As the industry awards season gets into full swing, what better time to assess the state of creativity? SHOOT surveyed various competition judges to get their feedback on the current state of creative fare. Responses spanned traditional and new media. And in the latter vein, before launching into the survey itself, we thought it best to share a big picture perspective from Eric Hirshberg, president/chief creative officer at Deutsch Los Angeles, who last week addressed a gathering at the Online Media, Marketing & Advertising (OMMA) confab in Universal City, Calif.
Hirshberg contends that the heavy focus on new media technology–how advertising is delivered to people–is “misplaced.” Ironically, he observes, while technology can help audiences avoid ads, we are currently in an era when people are interacting with brands in more profound, emotional and elective ways than ever before. Arguably the most significant trend today, he says, is how people are connecting with brands.
“Brands have become a powerful part of pop culture–kind of mini-religions,” relates Hirshberg. “–Religions are ‘marketed’ as a set of values. ‘I’m this type of person and that’s why I belong to this community.’ That same dynamic is happening with brands.”
He then proceeded to list different products in four categories: automotive, technology, fashion and food. From selections in each category, Hirshberg asked the OMMA audience to imagine the kind of person who liked certain brands (Dell, Blackberry, Apple, Armani, Volvo). Certain sets of brands indeed conjured up profiles, albeit superficial, of each consumer. “Five to 10 years ago, we couldn’t have played that game,” he contends. “Instead you would have had to do it based on something like the movies a particular person liked. But now, brands have become shorthand for who we are in the world….Teens, for example, express themselves through fashion…You have a movie today like Mean Girls, which through brand, taste and style, underscores the differences between the haves and have-nots.”
Hirshberg adds, “Brands have become a much bigger part of our lives, our mental landscape…Decisions we make in commerce, on a superficial level, help to define us.”
The Deutsch creative believes that consumers want to connect with the right brands for them and have increasingly become “marketing Mensa [members]. They know the tricks, are more sophisticated. They don’t mind being marketed to but it must be done well.”
“People don’t hate advertising. They hate bad advertising,” says Hirshberg. Towards that end of creating smart, relevant advertising that connects with people across different platforms, he affirms that agencies should foster “integrated people, not integrated departments.”
The holding company structure and mentality at many ad agencies leads to separate divisions in separate buildings. By contrast, he says, at Deutsch “all of our creatives [from different disciplines] sit together. They’re one community designed to deliver one voice for every element of the brand.”
FEEDBACK The following mix of agency creatives have served, are serving or are slated to serve on judging panels for such competitions this year as The One Show, the ANDYs, The Art Directors Club (ADC) Awards, the Clios, the AICP Show, and the Cannes International Advertising Festival, among others. The survey questions were: What is the state of creativity in traditional television and emerging media today? How has the process of judging changed over the years? For example, being able to routinely access work from around the world over the Web, one would think there are fewer surprises in terms of what you see while serving on a competition jury. What have you gotten out of judging competitions in years past? Or if this is your first time judging, what do you hope to gain from that experience?
Pete Favat
Chief Creative Officer
Arnold Worldwide, Boston
People look at the mix of new media and see chaos and confusion. I think it’s pure opportunity. This year’s ANDYs and One Show Interactive competitions had a number of entries that were through the roof creatively. Interactive content is no longer in startup mode. It’s a full-fledged media vehicle.
When television was created, I’m sure there were creatives who thought, “No way we’re doing that. Print has been awesome for us.” To ignore or give short shrift to interactive would be to make the same mistake.
To have separate creative people in interactive is crazy. I tell my creatives, “You are going to learn interactive. You are going to understand it.”
Yes, we have world-class, kick-ass talent at Arnold in design, interactive and concept development. But we all work together in one place–one building–to bring an integrated campaign together. The smart trend today is to be media agnostic. Have the idea first and then figure out how to dispense the idea.
I don’t see TV being replaced. But interactive at the very least can complement TV or become like the TV medium in terms of importance. In judging award shows, I saw R/GA’s Nike work on the Times Square big screen where you design your own shoe via your cell phone. You size it up and order it via phone. The campaign breaks all the rules and works on so many levels. You use the phone to communicate with the Times Square screen. Talk about giving customization and empowerment to consumers. They can design a pair of shoes, click on the size and it will get shipped to them.
Even with the Internet, you’re on your ass somewhere. This [R/GA] work takes it to the street to use your phone as a design and purchasing device. Let’s try the color yellow or red. If that’s where we’re going, I like it. It’s way beyond traditional and the Web.
