Why isn’t there more great work in the interactive space?
Ben Malbon
06/04/2009
There’s a debate that, if not quite raging, is certainly simmering about the perceived lack of breakthrough creativity in digital brand advertising (for example: http://bit.ly/14HeCe). I think everyone would agree that great work does exist. But maybe just not enough of it.
So why the paucity?
Well let’s get one thing out of the way right away. It’s almost certainly the case (please argue with me if you think this is not true) that the percentage of “great work” in interactive is no less than that on any other canvas. Great work is rarer than a Texan in a Smart Car. Full-stop. But there seem some quite specific reasons why there’s not a whole load of stunningly great creative in interactive.
So, a few linked observations about why this might be the case.
One, as an industry, it seems as if marketing is mesmerized by the (very welcome) potential efficiencies & measurability of digital and that this can lead to blindness when it comes to the creative opportunities. The talk is frequently of driving costs down through zero wastage, or improving efficiency (all good of course), and less often about increasing engagement, forging deeper links with consumers over time, storytelling across screens, and so on. How far away are we from work of the quality and ambition of Aaron Koblin or Jonathan Harris in what we produce for clients? To some extent, even average digital work can be more accountable than much of the work produced for the offline world, and sometimes that accountability can veil what is actually remarkably humdrum work. Here one’s reminded of the John Banham quote: In business we tend to value most highly that which we can measure most precisely. Traditional agencies are, in particular, often in the position of knowing they need to produce both more effective and more emotive interactive work, but not knowing remotely how to develop it.
Two, we probably need to stop looking at digital creativity as somehow different and divorced from the other elements that a brand uses to engage customers & prospects – a separate stage or world. Too often interactive agencies and skills are involved way too late to give them the best chance of producing greatness, because interactivity is something that needs to run through campaigns like a strand of DNA, not a module that can bolted on to something that’s already been produced. Partly this is a structural issue to do with different companies working together, often a tricky area clouded by egos and budgets. Partly it’s an attitudinal issue, with agencies sometimes wary of involving anyone else until they are forced to. One approach to solving this disconnect is to merge the teams of different people & skills currently tasked to separately produce on and offline. There must be an improvement in creative collaboration, perhaps through the deliberate creation of what ex-MIT organizational consultant Warren Bennis refers to as ‘Great Groups‘ - handpicked teams of people gathered by a (hopefully) visionary leader to produce exceptional results in the creative or innovation fields (examples he’d cite might include those involved with Pixar, Apple, Manhattan Project, Lockheed’s Skunkworks or more recently Obama’s campaign team). These groups are full of talented people who can – and want to – work together and who frequently believe they’re on some kind of ‘mission from God’. They are optimistic, not realistic. They bury their differences for the greater good of the objective. Most of us have at one point of another been part of these kinds of teams, and it is an enthralling and inspiring experience. This may mean (shock, horror) that we need to collaborate with people who don’t work with us or for us at the moment. I say, bring it on. I think it was an ex-CEO of Sun Microsystems that once said, ‘no matter where you work, most of the smart people work somewhere else’.
Three, and in a related vein, we don’t always build the right types of skillsets and backgrounds into the teams that do develop the work. The whole configuration of account & creative teams needs to change, with the introduction of technologists and engagement thinkers as central contributors to creativity at the very earliest stages of the development process. That means Day One. They must be used as architects, helping provide some of the art and magic, not just bricklayers, ironing out the issues around execution & deployment. Together, the ambition of these hybrid teams should be to engage the hearts and minds of the people they are talking to with content, tools, & experiences that move them – to do something, to think something, to feel something.
Four, and again linked to the first three points, we need to agree on what ‘great work in interactive’ is. This is a debate we’ve all heard again and again over the last 5 or so years, with little resolution or consensus. My take is simple. That great work in interactive is actually not that different to great work in offline. And my starting point here would be to look to how we benchmark breakthrough creativity in non-digital channels to help us work out how we might generate more breakthrough work in online. Does it tell a story? Does it have impact? Does it leave room for the reader, viewer or user? Does it credit the consumer with intelligence? Is it based upon a compelling insight? And so on.
In particular, though, I think there’s too often there’s a gap between technical knowledge and geeky creativity on one hand, and marketing know-how and strategic savviness on the other. Too often half the smart people - the digital artists, geeks & information designers for example - aren’t talking or spending enough time with the other smart people.
