Hot Topic - Creative Advertising
The happy advertising people are making pitches to clients all the time. It’s a big part of the job. Clients put out a call with a problem to be solved or an opportunity to be advanced. Ad-land people huddle for ideas, write it all down and make the presentation. Some win. Some lose. Some get famous.
The swanky hotels, ritzy yachts and summery French Riviera beaches were once again overrun by convention revellers. The advertising people descended on Cannes last week. Then they left to bestow on clients, underlings, media editors and shareholders the latest and greatest thoughts gleaned from the endless and serious conversations. There were several messages.
Between robotics, artificial intelligence and other imagination-bending tricks, technology is the be-all and end-all of being-all and ending-all. Creativity is no longer an entirely human endeavor. There’s an algorithm for that.
The creative side of advertising thrives on the edge. On one side is all the excitement digital media affords. On the other, it’s the workhorse of traditional media. Big ideas must fit both. And those ideas can come from anywhere.
Always seeking the zeitgeist, advertising people have thoroughly embraced technology. With that understood, does traditional media have a chance? Apparently so, whether you can hear it or not.
A giant outdoor ad campaign for the coming new season of the hot and trendy Mad Men TV drama shows, simply, an image of the lead character falling through the air. It’s controversial in New York City, evoking gristly images, though the producers call it a metaphor for “a man whose life is in turmoil.” Mad Men portrays the highly charged, brutally competitive and enormously creative world of Madison Avenue of the early 1960’s. The advertising world is still the same…but not.
The end of year holiday season means many things to many people. For some it’s good cheer, merriment, a little nostalgia and, of course, shopping. For others it’s advertising. And, too, there’s a message.
Give advertising people a proper canvas, metaphorically speaking, and magic can happen. They do have a way with words. They exist to sell things, to be sure, but also to make the best use of that canvas.
Advertising people are used to taking knocks. Their ads are too loud or too long. Some are too rude, more than a few just dumb. Mostly media people complain that ad people aren’t spending enough.
Anytime anything remotely interesting happens with new media, the rush is on to divine some sort of significance. When something quite cool happens media people get excited about being excited. Oh, yes, it’s all very post-modern.
TV spots are “a constraint.” Radio advertising? Who cares? And print? Please! The advertising people swarmed into Cannes surrounded by their new best friends: the social media and smartphone people.
See also in ftm Knowledge
The Happy Advertising People
The advertising people are spending again. But things are different now and media people are feeling it. New media attracts attention and advertisers want to be where the action is. This ftm Knowledge file looks at the paradox of media and advertising. 120 pages PDF (September 2011)
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