Hasta La Creative!

Terence DCosta is a very dear friend and a very very talented Advertising Creative, working out of the Himalayas in Nepal. He writes this column ‘Ad Verbatim’ for himself and for us.

Leave your blinkers by the door and come on in. Let’s have a chat. The parlour has no spiders no, no, no and I am just the fly. Your average fly on the wall, swattable solely by subjectivity. And the objective of it all is objectivity of course. We’re going to take off those rose-tinted Raybans and take a quick tongue in cheek peek at anything even remotely connected to the world of Advertising.

We have the freedom to dissect, debate and certainly to disagree. And because I prefer a light-veined plasma over the mundane phlegm, we shall, occasionally digress. But before we do, what in heaven’s name is all the fuss around Creativity?

Now I did say ‘remotely’ connected to advertising…

Jokes aside. What according to you, is creativity? What does the consumer believe it is? Are you on the same page with your agency or client when it comes to a basic understanding of that which makes the advertising soul tick? More often than not, we either haven’t bothered to stop and ask or we’ve been far too busy being productive or worse, ‘creative’, to listen. It isn’t like asking you to stare into a mirror and ponder existence. It isn’t rocket science either.

Creativity is the ability to make something out of, a supposed, nothing. The nothing is supposed because we, unlike the dude (or if you’re into nature, the dudette) upstairs, aren’t true creators. We just borrow from the universal scheme of things. And so does Mr. Cameron.

If you brush your tresses in a way you’ve never done nor seen anyone do before, you could be accused of creativity just as much as when you liqui-doodled while you took a leak. But in advertising, creativity is a little more. It is the ability to make a purposeful something out of a directive set of insights, analyses and givens. Pity, to the average creative bloke, the last bit is often overlooked as ‘nothing’.

As a result, you get what I call ‘creative calisthenics’. I call them that because I see this erudite supermonkey perched prettily on the advertising iceberg – serendipitously far removed from the hogwash of marketing and sales mumbo jumbo. Nonchalant to the point of condescension when he’s faced with absolutely anything rational. The calisthenics are what you get when you chuck him a brief. It’s a regimen he’s elevated to an art form. Watch closely as he cartwheels backwards into a tempestuous trance and promptly pole-vaults in with an in-your-face solution he’s yanked out of his musty closet of unused (read locally) formulae. Note the toothy grin.

“Formula 184 should do the trick. No try 901. Yes 901, that’s the one you need!”
(you don’t ask why because you realize he’s programmed not to do whys – much like your brand manager)

“It’s creative, isn’t it?”

“Erm… it is… but..”

“Then there you go. Run along now and don’t forget to bow.”

(the last thing you see before you pass out is a faceless someone holding up a placard that reads ‘applause’).

And so the stories go. Twice more tragic are the ones that twist tangentially from the lesser confines of the client’s own imagination and rocket into the predictable obvious as a mutated series of conveyor belt options uncannily reminiscent of fifth-grade autistic art. Haha, that’s a different fettle of kitsch. Ah well, time to fly. This wall’s getting too wet for my liking, you liqui-doodler you!