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Snake Oil, Big Ideas & the enduring value of ‘failed’ Creative Ambition.

04 Friday Jun 2021

Posted by Thin Air Factory in Uncategorized

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501s, Advertising, Avarice, Bartle Bogle & Hegarty, Big Creative Ideas, Carousel, Cocagne, Consumer Citizen, Creative Circle, D&AD, Democracy of Creativity, Global Consumption, Golden Age, Greed, hate Something, Honda Cog, KFC FCK, Long Lunch, Madison Avenue, Magazine Lifestyles, Nick Kamen, Porsche, Saatchi & Saatchi, Silicon Valley, Snake Oil, Tango, Tech Unicorns, Unsustainable Consumption, White Horses

Read Time: 12 Minutes

Two things have prompted me to have a type:

Firstly the passing of Nick Kamen, 1980s cultural landmark, icon and star of BBHs remarkable Levi’s 501s campaign. My threadbare 501s were welded to me for YEARS, and life was GOOD in them, and not just because BBH told me it would be.

Secondly, a recent client’s abject abandonment of a great creative idea in favour of something more anodyne. This had led me to ponder a little on what makes a creative idea big – and, in turn, what it means for an ambitious creative idea to succeed, ether in whole or in part.

So, let’s start with the obvious. What is a ‘big’ creative idea when it’s at home?’

There was a time when that was an easy question to answer.

Big Creative ideas smacked a little of madness – an audacious ambition wrapped up in a slightly megalomaniacal belief in possibility, all stuffed through the multi-million dollar mincer of creative chutzpah and craft obsession. Big creative ideas took cojones to create, to buy and to run. They weren’t simply the outputs of a smart collaborative team. There was a legendary status ascribed to big creative ideas and their creators.

There was a time when big creative ideas were seemingly forged in the fires of myth, rendered in gold and then scattered like diamonds across the arid deserts of our ordinary everyday lives. A time when Ad men and Ad women wore Sex Panther, and had highly inappropriate impromptu TV production meetings in the hedge at the Hurlingham Club on a hot summer Awards night. A time when a long lunch could reach across three dawns. A time when you didn’t fuck with big creative ideas.  A time when creative hot shops were on fire even though some may have sounded somewhat like a collision between a Victorian legal firm and a minor sex offence.

Much was made of the slightly unsavoury emollient nature of the Persuaders inside the Hot Shops’ doors with their dark arts of Madison Avenue. But, for all that, the creative work the hot shops and better agencies generated was memorable, often exceptional. Their presence on poster sites, newspaper ads, television sets and cinema screens made the world a richer, funnier and more interesting place. Saying that, not everyone appreciated the new, slick, bold and confident nature of the creative industry. 

Just a bunch of slippery market stall wide boys selling fizzy drinks and jeans to poor unsuspecting idiots.

Perhaps, but if the aforementioned Levis 501s campaign and Tango are anything to go by, slide on McDuff.

Add to that the likes of Honda Cog, John West Salmon Fisherman, Carousel, Sony Balls, John Smiths, KFC FCK and the myriad other big creative ideas that leap to mind, and why wouldn’t you give the creative folks your cash in search of a big idea?

Was their fetishization of gongs and plaudits, gathered up every year in the discarded clothing of the TV Department, deeply narcissistic and unsavoury? Perhaps. 

Awarded work was the only trumpet to be blown. Over the glory years of D&AD pencils, Cannes Lions, Creative Circle awards and various others, the industry revelled in its ability to use ground-breaking creative work to make their clients’ brands famous and echo through culture.

Everything was seemingly perfect and exceptional and single-minded creativity was revered and defended.

The downside [if there was one] was the agency people’s tendency to turn up for meetings in a car worth as much as the marketing director’s house, accompanied by a rather over-engineered sense of their own fabulousness. 

‘We’re the best part of their dull day job. ’Coming to the agency is like an outing for them’.

Even when said marketing director realised that the Ad people’s magazine-lifestyle of smart restaurants, endless bubbles, Cannes trips and Tony Montana-sized heaps of cocagne was being paid for by them, still, the value of and reverence for great creative work was upheld. As with every other cod trope about putting up with the difficult genius, the world still allowed for the minds that might make something exceptional.

But as the world turned a new dawn of democratic creativity arose. Creativity was reframed. ‘Everyone is creative’ – and ‘great creative ideas come from anyone and anywhere.’

