Ideas Are Gifts, Not Possessions
“You will never win fame and fortune unless you invent big ideas. It takes a big idea to attract the attention of consumers and get them to buy your product. Unless your advertising contains a big idea, it will pass like a ship in the night. I doubt if more than one campaign in a hundred contains a big idea.” David Ogilvy
From the scotch soaked, cigarette smoke perfumed days of the 50’s to the Mac Book littered millennial offices of today, creatives have always chased the fabled big idea. Its pursuit has made careers and destroyed them, won pitches and lost them, forged international allegiances and inspired the fiercest interagency rivalries.
In this chapter, I’ll be exploring the way in which coming up with a big idea has changed, what they look like today and where they could take us tomorrow.
Lets start with the traditional creative team. It was Bill Bernbach who first put Art Directors and Copywriters together to form a creative team. He believed two heads were better than one when it came to advertising. Back then big ideas lived as either TV, print or outdoor advertising. Their aim was to literally interrupt, to stop people in their tracks. Bernbach felt that blurring the lines between words and pictures, gave more depth to the creative concept. It was an idea that soon caught on and teams of 2 fast became the standard practice.
Fast-forward to 2014 and successful teams are made up of more than 2 people. Most likely it’s a dynamic group of experts embracing all aspects of ideation, creative technology, experience design, art direction, story telling and production.
The Google re:brief project dramatises this organisational shift perfectly. They asked how the iconic TV spot “Hilltop” for Coke would live and play out in today’s media landscape.
The original Hilltop Art Director, Harvey Gabor, worked with a multidisciplinary team to reimagine what the big idea would look like today. The team turned the sweet metaphor (and melody) ‘I’d like to buy the world a Coke’ into a reality.
The 2012 interpretation of Hilltop resulted in display banner ads that could connect people to Coke machines on the other side of the world. By clicking on the banner ad, the person could literally buy (someone in) the world a Coke.
This highlights the first fundamental difference in how we execute ideas today compared with 1971: we used to simply say a message, now we do the message. The big idea remains the same, however it’s no longer something that a conceptual team simply hands off for execution. Execution and ideation are interdependent.
I believe the second shift we are seeing is that we are no longer limited to metaphors. We can do more than just fake it with impressive CGI or incredible storytelling. Mercedes invisible car is a great example of our ability to actually create the magic of advertising, for real. Some smart technology, a whole lot of LEDs and some clever camera work made it possible to really make the car invisible to the public. Invisibility was the metaphor to support the claim that this car had zero impact on the environment. The stunt was filmed and went on to become one of the most successful viral ads we’ve seen. It also can be held responsible for the flurry of stunts that have swamped YouTube since then.
This upfront role of technology in the creative process provides us with some of the biggest creative opportunities today. Sir John Hegarty sums it up well “Creativity challenges technology; technology inspires creativity”.
It’s no surprise that this new role for technology dramatically challenges the definition of what the creative team is and does.
I’d argue that digital creatives have evolved in a collaborative creative process and work environment because they have always had to hack solutions. (You’re only as good as your programmer.)
The very nature of digital has always meant that the execution is not an afterthought but instead it’s the process. Hacking solutions has become second nature with the incredible explosion of platforms, devices, social networks and technologies that influence our creative playground. Ideas need to be shared, built upon, stretched, challenged, supported and made better through collaboration. It’s why this chapter is called ‘Ideas are gifts, not possessions’. It was something that my old friend and mentor, Mark Beeching, taught me a long time ago and, I feel, it only keeps getting more and more relevant.
Collaboration and co-creation is the new source of creativity. It requires confidence (not ego) to give your idea away to someone else — whether that’s another agency, partner or even your consumers. Interestingly, strategic planners have always had to give ideas away to creative. It appears that we must now do the same. It’s no longer about controlling or policing the idea in a matching luggage approach. It’s about giving it away and enjoying the ways in which it’ll come back and, delight and surprise you.
When trying to understand successful collaborative models it’s interesting to look at the Film industry for inspiration. It’s perhaps the most dominant creative industry in the 21st century. It’s always been a collaborative industry. It’s hard to say who or what is responsible for (or the owner) of a great film: Director? Scriptwriter? Actors? Producer? Photographic Director? The great story, which was based on a great novel?