If we do nothing else except start to build bridges across that gap then I sense we’ll be on our way to seeing interactive work that genuine moves & touches people, that feels like magic, and - as the Americans would say - hits the ball right out of the park for clients.
We certainly do not have all - or perhaps even any - of the answers. Would love to know what others think.
(NOTE: a follow-up post to this original post, in which I attempt to summarize some of the emerging themes, can be found at: http://bit.ly/14HVJo; the conversation continues there, B)
(A version of this post was previously published on Revolution’s new - & tremendous - website: http://bit.ly/3JfrTL)
25 comments on “Why isn’t there more great work in the interactive space?”
Darrell Whitelaw Said (April 6, 2009 at 5:14 pm)
i think it’s much more simple than that. digital creativity is stifled because the creative always comes down from traditional agencies. it’s thinking that you can shoehorn the creative into any medium. let a creative team from big spaceship, barbarian group, deep focus, traction, AKQA or any other nimble agency do their thing without taking direction from someone at wunderman, WK, ogilvy, JWT or more and THEN see if there’s a lack of creativity in digital still. When brands go directly to “digital” shops there’s a whole new playing field.
Darrell Whitelaw Said (April 6, 2009 at 5:31 pm)
it can also help to have the legal team at any company loosen up a bit. nothing groundbreaking ever gets done when legal says no to EVERYTHING.
Bud Caddell Said (April 6, 2009 at 5:18 pm)
Ben, great post, and great new blog btw. Love what Labs is up to.
1) We aren’t quick enough. The web moves far too fast for our traditional creative teams to keep up with. The idea of building a team that builds on economies of scale is bogus in this space. By the time you become able to vomit out micro-sites at a clip, you’re only contributing to the glut of mediocrity. Kids are out there building the next gen of ‘cool shit’; we (the industry) is certainly not.
2) Long is the untapped market. All digital creative work I’ve seen have been flashes in the pan. I can’t name many brands/agencies that get long term engagement right and deliver consistent value in the space.
3) Success is going to require some visionary thinking and doing. Someone’s about to do it right, and blow the rest of us away. I feel it.
Bud Caddell Said (April 6, 2009 at 5:19 pm)
oh, -10 cool points for censoring cursing….
Clint Said (April 6, 2009 at 5:33 pm)
My experience is that there is also a very strong economic reason for the difference between off and online work.
Clients that will happily shell out 4 millions just to get their ads shown on TV (and an additional couple of millions for making them) are almost screaming for paying 200.000 for an “online part of the campaign”.Again I agree that somehow it is connected to the way traditional agencies think and act (and advise) … but also very much in the way clients buy advertising. For a surprisingly large part of the people that handle the marketing budgets, TV is still considered “the campaign” and all digital things are just add-ons to that.
Griffin Farley Said (April 6, 2009 at 5:48 pm)
I look at this question from a media point of view and I think their are three types of media: Paid, Owned and Earned.
The problem with interactive paid media is the way that it is bought and sold. They are sold as banner ads and banner ads are ‘most’ similar to newspaper ads, except you can interact with them. Traditional campaigns are not held to the metrics that interactive campaigns are held against. When you purchase ads by CPM, CPC, ROS, etc. the brand building stuff will be ‘optimized’ out for the hard sell junk. In a recession, the hard sell seems to return and everything clients have learned about branding is tossed out the window.
Owned digital media is where the awards are found. It includes the platforms, microsites and websites that creates an amazing experience that aligns with a brand. This has a lot of potential for great creative ideas. If you look at the award shows that involve digital work, it almost always includes some owned media platforms.
Earned digital media is even better. This is a space where you have encouraged participation and excitement to a level that the viewer is willing to spread it to their friends (Propagation Planning). However ad agencies don’t hire people with branded content or content management experience. We need screen writers, set designers, gamers, storytellers among our ranks to pull off the ARG’s, branded content and transmedia potential.
As strategists if we can get clients to look at media differently, the creative that they buy to leverage the communications plan will get better.
Tom Morton Said (April 6, 2009 at 6:15 pm)
Much of the greatest interactive work has been around people’s passions: causes such as Barack Obama’s election campaign and The Great Schlep, entertainment properties such as Halo and cult brands such as Apple. Here interactivity harnesses those passions, giving people something to congregate around and to engage with.