This new egalitarian creative dawn, fuelled by the post-it-note frenzy and white-board abandonment of tech fuelled innovation sprints and hacks, seemed to diminish the pure dream of the big creative idea. It visibly shrank in the room. Suddenly, real world-changing Creativity was super-processor shaped and lived in Silicon Valley. This creativity was not only shinier and sexier – it was worth a jaw-dropping amount more money for its priests and advocates. And the fractal screenage media world that came with it didn’t help matters. 

When you can shade every channel to the immediate audience and a brand must speak in segment tongues you are in effect viewing everything through a sieve.

Where once a single killer TV or Cinema spot could knock itself and its audience out of the park, said idea now needed to be capable of the creative equivalent of channel parkour – leaping from blog to vlog to App to platform to paid social to podcast to Youtube to PR event to TV. 

All too often, in this environment, the value of a big creative idea is quickly diminished – suffocated by too much channel complexity, over-bearing and ill-conceived metrics – leading to a slow though rather intelligent death by democratic contribution. Not always – but increasingly nonetheless. It takes nerves of steel and endless patience to keep it on the rails.

But is that such a bad thing you might ask? Doesn’t that just test the mettle of the idea even more – a sort of Iron Man endurance test for creative thinking? Good point.

There are also many who dismiss the search for the ‘big creative idea’ because they look back at the golden age of them and simply see self-interest and sophistry. What’s more the purpose of big creative ideas if there was one, is perceived as rooted in endless and infinite growth and gain.

‘Come to think of it’ they say, ‘Big creative ideas lacked real integrity because they were used to persuade people to buy shite they never needed while making them feel like enough was never enough’ 

OK – again, fair-dos. The gold mine of unfettered consumption, feckless social engineering and the waxy, bloated god of endless growth throned inside a Super-Size model of excessive corporate greed may well have underwritten the whole cult of big creative idea advertising BUT that don’t make them less valuable M’lud.

In that small slightly defensive truth lies the point.

There will always be a value in reaching for a big creative idea – even when some people are calling them anachronistic – others saying they’re not fit for purpose any more – and more still decrying their seeming indifference to robust data measurement and research.

Even when the budget has shrunk, and the joy has been suffocated in its sleep, the deadline looming and the client exercising their dick-ness or insecurity or both – don’t stop reaching for a big creative idea, because even if you don’t quite reach it or you do and they don’t run it, the sheer act of reaching for it will create a positive impact in the world. 

Now to be clear here, there is a very clear line that divides the messianic pursuits of creative ambition and the sociopathy of misguided creativity, inappropriately applied.

Seeing an opportunity for a Platinum Lion in a single social post hashtag for Leclerc supermarkets on Insta and burning the ferocious gem-like-flame of creativity in pursuit of it is simply madness. We are only talking here about situations where a big creative idea might be fit for purpose – where a client has said ‘We’re up against the big guns here. We’ve got to really stand out. Cut through. We need a big brand story, a brand idea that gets us noticed.’

Having recently created an idea rthat delivered way beyond the particular client’s ambition – an idea that may well have set a new optic through which to view their world and their proposition – to watch if get fleeced out and side-lined through a mixture of bad timing, over thinking, cold feet and an overly-rushed need for a website led me to contemplating the idea of what it means for a big creative idea to ‘land’ and ultimately succeed or fail.

Does the fact that the bigger idea wasn’t taken up mean that it failed? 

Does it make the desire to keep on seeking a bigger creative idea or play-space a rather nihilistic exercise fuelled only by ego? 

What does it mean for creative ideas to succeed? 

Must they always do it in totality? 

How much tenure does a creative idea need to have to impact and shape something good both within and without a business or brand? 

Lots of questions then. Any answers? Dunno. But here’s a thought hidden inside an observation. 

What I did notice in the new stripped-back vanilla version of the client’s website was a phrase – one of the original phrases I’d written as part of the creative idea. Now, if that phrase goes forwards and upwards into their business and brand vernacular – and shades and shapes how they think of and apply their IP and proposition in the world over time – in turn reshaping and transforming their clients’ worlds’ to even a small degree – then all is not lost. 

Do the businesses and brands who have a tendency to not convert the big idea but flourish from the ideas that fall out of the process of chasing it realise what they are doing when they magpie creativity along the way? Usually. Especially if some nominal sums have been exchanged for the thinking. But in a world where they’ve been taught to honour the whole idea or nothing, not buying it allows them to not recognise the influence of the creative exercise on their thinking and doing.

