Day #4: The Current Creative Landscape

Joseph Jaffe: Having just entered our teens as an industry, we’ve certainly come a long way. And no doubt, there’s still a long way to go. Comment if you will on the current landscape -- what excites you? What depresses you? What are some of the current trends that motivate you and which ones disturb you? Comment any way you want: citing industry moves, new formats / units, et cetera.

Daniel Bernard: In general what's really exciting me right now are all the possibilities... Look at XML/RSS for example -- this is impacting the way people consume information and has a lot of potential for innovative advertising. I'm also very bullish and excited about mobile and Interactive TV. 

Scott Witt: 2004 was a landmark, turnaround year.

What excites me:

• For the most part, we're done proving efficacy -- and I can't remember the last time I heard "test buy" come from a brand. Four years ago, I said this on a panel: "water is wet -- and advertising works. Let’s move on." I relish in spending a larger percentage of my time dreaming up ideas rather than constructing burden-of-proof argumentation.
• We're on to showcasing merits of the space, and merchandising the good work of the collective industry.
• At my agency, there's no "media bashing" -- and I can truly say our positioning is entirely about media and creative neutrality. Contemporary Media Mix is the order of the day.

The last 10 years are not unlike marketing boot camp. And the practitioners who are left aren't here because it's easy -- it's because they genuinely want to make a difference, rather than a buck.

The digital space was always entrepreneurial before it was experiential. But the fulcrum has shifted.

Mark Silva: I love the integration of video into more experiential online context vs. just streaming.

I also like that we're helping clients think beyond current standards of measurement to new models that move beyond attitudinal change through consideration to conversion.

One cool mind-bender that our DNA's going to have to catch up to: videochopping. Just as Photoshop allowed anyone to alter still photos and messages, robust, consumer-grade video tools put the power of editing into virtually anyone's hands.

• On the benign side, we’ve seen how a passionate consumer can produce a beautiful long-form iPod commercial that could have come out of an agency.
• On the dark side, there’s the Volkswagen car bomber ad.

Because it's video, traditionally signifying higher costs for production and talent, we naturally conclude these videochops are client-authorized.

Just as you see an abundance of satire in text and photography online, you can assume it will happen in greater frequency in video.

Joseph Jaffe: That’s a great cross-section of motivations. What about the irks and things that make you bump in the night?

Mark Silva: Nothing really disturbs me with current trends. Even during the lows of pop-up and pop-under advertising, I personally didn't mind them. We need to make mistakes to test, learn and refine our model: the bigger the mistakes, the greater the innovations and learnings. I think consumers and clients are pretty open to participating in this experimentation as well.

Daniel Bernard: A big key, challenge and opportunity is to be sure we are (collectively) creating campaigns and programs that deploy consistent messaging and creative across multiple platforms, but not letting that limit the use of each platform's special strengths to reach an audience.

I'm a big proponent of cutting through clutter and creating clean, direct ways for advertisers to communicate their message. This could be via evolution of current deployments / units, the creation of new techniques and by maximizing or using in new ways our abilities, technologies and units available.

Scott Witt: Three areas of concern from my side:

1. The fact that Direct Response and Brand Advertising ethos still coexist, and usually in the same sentence; separated, of course, by the obligatory comma splice signifying a deference to that degree. I think there needs to be more measurable distance between these disciplines.

2. The fact that publishers still accept bad ads, and run them adjacent to Fortune 100 companies. This would never happen in Vogue. Part of cleaning up Times Square means keeping the bums out. In our case, it means relocating them to the digital equivalent of 12th avenue.

3. Pop Ups. Pop-unders. And "contextual marketing" applications, cum Spyware/Adware/Consumerware. Couch it however you'd like -- it's digital trespassing... and guess what: it's what consumers hate the most about the internet. We will optimize ourselves out of the consumers' consciousness if we continue to invade their space with poor formats, techniques and messaging.

Mike Yapp: What keeps me motivated with regards to creativity on the web and the interactive space? In general, it is the fact that the interactive space is so mercurial. Each day I see work that is not restrained by traditional methodologies, retread thinking, endless production schedules, and hand-wringing second thoughts. It's simply so immediate, so demanding, so creatively competitive and so entrepreneurial that it begs comparison to a printing press in the hands of the early 20th century revolutionaries.

IP, Internet Protocol, has created such a huge canvas for new ways to communicate that I like to think of it more as Interaction Protocol, two-, three- and multi-way communication with trackability and accountability built in to prove the effectiveness of your creative in a virtual nanosecond. With the right idea and the technical chutzpa to explore, anything is possible.

Joseph Jaffe: We’re about at the end of a really great week of stimulating conversation. Tomorrow we’ll bring this baby home with a discussion on everyone’s favorite topic: video.

Joseph Jaffe acts as Editor-at-Large for iMedia Communications. He is President & Founder of jaffe, L.L.C. http://www.getthejuice.com/, a new marketing consulting practice. His book “Life after the 30-second spot” will be released on May 27th (Wiley/Adweek).