Killing Creativity Is the New Paradigm in Advertising

Advertising is experiencing a crisis in creative effectiveness that stems from the financial pressure brands have faced over the past 15 years. It has led marketers to pursue short-term sales activation over long-term brand building, with an emphasis on easy-to-measure, direct response tactics designed to drive sales via price-focused messaging.

Additionally, many say that creative excellence is not what it used to be, and their claim is not entirely unfounded. A 2019 report from the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising from the UK found that “creatively awarded” campaigns analyzed for the period of 2016-18 were the least effective in the past 24 years when they had been analyzing impact data. So is creativity simply “less good” now?

A heart turned to a pump 

In the last ten years, the pressure on the creative sector has been constantly increasing. Profit and time became the only priorities. Formality, routine, established processes, fulfilling obligations... Creativity is systematically given less and less space to live, which led to a new approach to its meaning and importance in the advertising industry. Things have completely switched places - the Creative Sector has become a service provider to all other departments within agencies. The heart transformed into a pump.

As the success of creativity is not immediately visible, it has been less and less appreciated. Maybe as an idea for an award, or a side project, but not as the main approach of the agency. 

Measuring the magic

The success of media has become the barometer for effectiveness. We can measure more than ever before, mine more data, and add more columns and rows to the spreadsheet to demonstrate effectiveness – sometimes to the expense of measuring the success of a creative. Partly because we can, and partly because it is easier. The value of creativity is a much harder conversation topic to discuss with whoever signs off the budget.

According to a 2020 study by Kantar, marketers ranked media and getting the brand/performance balance right significantly higher than creative excellence when asked to identify their greatest competitive drivers. Back in 2014, the quality of creative was only second to brand size as the most important profit driver – according to Kantar.

Updating creativity 

A direct consequence of this new world-view is the remodeling of award shows. There are fewer and fewer creatives in the juries, and more and more marketers, business people, data scientists, and consulting experts. The number of categories at creative festivals is expanding and increasingly entering the fields of business development, business innovation, digital technology that are no longer focused on a communication idea but on a tool or a business solution to increase sales.

At the local Serbian festival, Kaktus, only 3 out of 15 jury members are creative people. The Golden Drum festival joined the regional Weekend Media festival and became a side program of the main event.

Of course, with the prefix ""creative"", all this happens smoothly and almost imperceptibly: Cannes Lions is now characterized by categories like Creative Commerce, Creative Business Transformation, Creative Data, Creative B2B.

In addition, organizers of creative festivals have created special award shows that are exclusively dedicated to marketers. Company people choose the best of themselves, by themselves. The rising stars are CMOs, marketing managers, and brand managers. The industry is being taken out of the hands of creative agencies. 

The silence of the drums 

All this implies the establishment of new criteria for defining and evaluating creativity. It is not about being bold, distinctive, brave, or original anymore. It is about being smart, practical, and profitable. Creatives and engineers stand side by side and their opinions carry the same weight when it comes to evaluating creative ideas. (However, the same rule does not apply when it comes to evaluating engineering projects.)

It is not difficult to predict that creative festivals will soon become boring, unsatisfying and irrelevant to companies. Fewer and fewer submitted mind-blowing works, fewer and fewer fierce ideas, and fewer and fewer creative people present at the spot will dull the edge of competition and make the ideas quite similar to each other.

This uncomfortable situation will lead to a place where results will be the ultimate criteria. And that is where Effie Awards come in. In full glory, it will rise and shine, take the crown of advertising from creative festivals and set new principles to rule. Among these new rules, creative ideas will easily be overlooked and forgotten over time.

VIVA LA KREATIVA!

Five years ago, Jeff Goodby, co-chairman of Goodby, Silverstein & Partners reminded the advertising industry of the words of his old boss and mentor, Hal Riney: “Every department in an agency can create value for clients. But only the creative department can take one dollar and turn it into 20.” The truth is that nobody cares about these words today. Today, we live in a shortsighted and greedy post-creative world.

But let us finally make it clear: we recognize “good creative” by its impact, because advertising is creativity in the service of commerce. “Good creative” drives fame, as people are more likely to talk about it and share it. It is more likely to get mainstream press coverage that is a Share of Voice multiplier. It creates price premiums over time by establishing notions of quality that decreases price sensitivity.

The present situation, in which everything seems to be lost for creativity, is exactly the environment where it instinctively manifests itself. It becomes even tougher, more resilient. This is where the idea that ""creativity is the biggest rebel that exists"" can come to full expression.