The evidence of various pieces of creative shrapnel embedded in a clients’ thinking, echoes of the big ideas that have been blown-up along the way, are not that hard to find. Their role in influencing the client’s proposition and trajectory are, equally, often plain to see. 

To be clear, I’m not referring to that really crappy behaviour that we’ve all come across in our time – that of running a pitch and then ‘scraping’ the pitch works, taking what you like from across the work yet not recognising any of it. That’s just plain old opportunistic theft of others IP and creativity.

No, I’m talking about when ideas and thoughts and strategies shared along the way, openly and in good faith, to the point they become shared perspectives and therefore part of the commons – at which point they are adopted as part of the client’s new dawn with no real appreciation or recognition of where those ideas came from. 

My point?

These pieces of creative shrapnel embedded in a client’s thinking and doing are proof of the fact that it is never a waste of time to go for a bigger creative idea and ambition, even in the absence of gongs, fat cheques or even client appreciation. 

The unreasonable power of creativity needs to be unleashed in the world at every opportunity. 

Is this a desperate re-rationalisation of what it means for a creative idea to succeed, just to make me feel better – a last ditch effort to stop it feeling like an utter waste of time and energy? Perhaps. Quite possibly. But not necessarily.

Academic Lag, Advertising Jag & the task of Socialising the Genome

14 Tuesday Jul 2015

Posted by Thin Air Factory in Uncategorized

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Academia, Academic Lag, Acclimatisation, Advertising, Advertising Jag, andy lamb, big data, Brian Cox, conversation, Creative Action Research, Decompression, Demand, desire, DNA, Evolution, Genome, Genomic Science, Guttenberg Press, Hadron Collider, Health, health Screening, Human Behaviour, human essence, Identity, Insight Ladder, Intellectuals, Language, Living The Dream, marketing communications, networks of academic collaboration, NHS, Populists, Sanger Institute, social networks, Socialisation, Syntax, utility, wellbeing

LAG:

A period of time: a noticeable delay between action and reaction –                         Failing to keep up with another or others in movement or development

JAG: 

A short period of overindulgence in an activity: a shopping jag: a crying jag          A stab; an intense and concentrated movement or action

Screen Shot 2015-07-14 at 12.39.29

I increasingly find myself at a very particular and exciting intersection.

I find myself there not by accident but by design: having helped build a methodology that reaps its greatest rewards at the point where applied science and commercial creativity collide.

(The creativity is commercial in that the point of collision is designed to generate pieces of communication to a specific end and utility – functional with tangible benefits – as opposed to a piece of pure art or some material assemblage generated to no end other than to create feeling and effect through its aesthetic – experiential with intangible benefits.)

Over the last year and a half I have been working on a project that seeks simple answers to some quite complex questions rooted in deep science:

  • How do we scale the ‘everyday’ conversation around genome science and DNA beyond the scientists, academics, clinicians and the rare interested civilian party?
  • How do we illuminate the scientific mysteries and wonder of our DNA in such a way that everyone can understand them, embrace them, engage with them, and reap the rewards that come from them?
  • And ultimately how do we help the greatest number of us to enhance the nature, quality and duration of our human tenure through informed choice and enlightened action in regards to our DNA?

This search for a more compelling narrative and conversation at the point where science and everyday humanity meet is not an isolated pursuit.

It is also true of the ‘Living The Dream’ project I am currently helping to steer. The project also seeks to scale the conversation around what constitutes a more enduring model of prosperity and sustainable consumption by finding a more ‘human’ narrative to replace the existing one, rooted as it is in the science, engineering and ‘reason’ of sustainability as opposed to human emotion of it.

In both cases we need to find a way of communicating complex concepts and constructs in the simplest way possible to the largest number of people without destroying the integrity of the scientific truths in the process.

In both cases there are untold rewards for society and humankind both individually and collectively if we can scale these conversations.

So I find myself working at this intersection of multiple collisions: between scientific integrity and human sociability: between depth and structure and lightness and elasticity; between applied science and commercial creativity.

MAKING CONVERSATION

To reap the untold rewards we simply need the communities of science and academia to meet the man and woman in the street and have a good ‘chat’:

And boy do they have some great stuff to talk about: life changing, existence enhancing stuff.

In the case of genomics, simply put, if enough of us embrace the advantages that the advances in the science offer in our everyday lives, using the revelations of DNA in an applied manner both individually and for the common good, we could eventually move ourselves from the old curative model of health care to a new and far more dynamic preventative model: one that will not only just change the way we live but also alter the duration of that living.

