An open source vision for designing the future of our industry.
We’re having the wrong conversation about creativity.
Take a look at LinkedIn some time (or attend a creative conference when we start having those again), and you’ll hear a lot of talk about how “creativity” is under siege from things like data, social media, programatic, personalization, etc.
This project is about why I think that point of view is holding us back from fixing the mess our business is in and designing the next phase of our industry.
The Internet won. Now what?
Even before the pandemic, the last few years have been a demoralizing time for the marketing industry. As the Internet grew from “emerging, important side channel” to “the central nerve center of culture, commerce, and communication”, both sides of the digital/traditional divide that defined us for years lost our sense of a way forward. The doldrums in our industry and this sense of lostness reinforce each other. The purpose of this project to help us regain our bearings, by rewiring our basic assumptions about creativity.
The people who embraced technology early won the battle but lost the war. They were right that everything would change, but as a result the idea of “digital” has disappeared, and with it the relevance of the tech-hip digital agency. The iron grip of platforms, clients taking product design in-house, and the lack of an approach to marketing as simple and understandable (and relatively effective) as TV all contribute to sense that the digital powerhouses, who ten years ago seemed on the verge of taking over everything, no longer perform magic tricks.
In even worse shape are the remnants of the once-called “general agencies”. Their identities were always rooted firmly in the fact that they were the ones who had the idea that organized everything, and were therefore in control of everyone else. The biggest blow is that they ARE SIMPLY NO LONGER GENERALISTS. Nothing is dead —the type of storytelling and ad-making and ‘big ideas’ these places excel at will always be relevant and useful, but it is in no way still a strategy for organizing everything a client needs to accomplish. It’s now another specialty, like brand design and digital product design.
The decline of both of these approaches has left a power vacuum that is not being filled. Consultants have siphoned off some of the business but have not taken charge. The emergence of the data companies and media agencies shows some promise but they have yet to produce transformative creative work that can rival the best output of the digital or communications agencies.
Only “makers” can solve it.
Not only do I believe that the right approach to creativity can solve this problem and illuminate a way forward, I think it’s the only thing that can solve it from within our industry (as opposed to a disruptor coming in and doing it for us). The creatives, strategists, technologists, production and data people and others who are close to the “product” that we make have to take the lead. The suits won’t do it—because they are too beholden to the immediate-term needs of clients, and too allergic to making operational and structural changes to adapt to new realities. And the clients won’t do it for us. As my friend Nick Law famously said, “Clients are not responsible for innovating their agencies. If they want something new, they will just get a new agency”.
We can lead the change that our business needs, but to do that we need to move beyond the way we talk about “creativity.”
Diagnosing the problem.
I’ve put a lot of thought into trying to put my finger on what bothers me about the narrative around “creativity” in our industry and more importantly, why it hasn’t helped.
I’d sum up this point of view (which by the way is held by a lot of incredibly talented people) like this, “Nobody appreciates creativity and the power of a great idea anymore. All this data and social media and consulting stuff is just a mirage, snake oil, that’s made everyone confused, and caused us to lose our way. The work that’s come out of it is terrible and boring. We’d be better off going back to the good old simple days when people believed in big ideas and we weren’t so distracted by things that don’t matter. We need to believe in creativity again.” There’s also a much simpler version, held by a lot of creative leaders, which goes, “I’m a idea person. I don’t want to think about data and all that stuff, I just want to come up with ideas.”
Coming from the digital side of things I’ve always rejected this view because the Internet is not going away, change doesn’t go backwards, and when you dig a little deeper, mostly when people talk about ideas this way whaat they really mean is big budget TV spots.
But I’ve now come to believe the crux of the issue is much deeper, but also much simpler. And the truth is that the dominant narrative around creativity in our business is deeply conservative. Not in a political way (and certainly not in a 2020s version of that). But in a more simple sense of conservatism being about trying to protect an old set of ideas that is seen as being under siege by modernity. And holding up as an ideal an older way of doing things that we should return to.
And this insight leads to the jumping off point for our new philosophy:
CONSERVATIVE CREATIVITY IS AN OXYMORON.
What I’ve come to believe is that a conservative approach to creativity is at odds with what creativity has always been about, because creativity, as a human activity, is inherently progressive. Again, I don’t mean this in a political way (although I believe it connects with the idea of being politically progressive), but in a simpler sense. Creativity is always about about building a better, more human, more ethical, and more pleasant world, and using the tools available to us in whatever era we find ourselves in to move those things forward. If there’s a conception of creativity that we need to connect or ‘reconnect’ with, it’s that.
And so this becomes our first principle and the beginning of a new way forward that will allows us to integrate. master, and triumph in all the new mediums that keep popping up, and in doing so chart a new future for the creative industry: CREATIVITY IS INHERENTLY PROGRESSIVE.
Want to go further? Here’s a drill down into the Principles of Progressive Creativity and the thinking that falls out of it.
Philosophy matters.
That’s why I’m writing this all down and putting it out there—for some of us, the right lenses and principles can make a huge difference to how we approach our work and see the world, especially in periods of transition.
I’ll be adding more principles and thoughts to this site as time goes on.
Let me know what you think of this! Do you agree? Disagree? Why? Get in touch and let me know, and let’s talk about it.