Viva la difference! Tony Granger, chief creative officer of Saatchi & Saatchi New York, was honored to serve as advertising jury chair of the 86th annual Art Directors Club Awards in New York. Asked to reflect on the body of work he saw, Granger noted that much was the same relative to his judging experience in other competitions–but there’s a key difference that has emerged as compared to years past.
First, though, the “sameness” he cited as an industry awards show circuit norm. “No matter what show I’ve judged, it goes like this–80 percent of the work entered is from the sea of sameness. You wonder why a lot of agencies even bother entering that work. Anywhere from 10 to 20 percent starts becoming kind of interesting. Out of that maybe four or five percent really stands out.
“In a very real sense,” continued Granger, “this shows what consumers go through. So much of the work that we create in our industry is just wallpaper, completely forgettable, lame. It demonstrates how conservative our industry is and how much money can be made from just producing what everyone else is producing.”
However, there’s a major difference today, which Granger heralds. “Consumers aren’t held hostage anymore, which means that it is no longer good enough to create content that marketers feel they can push through with media dollars. This is music to creative agencies’ ears. There’s a repositioning in our industry with creativity being prized. More than ever you have to create content that people want to spend time with.”
Also creatively innervating are the multiple screens available and the fact that the creative community is no longer confined to the 30-second world. “That’s not to say that the :30 isn’t still powerful–as the [three Gold ADC Cube-winning] Skittles work [from TBWAChiatDay, New York] demonstrates,” said Granger. “But to have less of a time restriction to communicate and connect with people is a wonderful opportunity….Integration and the digital world are the new frontier. There are exciting things happening in that space–but there’s also a lot of schlock happening. The Internet is full of rubbish, just like TV and print. The percentages [of failure] are still the same and that’s something the industry must work to improve. That won’t cut it in an era where consumers have control.”
“Plus” value
SHOOT sought out a couple of judging chairs in this early industry awards season–as well as creative directors who are assuming new roles within their agencies–to get a read on where we are creatively and perhaps where we’re headed. Mark Tutssel, chief creative officer at Leo Burnett Worldwide, recently served as honorary chairman of the 2007 International ANDY Awards, which for the first time in its history bestowed its GRANDY best-of-show honor on an interactive/digital marketing program, Nikeplus.com out of R/GA, New York (for a rundown of ANDY winners, see 5/4 SHOOT e.dition).
Nike+ bridges two products, a Nike+ shoe and the iPod nano. A sensor in the shoe records running data like time, distance, speed and calories and transmits it to the runner’s iPod nano. When the runner returns home, having listened to inspiring workout music on his or her iPod, then docks the nano, the data is automatically uploaded to nikeplus.com. The digital platform allows runners to set goals, compare runs and track individual programs as well as connect to a digital community through virtual challenges and the global forum. The interface seamlessly integrates the physical with the virtual and creates a completely new brand experience. In less than a year, the Nike+ community has logged more than 12 million miles.
Tutssel described the Nike+ work as being “the best example of the most future-facing idea that we had on the table at the ANDYs…We honored it because it demonstrates what needs to be done today. We have the rapid demise of mass media, meaning we have to find new ways of engaging, entertaining and finding big ideas that ignite conversations, that add value to people’s lives. There needs to be a value exchange between brands and people,” affirmed Tutssel. “Nike plus is a wonderful example of something that is of real value and relevance to a running community. It’s a fantastic fusion of brands coming together, uniting in a common goal to create something of use for people.”
The brands that understand the need for this “value exchange,” affirmed Tutssel, are “the brands that are winning in today’s society. They are looking to have a conversation with people. It’s the brands that don’t sell that have the greatest traction. There were thousands of [ANDY] entries that were still out there trying to sell. You can no longer do that. You must create communication that resonates with people, that treats them with intelligence. The ANDY winners did this while showing that it can also be done in the traditional areas of print, poster, TV and radio.”
Creative/technology
Scott Briskman, a creative director with Agency.com, New York, has been promoted to executive creative director at the agency’s San Francisco office. He assumes his new position next month. “The way I summarize what we’re about to our team is simply we have to let people interact with the brand or product as opposed to letting the brand or product speak to the consumer via one-way commu nication. That’s the fundamental shift in thinking and what we’re all doing now is trying to define the right ways to connect, to have a dialogue with the consumer.”
A key means toward attaining effective dialogue between brands and consumers, said Briskman, is establishing an effective interactive dialogue among creatives, directors, producers, technologists and designers. “What’s troubling is the fact that many people don’t realize that technology is creative…Agency.com and others in our bracket so to speak know this and are trying to figure out ways to bring together technologists, designers, writers and other artists in order to make something that a consumer would want to use.
“This is a big part of what I want to do when I move to the West Coast, to have working relationships with directors and producers who are excited to tap into technology and technological experts. To watch the interplay of ideas when a director is in a room with an information architect or one of our senior technology resource people is very exciting to me and will result in work that will benefit brands and consumers.”
Dewey, Hadlock “Delivering a brand promise to a consumer will never change,” said George Dewey who was recently upped to executive creative director at McCann Erickson, New York. “But how we’re doing that is changing in a fundamental way in terms of technology. Technology has caught up to the advertising business. Technology has transformed every other business around us and now it’s our turn.”
Dewey said that while some are understandably apprehensive “about the ground moving beneath us,” he feels that today is perhaps the best time ever to be a creative. “We’re kind of at a rupture point. Things are transforming on the creative side in a way they haven’t since Bernbach. It’s exciting because we’re getting a chance to redefine how we do things.”
Bryan Hadlock, who was just promoted to the first ever agency-wide chief creative officer role for MARC USA (with shops in Chicago, Dallas, Fort Lauderdale, Indianapolis and Pittsburgh), observed that the current creative marketplace is “exciting and terrifying at the same time. Clients are demanding knowledge and insights. Even the least sophisticated marketer and client will look at a traditional campaign–TV, outdoor, print, radio–and say, ‘What the hell is this?’ They see and feel the need to be interactive, to connect with their consumers with new forms and in deeper ways.
“I heard someone say, ‘If you don’t see yourself in the entertainment business, you’re going to die,'” continued Hadlock. “The only way to get your message across is to entertain and be relevant–particularly with today’s savvy and jaded consumer who can tune you out with TiVo or an iPod.”
