By Jayr Sotelo
There was a time when writers and art directors were in different departments. Today, this idea seems hard to believe, but before Bill Bernbach, nobody thought of bringing them together into one team. It was the 1950s and advertising was mostly print, and television was on the verge of becoming the most important communication medium. Bernbach’s idea of creating the art director and writer team revolutionized advertising and gave way to more cohesive ad campaigns that shaped consumer culture visually and conceptually.
This creative model has remained the same since the 1950s. Unfortunately, media has changed.
Drastically.
In the new age of digital advertising, it’s time to take another look at the old model of the creative team. As technology plays a bigger role in advertising, teams must adapt their thinking to this new media landscape. An entirely different collection of media touchpoints has replaced the dinosaurs, and technology cannot be ignored in the creative process.
Just as television was in the ‘50s, digital is the new frontier today. How can technology and creative walk together hand in hand toward the sunset of perfect communication in the new digital age?
This can be done in very different ways, but to truly have a cohesive campaign, the change has to come within the creative part of the process – the place where the most naive and raw ideas are explored. Technology has to be part of every step of the process from conception to execution. It simply can’t be left to the end.
The collaboration between technologists and creatives can already be seen in other industries and can be mimicked to improve the output and evolution of advertising. One of the examples is the combination of computer scientists and animators to create digital motion pictures in Pixar. This company began with scientists whose names are now the standards in shading, modeling and rendering in 3-D and with animators from Disney’s Cal Arts University. These people created a new way of looking at animation, a way of simplifying it and a way to make it better, which led the creative process, not vice versa.
In a similar approach, forward-thinking advertising companies have started adding a “creative technologist” to their creative teams. Most companies using the new approach started as production companies, which have a deeper understanding of the importance of execution than traditional advertising companies.
One of the best examples of how advertising is taking a more technological approach to campaign building is Nike+.1 Using different parts of the new medium, which is the Internet, social networks and new GPS gadgets, they were able to create a concept and execution that became not just the ad campaign of the decade, but also a new sort of product.
New Creative Team
A brief holds in its limits a world of possibilities, especially now, when digital advertising is growing and changing at an incredible pace. The creative and technology teams already communicate with each other, but only at the point of production.
When you consider how much advertising grew after connecting the thoughts of art directors and writers, you should think how it can grow after adding developers. The creative will push the technology and the technology will inspire the creative.
As technology keeps changing, advertising will be able to keep up with it or even be able to spearhead and become purveyors of new technology.
What This Changes
So, what will this change? In a matter of group dynamics, the team might need a little time to adjust to new personalities. The human factor is the only difficult part in this ordeal.
In terms of creativity, having a technologist as part of developing a campaign will ensure the ideas that are pitched are doable, innovative and push the current state of technology and media.
Of course, it’s not the sole responsibility of a technologist to develop and judge digital ideas. Instead, we need to be thinking more collaboratively as a whole, suits to creatives and everything in-between, to understand the true context of opportunities available for us as marketers. As has been touted before, ideas can come from anywhere, and in the new digital world, it’s more important than ever that we build in opportunities to collaborate as a team to arrive at a true digital big idea.
The end result is the development of great digital work that rivals the traditional media formats, creates more cohesive integrated campaigns and builds the best possible brands for our clients.