Making smarter and easily comprehensible lifestyle choices informed and underwritten by a deeper and more intimate understanding of what makes us who we are can help us to embrace a more positive approach to the lives we lead. Those choices made en masse will equally inform and illuminate how best the health service of the future can better sustain its ability to continue to serve our society both systemically and financially.

Now logic would predict that given the enormous impact and beneficial nature of those potential outcomes, everyone should already be ‘all over that conversation’: chatting away furiously, listening intently, sharing the conversation with friends and reaping the rewards of a better life.

SPEAKING IN TONGUES

The problem is – we’re not.

Why?

The greatest barrier seems to be one of simple comprehension and understanding.

The scientists and academics simply communicate in a different language to the everyday people they are trying to reach. Their particular languages have different vocabularies, inflections, idioms, energies and vernaculars – which is unsurprising given that both parties live in very, very different worlds.

In one world we have the ‘splendid isolation’ of existence required to nurture intense, interrogative and highly rational scientific thought and action – and the codified, particular language and almost impenetrable texts, dissertations and white papers that accompany and support it.

In the other world we find the hyper-connected and hyper-socialised immersion of our emotionally charged everyday existence, fuelled and accelerated by smart devices and sprawling digital platforms of human interaction filled with billions of TXTS, tweets, emojis, memes, slang and banter.

One exists in a mode of hyper dislocation; the other in a mode of hyper socialisation.

And it seems that each speaks in riddles as far as the other is concerned.

A chasm exists between the world of academia and the sciences and that of the everyday person in the street. And as with all worlds of such different ‘atmospheres’, there needs to be a process of acclimatisation when travelling between one and the other.

In the context of Socialising the Genome (and my Living The Dream project) it is the conversational ‘syntax’ – the framing, structure, language and phrasing of these arguments – that needs to ‘acclimatise’ to the atmosphere of everyday needs and desires and the language they speak.

The highly tuned language, intense qualification and proofs of the scientists and academics need to ‘decompress’ on the way up into the ‘real world’ – otherwise they will suffer a bout of the communication ‘bends’ – where they either over compensate and try to hard – become too ‘matey’; the NBF of the person in the street… : ) : )

Or they simply come across like a geek at a fancy dress party – awkward, uncomfortable and so wrong on so many counts.

Putting deep science and academic concepts and truths through a ‘decompression and acclimatisation’ process can of course be undertaken as a one off – but realistically, if our ambition in this instance is to ‘socialise’ the conversation, we have to assume a fluid and escalating dialogue of increasing and expanding value and reach – and for that to happen we realised that we needed to keep the findings, revelations and insights of the academics and scientists constantly ‘in flow’; moving seamlessly and effortlessly between one world and the other: elastic and evolving.

To achieve this they need to be ‘sensitive’ of, keep pace with and be true to the everyday shifts and nuances in the behaviours, attitudes and language of the people whose existence they seek to improve. To be resilient and meaningful they must remain ‘relevant’ at all times.

(There is little point in deep diving for a populist answer only to find that on surfacing with one 2 years later, the question has changed. Herein lurks the danger of the academic lag.)

So, in the process of designing the methodology that would facilitate this we found ourselves with two acute questions to answer:

  • How do we create an offset strategy for the academic lag – one that allows the worlds of academia and the deep sciences to remain ‘present’ – to exist both in the accelerated and socialised Now while still mining in splendid isolation?
  •  How do we design a ‘decompression and acclimatisation’ process that enables a smarter simpler flow of ideas and findings – a ‘conversation’ or dialogue – between one world and the other?

CUE ADVERTISING JAG.

To reap the ultimate rewards that the advances in Genomic science offer us, the screening and storing our DNA as would have to become an everyday part of our health profile: it would have to become second nature to every one of us: a common place behaviour: something that we do without ‘thinking’.

But we’re a long way from a chirpy chat along the lines of:

‘hey Trish. Sorry. Can we say 7.30ish now? Running a bit late at the DNA screening clinic – mines a large glass of DWW! ; ) Jax xxx’

Genomic science tends to only enter our conversation either because we are forced to engage with it or by an accident of revelation.

Even when the more moderated conversations do occur they can quickly tip into ethical minefields around data storage and security, commercial abuses by insurance companies and self interested corporates, elitist tiers and eugenics, socio cultural stratification and the Police Database. There issues around identity privacy and confidentiality are staggering in some of their complexities and contradictions.

