In the old days of positioning and messaging, a creative team was made up of primarily a copywriter and an art director. Together, they would create what Leo Burnett called “the marriage of words and pictures that produces the fresh, the memorable and the believable effect.” The campaign would then go on air and the job would be done. That was marketing in creativity.
However, as should be abundantly clear by now, the world has become significantly more complex. Campaigns don’t end when they go “off air” any more. They live on as consumers praise them, trash them, mash them up and discuss them online. Control, if it ever really existed, has become a dangerous illusion.
In the movie What Women Want, Mel Gibson played a creative director who gained the ability to read women’s thoughts. Armed with this new power, he became an advertising superhero, able to glean insights and compose brand messages that created meaning for the consumer. It was an idealized version of the ad business, but not far off the mark.
Historically, the ad business has revolved around positioning and messaging.
Positioning was the essence of marketing strategy and the message was what gave voice to the brand. A strong marketing message was no less than the beating heart of a successful business and brands were crafted, revered and, most of all, tightly controlled.
In the “Mad Men” days of Don Draper, messages were broadcast on TV to a public that was fairly monolithic. There were just a few channels, so you could be sure that once you were on air most of your consumers would hear what you had to say. Very little thought went into how to reach them because they were so easy to get to.
Positioning and messaging are still important and probably just as important as they always were, but they no longer enough. The marketplace has evolved and we simply need to do more.
While broadcasting messages will continue to play a central part, consumers themselves are sharing brands as well. While they can’t be controlled, they can be encouraged.
Creative directors native to digital know this instinctively. Mechanisms of interaction need to be designed to empower consumers, but care must be taken not to intrude or offend. This is still an emerging area and we still have a lot to learn.
Most of all, the new creativity will no longer revolve around one “big idea,” but hinge on the combined talents of diverse network of teams.
Without disparaging the great accomplishments of the past, or the genius of those form whom they sprung, I think it’s fair to say that the future of marketing creativity will be more rich, nuanced and immersive than anything we’ve seen before.