For me, judging has been a terrific experience. Hanging out and talking with Goodby, Bogusky, Scarpelli is a learning experience no matter what level you’re at in the business. You see great work and not-so-great work. But the great work you can bring back to your agency to show that this is the caliber of work we need to do. Our Volkswagen interactive stuff has won tons of awards–but even then, you need to keep growing and developing and striving to do great creative. And even with work all over the place and accessible during the year–and I am an advertising junkie who constantly seeks out work–you still can run into surprises when judging–pockets of work you hadn’t seen before or had the chance to thoroughly see and fully appreciate.
As a judge, I think agencies are grappling with how to best present their integrated work at shows. A lot more experimentation needs to be done to show integrated work cases in the best possible light. Sometimes presentations seem disjointed and messages aren’t clear. This goes beyond just presenting a print ad or a TV spot. The big picture often needs to be better thought out for presentation to judges.
David Lubars
Chairman and Chief Creative Officer
BBDO North America Television-wise, there are some great spots and not great spots, same as it has always been.
With all the talk about emerging media, it hasn’t progressed as fast as I imagined it would. Unfortunate, because clients and agencies really do want to go in new directions. The problem is our industry hasn’t figured out how to provide substantive media metrics for the new things. Without decent measurement, new media pieces can seem experimenty and risky. We have to work hard to come up with models that’ll prove the impact of [Cannes] Titanium styled creative.
The biggest thing that has changed is the universality of the work. You can’t have inside American or Brazilian references anymore because the judge from Poland won’t understand. The creative has to address human truths, not cultural ones. The best work always did that anyway.
I judge shows where I think I can learn something from the work being entered. Cannes, One Show, a couple of others.
Jeroen Bours
Creative Director,
Hill Holliday New York and Boston.
There’s a big difference noticeable between the U.S. and other countries and it’s coming through in the award shows. The U.S. is clearly in a new media frenzy. The focus is new media in practically every meeting. Media planners are pulling their hair out. Clients and agencies think they need new media while trying to figure out what it really is. Often you hear between the lines: “I want it, I want it, whatever it is.” Only everyone notices that once a new idea has been discovered, someone is already doing it. And copying a blog idea for a brand or an interactive game idea cannot be done. Once the “Subservient Chicken” was born [for Burger King], no one can repeat it. New media won’t let you repeat an idea. Ford cannot do Ford Films after BMW. You can’t have another subservient-anything ever again. This fever hasn’t yet reached other countries it seems. And if they’re practicing it, they’re just calmer about it. The word “commercial” has become an almost dirty word in pitches and meetings and the work suffers because of it. Where are the campaigns, the real lasting ideas today? They’re nowhere to be found because everyone is working on the “candy of the week idea.” Agencies are getting famous for putting out one-time ideas that last less than a month. Not so in other countries and so the best commercials are foreign.
Thanks to countless blogs and emails sending you the latest cool spots from all over the planet, judges go into the shows expecting to see certain work. The never-seen-before work suffers because of it. It’s as if certain ideas campaign for themselves during the year like an old politician. For some judges it’s very easy to form an opinion before the judging is actually over. Not a good thing of course. I found myself lobbying for a good spot from England that nobody had ever seen before, just because opinions were already formed on the familiar stuff.
Judging is a very humbling experience. You sit there and judge everyone’s hard work. You easily become a snob in the process. And then you pinch yourself and remind yourself that you don’t often get the chance to be that good at all on a daily basis because of many circumstances including budgets and clients. In the end, I always walk away thinking, what an incredible amount of people work so hard to keep up the standards in our profession. It gives me the energy to keep trying.
Marc Lucas
Creative Director
SS+K, New York
I was invited to judge both the ADC and the AICP this year–a great way to get an overview of the work done around the world in the past 12 months.
It’s clear there’s a change sweeping over the industry, and it is reflected in the work we saw. In the past, the parameters were more clearly defined–much like a haiku, advertising existed within some structural givens. Today, it’s harder to judge work because the first task is to understand exactly what we’re looking at. Is it a spot, a viral piece, or something we’ve never seen before? Is it magnetic work? Does it give people a reason to rewind the TiVo? Will people devote precious time engaging with this idea? Or is it just a commercial without a budget or the discipline of media restrictions?
Based on what we saw submitted at the ADC, everyone is wrestling with this stuff, some with more success than others. There’s some really interesting work coming out of China, Japan and France, and closer to home, Crispin continues to recalibrate the definition of good. Others created complex and convoluted conceits that were ambitious but naive failures.
At the AICP Show, I was on the Humor Jury, which was a slightly different beast. It was hardly the yuk-fest I’d been hoping for. While many of the entries forgot the first rule of comedy (Be funny), the few that didn’t fell into two distinct categories: 1) weird or 2) physical comedy. I’m not sure if its generational, but the candy category defined the Weird (see: Starburst, Snickers, Skittles). The rest felt like out-takes of America’s funniest home videos or were so familiar I half expected to hear a rim-shot after the gag.
