ISN’T THE NEW “CREATIVE REVOLUTION” JUST A CONTINUATION OF THE LAST ONE?
Every once in a while, I’ll read something on the industry that makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up. The most recent example is an editorial on Creativity Online (http://creativity-online.com) by Nick Law (Chief Creative Officer of R/Greenberg Associates in New York) entitled “The Next Great Creative Revolution.”
First, a little background: R/GA is one of the best-known integrated marketing companies in the business today. They’ve earned the reputation as pioneers in working with major advertisers and marketers, helping them make the most of the online space. They really know their stuff. That’s why I was surprised by Law’s All-You-Dumb-Ad-Agencies-Just-Don’t-Get-It rant:
“Fifty years ago, to join advertising’s creative guild, a man had to tell funny stories and smoke a pipe. The patron saint of this exclusive guild was a guy in a suit from the Bronx named Bill Bernbach, who preached about advertising as entertainment. To this day, there are followers of Saint Bill who believe that people are so amused by advertising that they run right out and buy stuff…Over time the guild crafted the creative one-two punch that has become synonymous with what they call ‘The Big Idea.’ It consisted of their famous ‘funny story’ tied up neatly with a conceptual bow called the ‘tagline.’”
Whoa, Cowboy. You can diss my ads. You can make fun of my momma. But don’t ever, EVER demean the spirit of Bill Bernbach, the man who single-handedly saved America from the hacks on Mad Men. Law continues:
“While the followers of Bernbach are crafting the message, McLuhanites (as in Marshall) should be politely pointing out that you can’t divorce the message from the medium…Each time the medium changes, our relationship to the message changes. In case you haven’t noticed, the medium has been changing a lot lately.
This has, in turn, complicated advertising. Back when both patron saints walked the earth in sensible shoes and Brylcreem, advertising was simple—and the medium stable…Now the product influences the choice of medium and the medium influences the message. Thankfully for today’s creatives, none of this is prescriptive or particularly limiting—in fact, it frees us to make even bolder creative leaps of faith.”
Gee, Nick, thanks for enlightening us! It took some new media guru like your self to let us in on the fact that the medium and the message are inseparable! Stop the presses! (Wait, that’s an old media metaphor.) Marshall McLuhan, who by the way was a big inspiration of Bill Bernbach’s creative revolution, came up with that one back in like 1963. Anyway, I’d like to treat the rest of this post as an open letter to Nick Law:
Dear Nick,
Have you ever read anything about Bernbach? Oh right, books are passé. Not new media. Anyway, if you followed the work of the man, you’d realize he was no big tagline guy. And he really wasn’t a funny story guy, either. He was about bringing together people of different disciplines then setting them loose to find the greater truth of a product, create a story around it and present it in a way the audience would like and remember and with a little luck, pass on to someone else. Is that any different than what we’re all trying to do today with the expanded palette of tools and media at our disposal?
Bernbach was like any other great communicator–he respected his audience and understood how to engage it. He mastered the media of his day. His agency’s work was engaging, transparent and easy to share with others (that was back when the word “viral” meant you were staying home with the sniffles). I’m sure if he’d have come of age in our post-electronic age, he’d be championing work that would have R/GA, Crispin and the rest of us playing catch up.
The medium and the message inseparable? The product dictating the media used, and the medium influencing the message? Sorry to break this to you, Nick, but every decent writer and art director for the past 40 years could have told you that.
My point is this: great communicators are a lot more alike than they are different. Twain. Hemmingway. Roosevelt. Gossage. Reagan. McElligott. Even the Will-It-Blend guy. Eras may change. Media may change. Metrics may change. The audience’s interests, media habits and attention span may change. But through it all, great communicators figure out how to somehow stay relevant to their audiences.
And, oh by the way, Nick. Where’s your “Think small” ad?
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