at the numbers,” she said. And I groaned. Numbers have never really done it for me. Not in the past, anyway. “Look, the numbers show that while kids are still into football, they aren’t as crazy about it as they used to be. What they are interested in these days are individual sports like swimming and cycling.” Now that is a real insight.

people can edit advertising out of their lives entirely now. That means you have to create ideas they actually want to engage with. In other words, creativity has never been so important.

For me, for any brand to survive, let alone thrive, it needs to mean something to the people who buy it. For creative people, that means creating ideas rooted in human truths rather than ideas rooted in product facts.

TV advertising isn’t dead. There will always be a role for the tent-pole commercial. Especially when brands have news they want to share. It’s just that it can’t really change behaviours on its own. Together with digital and experiential media, however, it can help get people to change what they do and how they do it. And maybe, just maybe, to start looking out for each other as well as looking out for this fragile world of ours.

Thanks to the digital revolution, advertising people have become relevant. Not just to marketers with brands to sell but to people.

be amazed at how the client is expecting a piece of advertising to deliver 3 or 4 different KPIs - then marvel as the ad is a derivative, pseudo-ironic, line by line execution of the brief.

Someone once told me that only 10% of a client’s working time was available to work with agencies. And, boy, is it starting to show. The other 90% of time is heavily involved with talking to The Street, managing politics, writing reports, meetings, P&Ls and budget cutting.

Ads end up trying to do so much with one execution because they’re being filtered through the unrealistic demands of every other department in the business.

all of the greatest ads ever have outstanding ideas at the heart of them.

They challenged society, insidiously changing language, behaviour and even media consumption.

They promised to do things cheaper, to charge less at the pitch and to allow ‘THOSE’ changes just this once so that they could get an ad out of the door.

They mothball bottom drawer ideas for fear of upsetting the apple cart and have diversified into every other discipline from ‘retailtainment’ to ‘youthmatising’ whilst doing exactly what they tell their clients not to do - losing their heartland…heart stopping, tear-welling, finger-lickin’ idea generation.

told him I’d seen somewhere online that 89% of ads are not remembered. 7% are remembered and not liked and only 4% are remembered and liked.

Why aren’t agencies and clients working together to get their ads in that magic 4%?

Advertising in its heyday was born of clients and agencies working for a common purpose in symbiotic relationships - a creative Yin, a commercial Yang, spooning each other in a loving, trusting marriage, not rutting like 2 Alpha teens in the back of mum’s Ford Ka.

Deserving work that sold on the premise of real insight, not a lazy interpretation of a poor brief.

The diversity of media means that even more now, a well-formed idea has to be the bedrock of the creative output and then blown out across all channels.

It’s not rocket surgery but it takes discipline, collaboration and real joint energy to make great ideas fly.

That disruption has to be rooted in truth and executed aggressively.

it has to link back into some deep-seated truth about an opportunity that the business has seen to disrupt the status quo.

Radical Collaboration.

This joint relationship has to crave simplicity - ask anyone who has done a TED talk - my friend told me that the crux of his 18 minute speech could be distilled into 8 words by the end.

The creative thrust has to be as sharp as the disruptive truth that gave it birth - the combination of the 2 delivers the end result.

both parties must be hungry for results, feedback and the responsibility that brings.

in many ways there needs to be a disruption of the way clients and agencies operate in order that great, disruptive, behaviour changing ideas can be released.

are those who see great ideas as part of the make up of society. Great advertising, like great beer, is the hallmark of a country. It mirrors, fuels and fucks up in equal measure the psyche of the nation.

Of course clients know great ads, as do agencies. They both just need to give a fuck more often about what they put out.

Each of us is only as creative as our imagination allows. We need to continually both feed that imagination and give it room to breathe,

We have created ‘Innovation Directors’, ‘Labs’ and ‘Hack-a-thons’ to encourage innovative thinking in our work.

If your frame of reference is mainly based on advertising and the usual sources of inspiration that everyone else in the industry is accessing, then your ideas will invariably be in danger of becoming derivative.

‘Curiosity about life in all of its aspects… is still the secret of great creative people’.

Shorter and shorter deadlines, the pressure to produce ideas on demand, the expectation you will work insanely long hours for extended periods – no wonder it’s tempting to take ‘short cuts’ when it comes to getting inspiration.

“A broad set of experiences” he said “expands our understanding of the human experience. A broader understanding leads to breakthroughs that others may have missed”.

have as much variation as you can via your daily feed, follow interesting people who have nothing to do with your job or your industry and read blogs and watch content that showcases highlights from across different industries.

Many ways of getting inspired involve minimum effort or time. Walk if you need to think. Turn your phone off, look up occasionally. See what’s around you. Listen to music you know nothing about. Make a list of classic films you want to see and watch them on your commute. Cook a totally random recipe. Volunteer….

High risk and great uncertainty sometime leads to great and groundbreaking innovations (think military strategy). Often, it leads to paralysis and a “let’s not rock the boat” attitude. It leads to the culture of fear, conformism and aversion to doing anything new and different. It’s the culture of change-phobia.

Big, global clients, with big, global markets don’t help

here. They are under this same economic pressure, and they seek solutions that will help them stay in the same excel spreadsheet column as the last year.

The advertising professionals in this long tail know that their audience is so poor that only every fifth person will be able to afford the products they are advertising, shrinking their market even further.

(a warrior chant) and start fighting against complacency. But never head-on. That’s why you are guerrilla.