Worth A Read: There' Only One Job In Advertising

AdWeek is the host for a recent article by Alex Bogusky entitled "There's Only One Job In Advertising". It's worth a read, as are most articles by Bogusky. He makes two points that most will agree with. Clients look to their agencies for great creative ideas, and these creative ideas can come from any discipline, not just the "creatives". Well, maybe agencies will at least pay lip service to the latter, if not actually believe it.

Bogusky goes on alert us to the threat to this creativity, the relatively new "scientific" discipline that has become part of the agency world:

"...we are still inculcated to mistrust the concept of creativity...we spend our time trying to add scientific processes to our strategies and scientific testing to our work. Why do we distrust something that is so easy for us all to identify and identify with?"

It's this last point, which seems to be the motivation for the article, that we take issue with. For decades agencies have foisted third-rate "creative" onto their clients with little more than "trust me" as a reassurance.

They now expect more evidence, and they deserve it.

The challenge is to harness this scientific discipline so as to direct and energize creativity. Agencies failed in the past to lead their clients to the proper balance of creativity and accountability. They need to do a better job in the future.

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Thanks to Spike at Brains on Fire for bringing this article to our attention.