Creativity: From Art to Intelligence
“Creativity” is a term thrown about so loosely these days that to begin this article without defining it would be like taking two steps backwards in a hopscotch death match. The Oxford English Dictionary describes creativity as “relating to or involving the use of imagination or original ideas in order to create something”. In other words, they don’t know either.
But who could blame them?
Creativity can be anything from the fancy footwork of a football player outsmarting his opponent, to a mother cunningly persuading her child to eat that last Brussels sprout. Never mind Jackson Pollock splattering paint all over huge canvases and creating the question of “…but is it art?”.
The definition of creativity will remain a long-standing debate. Our context in this discussion is advertising and this is where we will focus.
In our industry “creativity” refers to problem solving. It’s the art of finding a lateral solution to a linear problem. The only time that anyone will pay somebody else to do a job is when they can’t do it themselves, generally through a lack of know-how. They have a linear problem and, as linear people have no solution, this is where our skills add value. When poor quality cars were flooding the market back in the day, you can bet that it wasn’t a Volkswagen engineer that titled a beetle ad ‘Lemon’.
In an industry that’s been around for over a century, it’s understandable that the interpretation of creativity and our understanding of it has changed. That said, the last 20 years or so have been somewhat radical. Society as a whole, whether young or old, acquired a comprehension for the advertising message. People began to ask “why?” instead of “where can I get it?”, and they didn’t just start showing interest in the products, but the corporations that made them. “What are the ethics of the company?”, “Do they contribute to the community?”, “Is their manufacturing process green?” these are some of the questions being asked today that strongly influence purchase decisions.
Communication that was good looking was no longer good enough. The consumer expected a value offering. And so we began to see the transition from “art” to “intelligence”. The point where creatives had to start selling more and “making pretty” less. We had to include a new approach to messaging where transparency was key. We could no longer pull the wool over people’s eyes, a sound, intelligent argument would be required if people were to take interest in our message, and with the internet at everybody’s fingertips the public are quick to call out any claims that aren’t accurate.
Think back.
Think back to before J. Walter Thompson merged a media house with a graphic design studio to create what we now call an advertising agency.
In fact, think back to before there was such a thing as a graphic design studio or even a media house.
Our industry began through competition, when a fishmonger put up a sign to suggest that his fish was better than that of the guy opposite him.
Later on, a car was reliable. “It got you from A to B”, a soap was presumably going to make you clean, a cereal would fill you up in the morning and a shoe would protect your feet as you went about your daily business.
From the beginning to this day, when you read this piece, and into tomorrow when you wake up, there has been a consistent equation:
There’s a client • who has a product • that needs to be pushed into a certain environment • so an ad agency is employed • to come up with an approach • that through specific channels • will yield results.
So, not so long ago it was pretty simple. If there were two enterprises offering the same product, the one that won was the one that better seduced the people. Since the products were pretty much the same it came down to art.
This is the art of attraction: visually stimulating and verbally convincing.
Imagine standing on the pavement opposite two restaurants and trying to decide which one to go to. You would go to the one that looked like it had the most ambiance. In advertising we know it as “visual appeal”.
Back then, if you could just get the attention of the consumers they were sold.
Clients appreciated that while they could make “shoes” for example, other people, creative people, could make ads. Everyone had a field of expertise and the lines were never crossed.
For decades the formula remained the same.
The agencies would convince the public that they needed certain things, new things, things that they had never heard of. The public would lap up the communication and follow the “Instruction to Purchase”, and the clients would blindly put their trust and money in the hands of the agencies.
Briefs were simple, products had one offering, consumers had one requirement and if the two fitted together there was profit.
At this point creativity was defined by prettiness and believability.
So if that’s “art” then what’s this “intelligence” theory?
After all, agencies and the creative minds within them are still applying themselves to the moving of product…
Remember the “lateral solution to a linear problem”? Well, that’s where things have changed. These days it’s very much about “Less art. More business”.
Contemporary advertising dictates that what on Friday was the top side of a coin is on Monday the bottom, and if you weren’t paying attention over the weekend you missed the edge. Think about it. While you sleep and dream up the next “big idea”, someone somewhere else may be beating you to the punch. It only takes one time zone for someone else to do it first.