It’s much harder to do this with everyday brands. (After my own agency TBWA pioneered the Media Arts Lab agency concept for Apple, one wit in the organisation asked ‘now how would this work for a hot dog?’) We can create related passions - dog adoptions for a petfood brand. Or we can create content that whips up interest - computer games for milk and Burger King. It’s doable, but it’s a creation, rather than a harnessing.
Broadcast advertising has to engage people in a much simpler medium. Let the spot generate thirty seconds of laughter or excitement or empathy for beer or soap. With a bit of leeway from a client, it’s possible to do this for most brands. That’s why you see so many great ads for everyday products in advertising awards ceremonies.
So there’s the difference. Broadcast advertising can elevate any product. Interactivity can certainly make an ordinary brand more useful or more relevant, but truly great interactive ideas still tend to come from brands that people care about already.
Jason Koxvold Said (April 6, 2009 at 6:18 pm)
I agree wholeheartedly. While on the one hand you could ask the same question of traditional channels, the interactive space has a number of unique challenges that still remain from the early days.
In short, because I’m grabbing a quick coffee on the go: junior clients; low budgets; small ideas; poor creative; low expectations; not enough championing of great work.
Categories like AICP/Next and the One Show Interactive are great catalysts for pushing the field forward, but we’ve still got a ways to go.
Conrad Lisco Said (April 6, 2009 at 6:24 pm)
Great post Ben.
Sites and experiences that excite me are ones that SMARTLY integrate new technologies. But technology is changing so fast that by the time I finish writing this, it will probably change again. So, as Ed Cotton said, agencies either need to work with 3rd party specialists who “get it” or begin bringing that talent in-house. Example: If you have an issue with your heart, you would go to a specialist, not a generalist, right? If you are going to put brands in the hands of consumers, wouldn’t you want to start off by putting it in the hands of experts?
Also, you mentioned the importance of putting together the right team to tackle interactive creativity. But I would add that putting them together at the right time is equally as important. All to often, interactive (mobile in my case) isn’t thought about until after most of a campaign strategy has been developed. How can you possibly design a truly creative and effective campaign if you don’t look holistically at all channels from the beginning? You have to put the “smart strategists” and the “geeky creatives” (as you say) together at the creative+strategic combustion stage, or chances are the entire body of work will suffer. This is especially hard when (as Darrell points out) a brand’s agency ecosystem is fundamentally flawed.
Rory Sutherland Said (April 6, 2009 at 6:58 pm)
I think one or two points here are fabulous:
In particular ” Long is the untapped market”. I also agree that the obsession with doing things which garner and immediate, measurable financial return can sometimes be a limitation.
But there is one more factor to remember. Mediocre or average interactive work is still relatively harmless. If I don’t like it, I need never see it again. It will probably die a quiet death, unmourned and unmissed. Much unflashy but sensible interactive work can even be very useful - perhaps it isn’t there to entertain, but simply to improve an experience - and sometimes all I need to do is find the bloody company’s address or phone number anyway, for which I don’t want anything psychadelic .
Bad advertising on the other hand robs me of my time. If reappears whether I like it or not. And it costs a bloody fortune for no discernible benefit to anyone.
It should be conventional ad people beating themselves up over the 95% of non-brilliant work on television, not the interactive community.
On the question of speed, one thing we need to do is lose our obsession with originating everything. Taking someone else’s cool idea and branding it appropriately is a perfectly valid creative solution.
Remember the words of Harry Truman - “Everything is possible, just so long as you don’t care who gets the credit.”
Leo Rayman Said (April 6, 2009 at 7:02 pm)
Thanks Ben
You touch briefly on storytelling across multiple screens and that is where I think much of the solution will be found.
Advertising and Direct Marketing thinkers spend an inordinate amount of time refining the ‘message’ - getting to a simple proposition. This is fine and important for TV, print and the like.
But the opportunity presented by interactive is to conceive of a campaign more as a long magazine feature. It is an involving story - with a core theme at its heart, to be sure - but a lot of depth. And characters. And tension. And resolution.
