I read a blog entry this morning written by Alex Bogusky that I just can’t get out of my mind. While the perspective he offered was smart from beginning to end, one section continues to whirl around in my head—so much so that I simply have to address it here before I can get on to the “the deadline is approaching” projects on my desk today.
“The market forces created by the rapid demise of mass media and traditional media models have made the real business we’re in clearer than ever. We’re in the business of . . .creating new ideas . . . so compelling and entertaining that the consumer searches them out. . . . Brilliance will be more powerful than ever, and yet everything from above average on down will become invisible. Produce ordinary ideas and nobody will ever see them.”
This is a very real and incredibly powerful shift in the business of marketing. In years past, if we produced work that was average (or God forbid, below average), we could still produce some modicum of impact because it could be forced on unsuspecting consumers via mass media interruption. Some sort of intellectual or emotional exchange would still take place. But today, the penalty for generic is this: It goes completely unnoticed.
I spend a lot of time these days talking with clients about the need to develop content so irresistible consumers are attracted to it. It is our goal on every project to produce something magnetic; an idea or execution so educational, or funny, or emotionally powerful they seek it out, rather than the other way around. This is a tall order. And it is made even more difficult—make that impossible—when the idea is compromised as it makes its journey from concept to marketplace. The result is often just what Bogusky warned—invisibility.
It is a core value at RP to listen generously as suggestions are offered along any creative path, and I believe many a good idea was made better through collaborative input. But it is our professional responsibility to stand tall for ideas worth protecting. And that is a truth worth remembering.
So there were no nightly updates because we worked like dogs. I have come home from the Digital Creative Direction intensive at Brandcenter with an intense passion for JUST FRIGGIN’ DO IT and with bronchitis. Mike Hughes (The Martin Agency),summed it up in his opening night presentation. “None of us knows how to do digital media,” he said. “You just have to find new human, wonderful ways to do creative in this realm. You have to push to figure it out.”