The complexities of genomic science are simply not ‘everyday’, not everyone’s ‘cup of tea’ and are at best incomprehensible and at worst quickly controversial.

But Advertising & Communication people spend their whole life not only trying to decipher what someone’s ‘cup of tea’ might be but also how they might get them to drink more of it

The nature of the models and frameworks used by marketing communications specialists to mine and shape insights, propositions and narratives – the intensity, speed and use of both broad stroke universal consumer insight and atomic data modelling – is driven by the voracious desire in corporates to ‘keep up’ with the fluid and ever changing nature of consumer demand and desires. These models have grown ever more agile due to:

  • The direct impact of technology and the social networks across the value chains and markets of the big corporate consumer brands:
  • The age of data big bang: an ever-expanding viral surge of relentlessly dividing and multiplying data on every aspect and dimension of how we live, act, interact and transact.

It is in the intensity, approach and most importantly the creative storytelling aspect of this ‘jag’ of activity that we believe our off set strategy can be found.

ADVERTISING SCHMADVERTISING

One of the greatest tension points in the new methodology we have engineered in Socialising The Genome is the point at which advertising exclamation collides with academic exposition.

There are fundamental and quite combative points of difference between the worlds of the Sciences & Medicine and the Humanities & Arts – in nature, methodology and application; and in their concepts of what constitutes integrity and substance (especially when the latter are of the populist persuader type – the advertising and marketing agencies and their kind).

Many wholly reason-based intellectuals and practitioners harbour a quite fixed (and many would say hugely justifiable) sense of distrust in what they regard as a moral and intellectual vacuum in the marketing communications agencies, institutions and organisations that manipulate and leverage ‘emotion’ and a lazy populism for commercial gain.

To allow the conversation around something as precious and fragile as genomic science to be driven by base desires pumped up on the wisdom of the crowds with no form of enlightened filter or curation, might well be perceived as not only risky but also irresponsible.

“Fine, if you’re just pushing another million or so 6-bladed, swivel-hipped funky junky disposable plastic razors” but matters of this level of human importance are quite a different thing entirely.

Alternately, on the other side of the conversational fence, we have the champions of ‘everyday’ people, the populist movers, shakers, creators and commentators who celebrate them, their language, their culture, their leisure and their past-times, and who shape, shade and distribute the myriad simple pleasures that they enjoy and engage with. For these people, unless science, like technology, is wrapped up in a Brian Cox-like, ‘whoops that’s my Collider’ approachability or celebrity, they are quite disdainful or disinterested in what they see as arcane and impenetrable conversations. They see no point in a dialogue that seems circular and closed in its nature and not of any use to anyone without a PhD.

Their attitude broadly runs along the lines of:

“don’t care – all a bit to serious and arch for me – lighten up, get over yourself – short time living long time dead – if you cant take the banter we’re not listening – and while you’re at it, mine’s a highly-advertised pint of unexceptional lager please!”

Screen Shot 2015-07-14 at 14.45.37

BUT, in a balanced world and all things being even – somewhere between the two polarities lies an answer – midway between the extremities of emotional populism on the one side and high-minded rationalism on the other.

Neither one nor the other can develop the conversation by itself in isolation. Each needs the other to create a full and robust conversation that is both substantial and sociable.

In our particular instance, we needed to go on a journey from the clinical utility of the genome conversation as it is now – closed alienating isolating and impenetrable in large tracts – to a one more rooted in concepts of positive identity and improved existence – open inclusive socialised and empowering.

We realised that to do that we needed to decipher how we could use the tension that exists between the worlds of science and society to most positive effect – to facilitate and accelerate that journey.

MIND THE GAP

To be clear, the absence of accelerated improvement in our human existence through Genomic science is not an issue of supply. (There are a lot of brilliant minds moving the science forwards). This is an issue of demand.

While ‘everyday’ people continue to not understand the real and substantial benefits of that science, they will not demand its benefits as a standard and inextricable part of their everyday lives

Communicating the inspirational, revelatory and highly beneficial impact of embracing our DNA to the greatest number of people in their terms in their world is central to all of this because it will fuel and fire ‘demand’ for better.

TWAS EVER THUS

Demystifying and popularising rare knowledge of a scientific, political, economic or theological nature has always been a critical step in the march of human progress (whether the scientists, politicians, economists and the theologians like it or not).