For example, consider cars. In the current car market “A” is irrelevant. All cars will get to “B”. Today, it is a matter of how safely and comfortably and what features one car has versus another.
Soaps are about skin rejuvenation on a molecular level, breakfast cereals don’t just fill you up but infuse you with every vitamin under the sun and “for a limited time only” come with a smile. Shoes tell you if you’re fat and your friends are all over your Facebook page telling you what to do about it.
At the end of the day, the first rule of brand building is “consistency”.
The consumer thinks, “I’m intrigued by the new one but I trust the old one.”
Pretty much all advertising before the late 80s / early 90s had been a steady evolution of communication structures that were born out of the industrial revolution.
Then the media consumption bucket began to overflow. An overwhelmed public switched-off to advertising messages and an underwhelmed client began paying closer attention to the bang that they were getting from their agency buck.
Never before had an individual been bombarded with so many sales pitches, with such high frequency.
We’re talking about people who during the 15-minute walk from the bus stop to the office would normally greet 15 familiar faces. They didn’t know the faces but they were familiar, and since everyone was going through the same daily motions, there was a sense of familiarity.
Suddenly the distraction of, “New, New, New! Buy me now! If you don’t have one of these you’re a…” infiltrated their lives. It built up and up and then, as a psychological defence, they all turned off.
Today’s creatives were born out of this renaissance.
Where the modern consumer’s question is not “is it new?” or “is it beautiful?” but “does it work?” and more to the point “how does it work for me?”.
Our clients are educated marketers who judge us on the returns on their investments. The products are competitive on a scientific level. The once accepting environment is sceptical at best and morphs daily, based on popular opinion. The ad agency seeks to perfect time travel in an attempt to stay ahead of the environment. The approach is often more about innovation and its potential than the message, and with that the channels blur, creating an ever-shrinking soapbox from which to make our plea.
More and more the “media department” is breathing new ideas into old briefs. Good creative work is not about the clever headline anymore but about how the overarching idea is applied. Innovation. It stems from technological advances and is generally introduced into any advertising agency through the media department.
With constant advances in our communication devices and the platforms that we use on them it seems like there’s a new way to get a message out every week. It’s a race between the current and the next best thing and as marketers it’s up to us to stay in front.
The good news is that one thing remains the same — the results.
If we aren’t getting them, we won’t exist.
Welcome the “Strategy department”. They’ve always been there but only recently been given permission to participate in the “Creative Process”. Who’s kidding who? If there was ever to be a hybrid it would be these two areas of expertise.
As egos are forced aside, the most efficient processes and the most successful results have been generated through this union.
Where once advertising creatives would sell their work based on beauty and poetry, we are now measured by our business acumen and strategic prowess. We can no longer sit in the corner daydreaming, while media schedules and demographics are discussed only to stand up with a good-looking layout.
We need to answer questions. Not about colours but about population consumption, emotions and spend. We need to know what’s being said about our brand on Facebook and ensure that the tweets are positive.
Remember the “lateral”?
Everything that we do as creative people is still art. The difference is the measure.
It’s about that ability to walk into a boardroom filled with very serious people wearing very serious suits and say, “have you ever thought of this…?”
“This” won’t be a layout. It won’t be a radio script. And it won’t be a web page.
It will be a business solution, an intelligent creative solution, a solution that nobody who can comprehend a pie chart would have come up with. And for just one second all your tattoos will be ignored.
We physically produce things of beauty, but when we’re around the boardroom table, or being reviewed on some global Excel spread sheet, it always comes down to ticking boxes. And getting that right is intelligent artistry.
Albert Einstein said, “Creativity is intelligence having fun”. You’d be pretty stupid to argue with him.
This essay was written by Pierre Odendaal & Steve Clayton, CCO and CD at McCann Johannesburg respectively, and first appeared in our highly acclaimed latest book, Hacker, Maker, Teacher, Thief: Advertising’s Next Generation, which you can still buy from Amazon here.