None of these roles or factors is single-handedly responsible for the success of the final product. It’s a cumulative effect. Although what’s interesting to highlight is that everyone can win an Oscar for their particular contribution. So it’s no surprise, that the Oscar for best film is always the one with the most individual Oscars.
The Cannes Lions Festival is the equivalent of the advertising industry’s Oscars. And in line with evolution of creativity, its awards are also evolving. In 2005, in recognition of the new integrated approach emerging in advertising, the festival first introduced the Titanium category. This rewarded campaigns that excelled across a range of media channels. Subsequently, this grew into Titanium & Integrated in 2007. Then, last year, both Jury Presidents felt a need to clarify (and maybe justify) what each of these categories meant.
Today’s Cannes Lions recipients are winning big, across categories. Dumb ways to Die makes this point well, cleaned up in 2013 with 5 Grand Prix, 18 Gold Lions, 3 Silver Lions, and 2 Bronze Lions across pretty much every category — making it the most awarded advertising campaign in history to date.
Dumb Ways to Die beat serious competition in each category too. It won not because it was a big idea that had been adapted to different channels giving a coherent and consistent campaign. But because it was a simple, powerful idea that lived in different ways, creating value and earning attention across different touch points.
The flip side of the new post-digital playground bringing a world of opportunity is the new challenge it also presents. Things are only getting more and more complex. We have never asked so much from an idea as we do today.
Ironically, I believe that as the briefs are become more complex, the ideas need to become simpler. But these are simple, powerful ideas that can live in complex ecosystems, across channels, in real-time, that always create value and earn attention for the consumer.
Another big winner from Cannes in 2013 was The Beauty Inside by Intel and Toshiba. It took home 3 Grand Prix, 2 Gold, 5 Silver, 2 Bronze, and that’s in addition to 9 shortlisted entries. It’s perhaps the most perfect idea I’ve ever come across so far. In my opinion, what makes this brilliant, is that it’s a perfect idea for Intel and only Intel.
A lot of the advertising we see today is category specific. You can swap in and out brand names and it still works as a campaign because you’re selling cars, luxury, chocolate bars or whatever the category may be, but in the end it’s not necessarily brand specific. The Beauty Inside has succeeded where so many agencies and brands have failed: giving the idea away to the consumer. It’s ruined UGC for us all, making other attempts seem cheap and meaningless. A fantastic script and faultless storytelling gave anyone the chance to play the lead character of Alex in this social film. But it was done in a way that made sense for the brand and the user, ultimately resulting in incredible participative storytelling done with great talent and incredible passion.
I find it interesting that what would have once been considered as a ‘web series’ now can take home the coveted Film Grand Prix at Cannes Lions (in addition to Cyber and Branded Content).
The comparison between the advertising industry and film industry is interesting given that The Beauty Inside is perhaps the first ‘ad’ to beat regular programming and take home an Emmy Award for Outstanding New Approach to a daytime series.
Which brings me to my final example. This big idea was the elephant in the room at the Cannes in 2013. Red Bull Stratos is perhaps the biggest idea we have ever seen in advertising and yet it was not entered in any advertising festival. (No doubt it would have radically changed Cannes and any other advertising festival if it had been).
The Stratos team was composed of “world-leading experts in medicine, science and engineering, including a former NASA crew surgeon, record-breaking aviators, and designers of some of the most innovative aircraft ever produced”.
As we look towards the future we’ll no doubt see this type of approach more and more. Successful advertising will be built on powerful organising ideas that live over time (and in real-time), across channels with a programmatic logic. Felix Baumgartner’s infamous space jump clearly demonstrates the shift from saying to doing. It shows us how brands can create magic for real. And most importantly, it’s an interesting example of how this new breed of collaborative creativity can redefine what advertising is, does and inspires.
#givesyouwings
The above piece was written by Bridget Jung, ECD and founder of Jungle and was taken from the “Creativity” section of our latest book, Hacker, Maker, Teacher, Thief: Advertising’s Next Generation, which features chapters from 35 leading creative directors and business owners giving their views on the big topics shaping the future of advertising and brands.
