Enough with the economy already. Yes, it sucks. Yes, business is bad. This is what you hear from everyone, everywhere, inside and outside of advertising.
But how bad is it really? Budgets are small, and projects are a lot fewer out there. It is getting harder to meet the overhead costs. Profits will be down, or nonexistent this year. But, if that’s the case, the key question is what do we do?
Panic is an easy one, but I think it is simply time for all of us to accept it and possibly learn from this experience. Time for all of us to realize where we are and how this happened, and then, let it go. Move on.
If there are gong to be no profits, then let’s work for the pure creative of it all. Lets invent ideas, techniques, software, etc. Go back to the original thinking that our forefathers did because let’s face it–in those days it wasn’t all about money and ease. Throw that hammer into the TV set and think about how else can we do this. I think this is the lesson for today. How do we innovate? We start by not thinking about how we did things two years ago. It is time for those ideas or past theories to be put aside and to rethink how we do business. How else can we represent ourselves? How else can we be useful to our clients? In what ways can we reinvent our industry? Reinvent our mindset?
Specifically what are the opportunities for innovation afforded by the current state of affairs? First, the chance to do more for less and the satisfaction of accomplishing something under difficult circumstances turns out to be its own reward.
Second, when budgets get tight, there tends to be a chance for a little more creative freedom. We are forced to solve things with our ingenuity.
Third, we can do more in-house. The reason for this is because of the previous opportunities. The need to do more for less drives this, and the openness of the advertising agencies and clients to do it. And now the technology to do everything from online, to color-correction, to complex graphics is there.
We recently edited a project for Kellogg’s. It was shot on the RED camera and had a challenging budget. I took the opportunity to explore stylistically how to approach the look and cadence of the edit and not allow the limitations to constrain us.
The agency was very open to seeing what we could do. The director, Kevin Smith of Backyard Productions, shot it so we had the options for this exploration. We ended up with a stylistic editorial approach to the spots. Everyone was open to finishing and color correcting in house. The necessity allowed for creative opportunities.
Until this economy changes, we have to be fearless. And when it finally does change for the better, let’s not go back to the same old way we’ve approached our business.
Let’s keep on innovating, let’s keep on working hard and let’s keep on thinking differently. Yes, let’s get those budgets up and let’s start making more commercials!
But when that finally does happen, let’s not forget the lessons we’ve learned from this challenging period .
Maybe that is the most important lesson. of all.
Editor Bill Marmor is founder of Rex Edit, Venice, Calif.
