WORDS, PICTURES AND EVERYTHING ELSE / THE CASE FOR EVOLVING CREATIVE DEVELOPMENT By John King, Chief Communications Officer, Fallon

Creative development must conform to the dominant media of the times. This has always been the case. When the world stared at glossies like Look and Life magazines and carried their Ovaltine decoder rings to the radio we made copywriters. And when television became the new American fireplace? Hello art directors.

And to be honest, art directors and copywriters were enough back when media had a visible panty line. But the Web changed everything. Marketing apertures, media need states, and appointment viewing have all been blurred together by the rise of smart phones, iPads, and the Web. It’s all fuzzy these days.

In a world of words, pictures, and everything else, the ‘everything else’ bits got way bigger. The ideas that are being celebrated aren’t for sale. Broad shouldered ideas like Pepsi Refresh, Best Buy Twelpforce, and Jay-Z’s Decoded launch are robust platforms, not mere messages.

Yet most agencies are still relying on the same people who made a career of fitting ideas into advertising to be the best at building ideas in the world. They’re asking art director and copywriter teams to design brand actions, fit a brand idea snugly into a status update, and create brand experiences. Which begs the question, ‘Is it enough to just send a craftsperson when what you really need is to connect?’

Facing this same question here at Fallon, we started to define the ideal recipe for the next creative person and interrogate the very creative process itself. We made a list of ingredients for the creative title that comes after copywriter and art director. For starters they’d have to be fluent in all forms of communication, or at least bilingual in brand and digital. They should major in pop culture, and have an entrepreneurial spirit. In our agency we found these traits in our most creative media people and in our broadcast producers… if we could just get them to mate.

Yes the demand for modern work and a creative output that is consistently more than paid media messages will likely give birth to the creative title that comes after copywriter and art director. Idea Producer? Development Director? Connection Producer? Truth is it doesn’t really matter what they’re called, it’s about the job. While most brand ideas will continue to be born out of the creative department, it’s become a full time job to raise these ideas in the real world. What does that mean? It means having the peripheral vision to see an idea through creative, digital, media and design. It means having the media knowledge to understand the best way to fit an idea into the big and small spaces online and offline. It requires a deep understanding of brand voice because the digital landscape doesn’t always have room for longhand brand ideas (It’s easier to tweet as Burger King’s ‘cool uncle’ than as BMW’s ‘ultimate driving machine’). It means truly embracing the fact that brand behaviour can do as much to build the idea as advertising can.

The next creative job requires a different skill set. Clearly, agencies can draw from media and broadcast production - even project management - to find this talent, but they should also look elsewhere. The skill set required to ‘produce an idea’ has more in common with that of political campaign managers, Arcade Fire album drops, and event planning than it does with copy writing and art directing. Our newest media hire came out of game presentation at the Minnesota Timberwolves. This makes sense because if you’re building ’80s night in a basketball arena you need to consider everything, from the in-stadium menu to what gets displayed on the jumbotron, and whether or not to pull out the retro jerseys. It used to be enough to get to the idea, now we need someone to determine how an idea should live, feel, and act.

Increasingly producing an idea in the world is more ‘build it’ than ‘buy it,’ because today the best ideas aren’t for sale. To succeed in the future, agencies can’t just be filled with the copywriters and art directors who come up with the idea; agencies also need the people who can run with the idea once it’s been created. This new creative role will be filled with young, can-do employees who will run on beer and pizza. But make no mistake: it’s their dog-eared Rolodexes and working of the phones that will make ideas happen, grow them as big as they can be, and most importantly ensure that the work is right-sized for the world.

But awards or even changes in media don’t drive the real case to rethink idea production; a new role is necessary because quite frankly the consumer is already there. Ask anyone under the age of 30 about Pepsi, and their opinions will certainly be formed by the millions spent on the Refresh Project, not the hundreds of millions spent on paid media. Tomorrow’s consumers aren’t looking to buy; they’re looking to buy into something. This requires a more generous approach to advertising and the next evolution in creative development.

Evolving past paid media messages requires a complete rethink. With the traditional Media Moses out to another long rep lunch, the group at Fallon took it upon themselves to carve these 10 new communications commandments into the Minneapolis limestone:

1) START WITH AUDIENCE
With a deep understanding of your target audience’s lifestyle comes unique opportunities to reach them. Don’t settle for hollow demographics covered up with a clever name.

2) BE A MEDIA PERSON WHO SAYS ‘YES’
Media finally has a seat at the table, so let’s not mess it up. The best communications people are idea chasers who won’t take ‘no’ for an answer. Duct tape, spit, bungee cords… doesn’t matter how; remember, your job is to find a way to make ideas happen.

3) MAJOR IN POP CULTURE
Want to be a great communications thinker? Get busy living. Understanding the myriad of ways to connect today requires staying current on culture, sports, entertainment, and the arts.

4) BUILD IT, DON’T BUY IT
Increasingly, the best ideas aren’t for sale. So remember to start with the idea, and figure out how to build it, rather than starting with the media and figuring out what you need in order to fill it.

5) EMBRACE THEMATIC COMMUNICATIONS PLANS
If your media plan looks the same every year, you’re not doing enough. To avoid communications complacency, be sure your plan is unique enough to have a title, theme, or T-shirt tagline each year.

6) DON’T BE A BUTCHER, BE A CHOREOGRAPHER
Slicing up the media budget like a pie is a blue-collar sport. Higher value contributions like assigning channel roles top to bottom and staging rollouts left to right are the future of the craft.

7) LET THE CHERRY ON TOP BE THE MEDIA PLAN
Don’t relegate the bells and whistles to merchandising credits and the occasional PR stunt. Instead, find a way to have the most interesting bits lead the plan itself.

8) USE YOUR CENTRE BRAIN
There is real value to being an expert, a specialist. Media has its own language, numbers, and acronyms. But tomorrow’s media person will be as good with concept as they are with a calculator.

9) HAVE AMBITION BEYOND ADVERTISING
Too much time is wasted trying to alter campaign ideas that weren’t designed to be anything more than a TV script. For better results, identify a brand ambition beyond advertising and work to extend that.

10) BE GENEROUS
Modern branding is learning to give as much as we take. Does your plan create value for the target audience? Does it build an idea in the world? Does it leave something behind?