I feel we need to get into a storytelling mindset and think about brand narratives (the story of the VW Golf for example). Then we get to a place that allows for rich and complex interactions, the use of video and text and imagery and play. So much more creative mileage than forcing the print execution into a banner ad.Gareth Said (April 6, 2009 at 7:54 pm)
Ben,
Great post and not much to add. Totally agree that actually the real issue is the lack of great work across all channels. The challenge, and one you clearly have seen in launching BBH labs, is for us an industry to take more of a R&D approach. Get the right people around the problem, try some stuff, see what works, learn. Rapid prototyping and all that. (Rapid being key)Interestingly (perhaps) many are convinced the reason CDP became the great TV agency in the 60s and 70s was because they had a studio downstairs where they could experiment making TV commercials. Also became the place where Ridley Scott and David Putnam’s careers outside advertising were born.
Sean Ganann Said (April 6, 2009 at 8:11 pm)
I think Rory’s quotation gets very close to the heart of the matter - to create truly great work we really do need to pull together and stop worrying about credit.
That being said I think we spend far too much time worrying about media (and drawing lines) rather than truly thinking about creating rewarding engagement.
It’s hard in the current landscape to define any idea that only works in an individual medium as great work.
And in that broader definition of great work there is a role for everyone.
Sean Ganann Said (April 6, 2009 at 8:37 pm)
Just to clarify.
What underlies the above is that we need to share more and break down our isolated media-specific cultures with different values and vernaculars.
And I’m not sure that really means different teams or structures (integration by definition is forced). I think a spirit of collaboration would work just fine as long as we all have the same end goal in mind.
Andrei Said (April 7, 2009 at 12:13 am)
1. Too many cooks in the kitchen. When a non-digital agency is involved, the client is super involved. Everybody over-thinks and overcompensates and the work suffers.
There are people in traditional agencies that do their homework, love the digital space, and bow to expertise where there is expertise. But clients, as well as out-of-touch creative directors and don’t-have-a-clue creatives, don’t get interactive. They approach it like print when it’s obviously anything but.
Oh yeah. And both agency and client legal affiliates have no balls. They suck. And they suck the life out of creative. They see the internet as a hotbed for liable activity. Super paranoid….
bill allen Said (April 7, 2009 at 5:18 am)
I wonder if we need more breakthrough digital moments outside of marketing before we get something really profound in the digital marketing space.
Harris has done a great job of introducing the larger creative culture to the idea of “data visualization” and now a couple years later it’s starting to become part of the vernacular.
I may be biased because I come from a fine arts background but I rarely see advertising leading any charges. I see them capitalizing on trends and events…and people. This is nothing new, Frank Stella painted BMWs. Cog (Honda) is a tremendous rip off of Peter Fischli and David Weiss’s The Way Things Go. The history of advertising is a long succession of rip-offs, as is the fine arts world itself.
I do think there is great potential for us to catch up and get out ahead of the curve because the means for production and publication are so easy and democratic. We are all able to become our own TV stations now, we should dedicate ourselves to spending sometime exploring the less dollar driven pursuits.
I applaud BigSpaceship’s efforts with Qapture and PrettyLoaded. They aren’t profound but they’re created out of some real passion and love for what they do and are interested in. Probably just need a whole lot more of that.
Like I said, simplistic.
Jinal Shah Said (April 7, 2009 at 5:30 am)
Ben, this is a great conversation-starter. Much dialog was needed around this topic. I read the comments above and am in agreement with most of them (in particularly Tom’s comment about creation vs. harnessing) And little original ideas to add to this
I think, in interactive, or in the digital space - “Creative” is so loosely defined. As much as I agree (and help my own clients understand) the value of engagement and earned media/content - I think the onus is upon us, creatives and agencies, to identify a more balanced value proposition that will allow us the risks on behalf of our clients and earn us their trust.
At Electric Artists, we launched the Tracking Twitter (www.trackingtwitter.com) tool a few months ago. We started asking the brands we were following, why they were on twitter and what value did it offer them. And the truth is, the “client” is not as divorced from the realities/ possibilities and limitations of digital media/ interactive as we think they are. They get it. These CMO’S and marketing exec’s understand interactive and have taken it upon themselves to use interactive for long-term value creation. And I think, this needs to be a reality check for most of us agency folks.
We talk to each other, ask each other for opinions - and ultimately, rejoice and slap each others backs for creating a terrific slideshare or writing a profound statement. We live and breathe our own echo-chambers. Lets end the jargon. The client has caught up with us.
