This article appeared in the last issue of AdNews. It goes a long way to explaining how we feel about Cannes, advertising festivals and the future relevance of the industry as a whole if we fail to start heeding Al Gore’s words from last year and start considering the social and environmental impacts of our unique, commercial form of creativity.
A few weeks ago the industry gathered for its annual pilgrimage to Cannes to celebrate another year of creativity.
Cannes began as celebration of TV and Cinema advertising. Over the years it has evolved its format to include new categories and keep up with emerging trends. As a result, it has become the world’s most recognized festival and eveyone worth his or her salt in the industry, wants to win one.
Yet, as we read the news coming out of France there is a sense that Cannes requires another urgent facelift.
Why? In this age where the sustainability of our lifestyle and planet depend on us weaning ourselves off big cars and slimming down our fast food children, the winners list is a little concerning. Design Grand Prix to soft drink. Film Grand Prix to a chocolate bar. Promo to a TV channel, Titanium to a video game. And Gold Lions galore heaped on the usual suspects in the SUV, snackfood, sweatshop sportswear and environmentally questionable cleaning products categories.
If there was ever a sign that hallowed environs of Cannes needed to re-align its principles and values with what was going on in the rest of the world this is it.
Reward and recognition is a critical component of any successful individual, organization and industry. It’s just that looking at the winners the awards seem to have become a bit of an anachronism. The same flamboyant celebration of art without concern as it was back in the 1970s and 1980s.
The Jeep campaign, for example is very clever, yet immediately feels like old school thinking on a multitude of levels. ‘What do we mean?’ You might be thinking (more likely shouting) as you read this?
What we mean is this….
Advertising was once a dark science understood by Oxbridge and Ivy league types who worked out how to sell products to housewives. As communication became more complex, the consumer became more sophisticated. Products became brands and the industry evolved to become one of the most potent creative forces in the world.
From its humble roots sucking up bowling balls, become the mouthpiece, the ministry of information, for global consumerism. It has shaped and decorated society and culture wherever it has taken a firm grip. Yet up until recently agencies did not really care whether they were selling Toyota or tampons, chocolate or cigarettes. It was all about ‘art that sells’.
And that’s the problem fact. Advertising works if it does something. If it makes you think differently it has worked. If it makes you behave differently it has worked even harder. If it makes you buy something the client is delighted. If it makes you tell everyone else you know about it you have just made the most important audience of all happy…the advertising industry.
“Crack open the champers we could be going to Cannes” up goes the cry.
Our hunger for the satisfaction of a Lion in the hand means we award ourselves for our work without concern. We reward creativity without consideration for its impact. We never concern ourselves that this ‘commercial’ creativity has an effect and often this effect plays its part in destroying eco systems and much more.
And we go to great lengths to do it. Consider the scam ad. It happens because clever creative minds spend time coming up with brilliant ideas, to sell inconsequential products, in order to enter awards. Our greedy industry ego says ‘I don’t care, I just want an award’. I want a gong because it makes me feel good and I can earn more money.
For what good? There is little sense of the role we have to play in a much higher order benefit. As an industry we have power to transform agendas, make change happen and dare I say it make sustainability desirable. And yet all we do by not thinking harder about potential solutions, that deliver some good whilst winning awards, is cash in.
Meanwhile, if 2000 of the world’s top scientists are to be believed, the planet is warming up, we have a frequency of floods and fires never seen before, 500 million people are starving and things are set to get worse. The cause? Over consumption of the world’s resources to make cars, phones, panel TVs, packaged goods and advertising.
The advertising industry is no longer an innocent bystander. We are complicit. Al Gore in his speech to the audience at Cannes last year gave us a clear role to play which we have not really lived up to yet. Just like those agencies that did not grasp how digital was going to sweep them aside, the industry is still playing a game that has a sell by date fast approaching.
It seems to us that the time has come for us as an industry, as individuals, to stop wasting money and resources on changing perceptions, in order to justify a trip to France each year, and start changing the world. Once you start thinking this way you can start feeling good about award winning creative ideas again because the work you do will have actually done some good.
What do you think? Should agencies start thinking about the impact of their campaigns or should creativity be judged on its creative merits no matter what the cost? Post a reply or start a conversation below.
