A black president. The world is in awe. What can the world of advertising learn from this?
People in the ad industry just love new, shiny things that shake things up. Paradoxically, the very same people are bad at changing. That’s why new thinking in the industry comes mainly from three sources: from new types of agencies with new business models, from certain agency accounts where risk-taking is allowed and from the sporadic one-hit wonders. I did not mention people, because I believe that contextual setting stands above individual talent. Sad but true. In other words:
agencies create their own barriers.
That’s why new contexts (like new agency models) have to be invented to allow people to break them.
One of many reasons:
“That will never work. Trust me, I’ve done it before”
This is a powerful line that everybody recognises. It’s also one of the most proven creativity killers. A colleague of mine had a brilliant point of view on exactly this, that
the ONLY common denominator in the life of conservative people are themselves.
Back to Obama. I think the one thing we as advertising people can learn from his success is that ordinary people have now overtaken the advertising industry when it comes to willingness to change.
Cynics may say that advertising is like any other line of business and that change for the sake of changing is futile. They are wrong. What people buy from ad agencies is creativity – something that doesn’t yet exist except for in our brains. But if our brains are programmed to do the same things as before, how can rules be broken?
That's the million dollar question.
I don't know, but I don’t think the answer is to invent new business models or other static constructs. Advertising is above all a people’s business. Change is also something dynamic, and to manage this change must come from within individuals.
In a way it’s about old vs young. It’s a fact that the more you have the more you risk to lose. I’m talking about
the fat cats of the agency world,
often senior agency directors that are more concerned with keeping clients in repitches so they can finance their second home/mistress/sportscar rather doing what they set out to do in the first place.
It’s not only about old people though. Often have I met twenty-something graduates from ad schools that act more like corporate professionals than creative rebels.
The world does not need more of these people.
Luckily, many are on the right side of change thinking. For you good people I have compiled some thoughts called
thinking starters for hungry people:
* Go beyond persistence: become the Al Qaida of the agency world, because they can never be stopped and they only get stronger when they lose.
* Don’t settle for a pay check and a smile. If you do, also accept that everybody else does.
* Punish bad behaviour: take conservative attitudes to the backyard and put a bullet in its the back of its head.
* The momentum of having nothing to lose and everything to gain can be a great force.
* Remain dissatisfied.
And to be fair:
some thinking starters for satisfied people:
* If money is the only thing that matters, become a drug dealer. Much more profitable and better working hours.
* The fatter you become, the easier you are as a target. There are always people that are twice as motivated and twice as clever as you, and they will work for half your pay.
* Sooner or later you will be obsolete: act like it.
* Never know better: or like the Wiedens put it - Walk in stupid every day
Hope I've made any sense.
Recent Comments