AdCritic and ad blogs have virtually eliminated surprises at the shows. The viral snowball that started with the John West Salmon spot–“Ooh look! An eagle!”–has become a juggernaut. On the one hand, it’s great to have access to the very best work as it runs, but the danger becomes that industry opinion is swayed and steered by this 24/7/365 access. In the old days, award annuals and reels were blamed for defining what was good by last year’s standards–creating an annual creative feedback loop. That cycle is now faster than ever. PR has always helped pre-sell work to juries, but today it’s unheard of to see something brilliant and unknown at Cannes. Is that a bad thing? The jury’s still out.
I’ve been lucky enough to judge a bunch of shows over the past few years–I’ve even chaired a couple–and the thing I value the most about the experience is the people you meet. If you’re not there, you’ll see the work eventually–and you’re spared picking through the rubbish–but you miss the dialogue. Judging a show means being sequestered with some of the smartest people in our business. The conversations over pasta salad during the lunch break make you realize we’re all going back to same stresses and frustrations when we’re done. And when the conversations turn to the work being judged, you get a glimpse of how these people think.
My most memorable judging experience was co-chairing the jury of the Asian Advertising Awards with Pat Fallon. I don’t know quite how it happened but under no other circumstance would I have had the opportunity to spend two days discussing the state of advertising with Pat Fallon.
If you’re a fan of our business–and I am a self-confessed geek for this stuff–judging is totally win/win. You get to sort through all the work, searching for gems, and you get to spend time with people you’d never meet any other way.
Bill Morden
Chief Creative Officer
BBDO Detroit As far as the state of current television creative goes, I feel the work has taken on a much more “entertaining” versus product focus. Both clients and agencies feel the pressure to compete with all the other choices a consumer has to spend time watching, whether it is regular TV, cable, Internet, satellite and, yes, even on their ipod. With all that competition, the work has to be more sought out and being more entertaining seems to be the solution, rather than just informing.
As far as the emerging media goes, we are seeing a lot more controversial work running on the Internet and satellite, which has fewer guidelines, which makes it more free form.
So from a creative perspective it allows us to be more edgy and less traditional.
I think that because of the Web, we [as award judges] are able to be more familiar with the work as a whole and there are fewer surprises. Particularly when it comes to international work.
I think one of the more interesting conversations we had judging the ADC was how should we judge work that was created for the Internet. Should just the longer version of a regular TV spot, that was put on the Web, be judged the same way as a body of work that was created specifically for the Web with a real interactive outcome, i.e. would you pass it on, did you click through to another Web site, etc.
What I always get out of judging is “inspiration.” It is fun to see great ideas executed perfectly. It makes me excited to be a part of such a creative business.
Kris Kiger
Executive Creative Director
R/GA, New York
From what I’ve seen this year of TV and emerging media, TV has stayed pretty much the same as in past years. There are always one or two brilliant spots that get your attention but most are fairly straight forward and nothing new or groundbreaking. Perhaps it’s a symptom of emerging media. If your communications plan is to tell a story across multiple channels, the way you think about the end creative has to radically change. However, it’s important to remember that just because you can do a longer format piece doesn’t always mean you should, and because there are new ways to deliver a message doesn’t mean it’s right for the target audience.
That said, now that the creative may end up on a TV, a computer, a two-inch cell phone screen or a digital sign the size of a skyscraper, editing and production is more important than ever to ensure the creative is still at its highest quality and the message isn’t diluted. Additionally, collaborating with your planning group and technologists during the initial creative brainstorms is essential so that these mediums are fully exploited, the story remains compelling and the ideas executed properly.
I’d say in most cases the judging process has become more streamlined. However, there are still a few shows out there that leave you wondering why you still have a pencil in your hand. And yes, there are pieces that circulate prior to judging so you know it will likely be in the top tier of what you see. The interesting thing to note is that each jury is made up of a unique mix of people, and each one has its own collective personality and perspective–different things resonate to each jury.
The discussions and debate about the work from various perspectives is what really interests me. Judging (for me, especially interactive) is such a personal experience and users are engaged with the work on a one-to-one basis. The experience is unique to that person because there are so many different ways to navigate the piece. Interactive is not something that you sit back and passively take it in. A TV spot runs for a short duration and the experience is linear and passive–you can expect that everybody saw the same thing. However, with interactive, you are engaged in the creative and taking an active role in the experience. You, as the user, decide what areas of the creative you want to explore and as a result, you can’t always be sure that everybody saw the same thing–let alone interpreted in the same way. It’s always interesting to hear someone else’s take on what they experienced, and how it affected them.
