People like Ad Age’s Randall Rothenberg certainly provide good, informed opinion and perspective around this whole marketing convergence thing. Today, he posted a long, incredibly thoughtful, and refreshingly blunt assessment on Interactive Advertising Creativity. Or rather, the horrific dearth of it.
Randall cites a number of valid reasons for this medium’s anemic achievements as a creative medium, starting with the direct marketing culture bred into its DNA. From the outset, the web has been a metrics maven’s dream, easily measured and quantified. On one hand, we should take comfort that the industry avoided making up putative measures of creativity and imagination like so many over-reaching testing methodologies in the traditional ad world. But still, the accepted practice has been an over-reliance on the logical, the rational and scientific, as opposed to the magical, the thrilling and inspired.
The industry’s finest mind, Bill Bernbach, nailed it years ago when he wrote: “Advertising is fundamentally persuasion and persuasion happens to be not a science, but an art.” Amen sir, amen. It’s too bad the logic-bound left brainers insist on grafting intellect into every sell, when the most fundamental decisions of humanity belie this conceit. I did not marry my wife for measurable reasons like her IQ or her time in the mile–I fell in love and changed the course of my life based on the emotional imperative of passion. Lucky thing too. We go to war, we choose religions, we get surgery for dying pets for entirely emotional reasons: how can a logical mind dismiss emotion’s impact on buying decisions?
Anyway, I’m getting off topic. Do yourself a favor and read Randall’s blog. It’s smart. And timely. And a clarion call for a resurgence of creativity in online.
You know, the kind that would come if traditional agency creatives focused their attention on exploiting the emotional possibilities of this medium.
Or rather, the kind that WILL come WHEN traditional agency creatives focus their attention on exploiting the emotional possibilities of this medium.