Creative Thoughts

This week included National Poetry Day. If you saw any of the good ones on Twitter (which is where National Anything Day really exists) then, no doubt, you’ll have enjoyed it.

In case you didn’t, check out The Poke’s roundup (which is where the good bits of Twitter really exist).

I’ve always liked a bit of poetry. It’s like writing with a tiny, weeny, miniature pen. The process is all-consuming. The theme matters, of course. Then the story matters. And then, suddenly, every word matters. You’ll find yourself sculpting prose from the top and adding it to the base, replacing one word for another and slicing whole sentences unless they fit perfectly. You’ll watch with wonder as the whole idea is changed with a simple Ctrl ‘c’ and Ctrl ‘x’. Without warning you’ll be drowning in Thesauruses, looking for another word for ‘experience’ or for something in Latin that might take up less space and sound more profound (and make you look cleverer).

And then you’ll start on the syllables. The pace, the pathos, the point of your poetry, all dictated by the tumbling rhythm of these potent little particles.

Of course, that’s the beauty. The level of craft it takes to create a poem that makes you think (even some of the ones on the Poke that simply make you laugh) is what makes them enjoyable to digest.

This is what makes good adverts too. We’re working on a stop frame animation for a client at the moment, which will be a thing of beauty when it’s done. But it’s already beautiful because of the care, detail and sheer effort that’s going into it now. Yes the theme matters, and the story is important, and the characters too, and what they wear, how they move. And now we’re suddenly crafting individual frames to make each one matter. The process – never mind the finished film – is as close to visual poetry as I can think of.

Casey Neistat – the filmmaker who famously stole Nike’s budget to go around the world with his mate without really knowing what he’d come back with – his mantra is this: ideas are cheap. Everyone has ideas. Making things is what counts.

What I’d add is to make things with a level of obsession that turns the making itself into poetry. Just listen to Casey talking about the effort that went into editing his global jaunt.

And, increasingly, it’s not just the ad industry that wants to see proof of the care in the process. Just take a look at how popular the ‘making of’ films are on YouTube. Seeing a thing being made beautifully is often as beautiful as seeing the thing itself.

Back to poetry for a second. The ‘making of’ for the poem I’ve just written for my Goddaughter’s christening wouldn’t be such an interesting film, I admit – the creative process is only there to make something in the end.

But it’ll pay to make your next ad like it’s piece of poetry. Craft it, hone it, sculpt it. Obsess about it as if the words and pictures art direction and design relies like a poem does on every single letter, syllable, word, sentence and stanza.

I’ve just had a coffee with a colleague. Nice to catch up and have a chat: the usual stuff – the state of the industry, the nature of our clients, where the award-winning work is coming from and going to, what is advertising anyway and when are consumers going to tell us what we're supposed to be doing next. 

At the same time that the democratisation of advertising has put the real power in the hands of the consumer, our clients have lost budgets and gained the fear factor. As platforms and channels blend, our clients have less money than ever to explore them. Culturally, we’re at the mercy of consumers’ fickle relationship with brands, the speed of change in technology, an increasing need – and, as importantly, the technological ability – for us to cast collective social judgment. It's a strange blend of technology, a pack mentality and social behaviour that put Obama in power and brought Murdoch to account. 

Which makes this simultaneously the scariest and the most exciting moment in our industry’s history.

Scary because we’re at the mercy of all of those often opposing and creatively oppressive forces. Scary because our clients have less money and need to do more and their KPIs make them nervous and there are so many unknowns. Scary because all that makes advertising a very serious business.

Or the most exciting because we don’t know what will happen next. Where will our consumers gather next? What will they want to share? What will technology enable us to do next week that we haven’t thought of yet? What can we invent that’s useful and interesting, entertaining or educational, surprising and delightful? And what the fuck is that dog singing about on that app that sends me a cuddly toy of it when I click through to find out something about a pension… maybe?

Feels like we’re at a junction that could redefine the nature of and purpose for creative advertising. And a lot of what happens will depend on our attitude.

It’s a pivotal moment in our agency’s history. In the face of all this flux, we’re rebranding to become the agency of the future. As mentioned, we’ve done all the hard work in terms of repositioning and rewiring the agency from within. So when it came to renaming the agency, we wanted to go on a bit of an adventure. Which is why we’ve given the naming of the agency away – to anyone who wants to play.

Going on this adventure is our way of communicating that we’re an agency that has the right attitude, that we explore without the fear of failure. Basically we’ve chosen to be excited over being scared.

So we’re crowd sourcing our name. Our good friend Patrick Collister's response was that it's either genius or nuts. I'd settle for adventurous. Or even mischievous. Or I could aim high and say brave?

There’s been a Golley Slater in London since 1957. So why are we changing it?

Well, because we’ve changed irrevocably as an agency. ‘Irrevocably’ is a strong word, but it’s literally true in this sense. As Mark Hancock, our Strategy Director puts it: “Golley Slater London is changing its name because it has changed. Fundamentally. As in ‘can’t go back now’.”

We’ve squished things together, fusing the disciplines of PR, digital, advertising, search and media into one process that creates a different sort of advertising.

 Because, although we’re still an agency (we still have timesheets, and meetings and deadlines and clients that want banners and press ads) we are finding that our clients and prospective clients want more. They want different stuff that doesn’t feel like advertising. Ideas that go beyond simple messaging. Ideas that can be advertised not advertising ideas.

That’s what we create. We call them ‘ideas beyond messaging’.

All of this puts us so far away from where Golley Slater was – and what that name recalls – that we felt we had to change the name.

Some clearly feel pained at the thought that we’re throwing the heritage of the agency away. We just feel the adrenalin of pushing the London office of the UK’s oldest independent agency, into a future proof reincarnation...