January 19, 2005
glamor-boys
Recently I wrote about the “commodification” of the Advertising Creative.
Mr. Big Mean Client treating Mr. Talented Genius more and more as just one more widget in the production line etc, to be outsourced to a cheaper supplier at the earliest possible moment etc etc.
Well, it works both ways. A lot of clients’ businesses are no more than mere commodities to Mr. Talented Genius.
Something to fund the ol’ glamor-boy career for a couple of years, while he works on getting that next creative award or fancy, all-exenses-paid TV shoot down in The Bahamas, to put on his reel and help land that EVEN BIGGER job next time.
A lot of creatives aren’t really that interested in business in the first place, let alone their client’s business. Advertising is just something to do until they can land that big Hollywood job, writing jokes for the sitcoms, or whatever.
This type of advertising approach tends to see the adertising as a form of “Entertainment”, that just happens to have to “sell product” in order to earn its keep, the same way a blockbuster movie has to also “sell product”- i.e. movie tickets, popcorn buckets, DVDs etc– in order to justify its existence. Postmodern capitalism etc.
It’s the most glamorous part of the business. Happily, it’s also fast becoming the most redundant.
Yeah, boy.
Witnessing the clients’ dismissiveness of The Creative Contribution wasn’t nearly as upsetting as seeing how cavalierly creatives took their own assignments. In my brief stint as a CD, I was appalled by my copywriter/art director teams’s utter disregard of the product brand personality (I know, I know, but this was the late-80s/early 90s) in their pursuit of fame, glory, and shoots in exotic places.
The one good thing in the otherwise utterly forgettable film, Nothing In Common, was the Tom Hanks character stating the rarity of his singular passion for his trade: no novel in the drawer, no film script at the ready, just a passion to connect the right product with the right consumer.
I’m appalled that “creative” is the next service to be outsourced, but given the arrogance and hubris I saw on both sides many moons ago, I can’t say I’m really surprised.
So this explains why people have their fave spots but can never remember what the product is…
…what I fail to understand is how any of it is in the least way effective…by any measure.
Oddly enough, many of the people who do get out of the advertising business and into the movie business, spend most of THEIR time trying to figure out how to make enough money in the business to get OUT of the creative BUSINESS altogether.
It’s an entertaining merry-go-round in itself.
And we see the “creative” jobs getting outsourced in the film and television business as well. From hiring Canadian, German, Czechoslovakian, or whatever-ian directors, production designers, editors or what have you in order to qualify their productions for foreign tax breaks or even better, foreign investment in the productions themselves — it is a part of living in the “global economy.”
Unfortunately, global economy often = local pain. Especially in cases where technology (in the motion picture business, cameras, stages, etc.) or even locale “hipness” (e.g. New York, Chicago for ad execs) become the reasons for doing business in a specific place. As the tools to create become more and more accessible, and obtainable, and as exotic locales become more accessible via the internet, it will continue to dilute the power of the old guard talent.
What I think this means for those of us in businesses like this, is that we need to find a way to become our own open standard, global commodity or brand.
It puts the onus on us to be several more things than we used to have to be.
1. We must be good at what we do.
2. We must learn to collaborate, and in some cases even compromise (GASP!) in order to deliver what the studio, audience, or clients want.
3. We must realize that the only time the individual artistic expression and creation are the sole possesion of the artist, is when it DOESN’T MATTER TO ANYONE ELSE BUT YOU:)
Anyway… there’s probably more to this, but I have to run off and go shoot some stuff for a client in freakin’ South Central Los Angeles that I’m sure is going to be as uncreative as it gets:)
“Oddly enough, many of the people who do get out of the advertising business and into the movie business, spend most of THEIR time trying to figure out how to make enough money in the business to get OUT of the creative BUSINESS altogether.”
Jon, that doesn’t surprise me. My (fortunately) brief excursions into the Hollywood machine were horrible experiences.
And you see so many people killing themselves to get a bite of the cherry. Then when they get it; it tastes horrible. C’est la vie.
I’ve always been amazed at the number of screenwriters who wrote their “big” movies while working at an ad agency. After having survived that churn myself for five years, I doubly admire anyone who could survive the brain drain and keep something inside for their own creative work too. (The thought of it alone exhausts me.)
Fear And Self-Loathing On The Ad Campaign Trail
Steve Hall of Adrants feels bad for Danny Kaster, and by extension all of us ad schmucks. He writes: “While it’s known the producers of The Apprentice get sadistic pleasure out of editing contestants into idiots, it was still embarrassing…