My problem with ‘future thinking’

January is probably the bullshittiest month of the year when it comes to advertising and marketing.

Maybe it’s because we’re still catching up with the trends reports that will define the year ahead.

Maybe it’s because CES breaks Twitter and everyone has a point of view about the future.

Maybe it’s because we’re all drunken with resolutions and lofty goals and end up dreaming about people loving brands like they never did before.

In short, we become obsessed with projections.

With predicting what will be hot and what will be dead.

With advising clients on how their businesses will change drastically.

With putting our ‘forward thinking’ hats on.

Well, I have a bone to pick with ‘forward thinking’.

You see, we spend so much time thinking about the future and not enough time thinking about the past.

Advertising, so is proclaimed, is on the process to become something completely different than it ever was.

Powered by technology that in an automated way will ensure what we do is deployed quicker than ever and in more measurable ways than ever.

Which in itself will influence creative decisions and make the process of advertising way more ‘scientific’ — perhaps even automated.

Sounds pretty exciting.

Except it’s not new.

Claude Hopkins raved about a more ‘scientific’ approach to advertising almost 100 years ago.

His approach was of course not let by technology but by (supposedly) fail-proof methods to persuade people.

And for a while the industry followed his techniques, looking at advertising as something purely methodical, almost formulaic.

Until Bill Bernbach came along and debunked the whole thing.

Advertising, he said, would always be an art instead of a science.

Because persuasion and creativity would always have an artistic side to them.

And so the ‘creative revolution’ of advertising begun.

The point is, this whole conversation about ‘scientific advertising’ feels like déjà vu.

Think of it this way.

Most of us working in advertising want to have a jab at ‘creating culture’, or at least emulate it and turn it into a commercial opportunity.

Well, it’s well-proven that culture is cyclical by nature.

So if advertising is meant to emulate culture in some way, does that mean that advertising is cyclical as well?

First it was art (in the sense that there wasn’t a specific method).

Then it became science.

Then it was art.

And now it’s meant to be science again.

It’s just like the eternal debate of ideas vs executions.

Some say ideas are what matter, others say that the execution is key.

And so the cycle takes another spin.

My pal Frederico Roberto has a point when he says that it’s not as simple as objectively being one or the other.

Because even here you see cycles in the general conversation about what matters most.

For a few years, there’s a big focus on the ideas, the story and the big human truth.

Then you have a few years where the execution comes first.

And it becomes about making ideas come to life with a high level of craft across multiple executions and innovative uses of technology.

Before the golden age of advertising, most commercials were animated.

Then live action film and new photography techniques came along.

This lasted until the mid-90s.

Almost 35 years of executions.

With the explosion of technology around us, the conversation became much more subjective again.

New tech provoked new ways to execute but also new reflections on how we behaved, worked, socialised and got entertained.

So from the mid-90s to the late 2000s big ideas were back in the game.

And so on.

It’s hard to pin down one answer that sticks around for long.

Because the answer to a bunch of these questions is ‘both’.

Is it about the ideas or about the execution? Yes.

Is it about art or science? Yes.

As an industry, we’ll do ourselves a favour if we stop purely focusing on what’s ahead of us.

And reflect a bit on where we’ve been before.

As Paul Feldwick says:

Reflecting on the history of advertising thought has led me to realise that there is much more possible diversity in ways of thinking about advertising than we normally allow, and that we could use this diversity to give us greater scope in what we do.

That’s ultimately what our industry is about.

Expansive thinking which is subjective by nature.

Let the machines assume that the world is purely based on zeros and ones.

More time for us to actually come up with — and execute — great ideas.