Ben, I think it would be very interesting to invite brand managers and folks from the client-side to this conversation. Instead of having agencies define great interactive, what do the clients think? How are the CMOs and brand managers defining great interactive ?
Am excited to see where this conversation leads.
Iain Tait Said (April 7, 2009 at 7:08 am)
Great piece. And some great comments too.
There is loads of great work in the interactive space. The whole web is great interactive work, every application on the iPhone is great interactive work, every Twitter feeder app is great interactive work.
I’m exaggerating of course. Some of it is total and utter pants. But it’s all part of what makes ‘digital’ an amazing creative space to play in.
I think we have to be careful not to define the boundaries of digital creativity within the borders of advertising. Otherwise we’re going to miss all the big exciting juicy tricks.
Some might view this as a cop-out - but it’s not meant that way. There’s plenty of examples of good online advertising creative. Storytelling, engagement, blah, blah, blah…
But the examples that blow me away are the places where an idea has transformed a way of communicating, or buying, or experiencing something. And there’s quite a lot of those around too. You just might not always find them in the D&AD annual or the CyberLions lists (no disrespect to those fine organisations obviously).
And the people who created them might not even be called creatives at all. Imagine that.
Ben Malbon Said (April 7, 2009 at 11:44 am)
Completely agree with this Iain. If I was running a creative department (many hundreds of people are sighing with relief that I’ll never be put in that dangerous & privileged position) I’d be hunting down people like Aaron Koblin to work in my team. Saw him present at a Google Sandbox evening last week and he was awesome. For example, check out some of his experimental projects here - http://sandbox.aaronkoblin.com/
The most powerful thing about his work is he brings together art and the algorithm, and in doing so he creates magic.
Anjali Ramachandran Said (April 7, 2009 at 9:33 am)
Thought-provoking post, and some good comments. Some of them provide enough fodder for posts of their own.
I think it is important to remember that people (not specifically just agencies, clients, strategists/planners, creatives, but people in general) appreciate and understand good work. Whether we work in an agency or with a client, we’re all consumers of media. And as consumers we like things that elicit a ‘Wow’. Increasingly, those ‘things’ tend to be digital.
Yes, creatives, technologists, strategists all need to work together from the start. Traditional agencies that don’t get that are dying slow deaths. The bit about half the smart people being somewhere and the other half somewhere else is so true, but there ARE places where they exist together, I’m sure. Maybe the right client hasn’t showed up, who’s willing to experiment. And those that are willing, don’t get the right agencies, so it’s a question of mismatch a lot of the time- that can’t really be controlled.
At the end of the day, good work needs the elimination of multiple egos from the process, then that good work needs to be sold in, and when that happens, it speaks for itself. CPB is an example of an agency that constantly makes work that pushes the boundaries (Facebook Whopper Sacrifice for example) - maybe they’re lucky to get good clients.
Why doesn’t something like We Feel Fine get made for clients? Because it’s not advertising. It’s a scientific project, championing no cause, that speaks to people’s emotions. I guess this raises the question of whether digital creativity is bound by client demands, and whether they have the right to make those demands (after all they’re the ones paying). Hmmm.
Chick Foxgrover Said (April 7, 2009 at 12:41 pm)
To be too simplistic due to time: Great creative in interactive is not “what did it say” but “what can I do” The digital world is not a medium, or only partly so, but a platform in which people act, a confluence of life streams. Great creative is great software.
Calle Sjönell Said (April 7, 2009 at 6:04 pm)
WORD!
Steve Poppe Said (April 7, 2009 at 5:13 pm)
Online work isn’t very creative because the medium is fairly new. The first 5 years of TV commercials probably blew too. It will take time. Many creatives are not from the digital medium, anyway, they are transplants.
For me, it’s all about the brief. A good stimulating brief will help creative people in any medium deliver a solution. A P&G brand manager told me yesterday there should be different briefs for different brand tasks. I’m not sure I agree with him. Get the brand brief right and the work will work…regardless of medium.
Tim Malbon Said (April 7, 2009 at 11:19 pm)
We should all pause and reflect on The SEO Rapper: http://www.stemkoski.com/the-seo-rapper-agai/
He describes how web standards and proper design can affect the ranking and conversion of pages on your site. But using rap.