‘Dumbing down’ as some elevated minds like to think of it is actually humanity’s way of smartening up. And inspiring and wild-firing everyday conversation is a vital lever in that smartening up.

So first things first: we needed to accept that the challenges to easy conversation are substantial – the impenetrable nature of the science; a very human, provincially minded fear of the unknown; the conflicted nature of our feeling towards ‘disease prediction’; a general fear of ‘science going too far & meddling with the cosmos; the primal compulsion to ‘move away from’ any form of human flaw (our own or anyone else’s); either in the form of disability or crippling disease; or those flaws as might potentially be revealed by DNA screening.

We need to accept that none of the ‘conversation’ generated so far has enabled us to move very far beyond our current audiences – and that we have so far failed to present a set of positives that outweigh the existing negatives.

Genomic science and the subject of DNA need to be lightly dealt with or presented in such a way as to find their way into pub banter framed and informed by a ‘did you see? Did you know?’ Intelligence Lite, fuelled by lifestyle magazines, Sunday supplements and the Discovery Channel.

And given that film is the most shared currency in the socially networked world, film needs to be the base currency of our highly socialised cultural economy.

So our key objectives for success were:

  • to create a methodology that enabled us to look up through the emotionally driven human and the everyday insight – not down through the rationally driven science and the clinical language
  • to develop and distribute the seeds of a new and scaled conversation through the power of shareable film.

CREATIVE ACTION RESEARCH

My work over the last year or so with Dr. Anna Middleton of the Sanger Institute focuses solely how we reconcile the perspectives of our two worlds to shape and scale the conversation around DNA and Genomic science to greater human benefit.

And it is in the circular and iterative nature of the interaction between her world – that of the Academic Lag – and mine – that of the Advertising Jag – that we believe will deliver the language and framing for and therefore the scale of conversation that we need to transform the way people see DNA in their lives.

With CAR, we have constructed a methodology where, even when in the midst of the deep dive nature of her qualitative ethical research process, Anna is able to utilize my and my collaborator’s ability to reframe, rephrase and represent science or research fact in more populist social storytelling terms and framings to play beck into and inform the more academic process she is undertaking.

CAR – TESTING THE EDGES OF CONVERSATION

CAR combines traditional qualitative research, rooted in group discussions and in depth interviews and discourse interpretation with quantitative research that introduces fresh  creatively-framed seeds of Genome and DNA conversation into the social networks to provide a simple speedy test of whether those seeds have the ability to inspire and engage people in such a way that they might in turn share it amongst their own social network both real and virtual.

The method we have devised for creating the simple seeds of a new conversation revolves around taking an existing piece of knowledge or scientific fact and creating different types of ‘conversation’ or story telling around it.

We then use these seeds of conversation as foils and flash cards in both a quantitative socialised environment and the more in depth and metered qualitative research groups and in-depths.

To ensure that in the migration from science or clinical insight to creative idea we did and do not fall foul of confecting, manipulating, misrepresenting and ultimately distorting or twisting the knowledge or facts we are using, every creative idea has to be rooted in an insight ladder.

Screen Shot 2015-07-14 at 14.58.47

The Insight Ladder is a simple proprietary tool that I have developed for this project that aims to lock the more creatively framed seed of conversation to the scientific fact truth or insight that inspired it: a sort of plumb line of integrity that runs through each ‘conversation’.

QUALITATIVE RESEARCH

A number of traditional qualitative research group discussions and some in depths will begin to explore some of the everyday language and insights around genome science and DNA.

A dry Discussion Guide takes each participant in the qualitative groups from a condition of lowest point of knowledge – do you know what DNA is? – through a natural arc of expanding conversation – knowledge of DNA – benefits or not to the individual – its role in improved healthcare – moral and ethical issues around the science – data privacy and security – and at its most extreme – and ultimately, the nature of improved DNA and genome science on a thriving UK PLC as a mark of global leadership in the advancement of improved human existence through scientific and social enlightenment and application.

Once the open and freeform discussion has come to a close we will use some of the seed ideas that we have developed from existing insights to see how opening doors to the subject using more creative everyday storytelling potentially changes or alters people’s disposition, perception and appreciation of the subject.

QUANTITATIVE RESEARCH

Once the qualitative groups have been transcribed we will then select the most potent insights and creative storytelling and framings so that they may be turned into simple animated pieces of film storytelling.

We will use an online research tool to see which film inspires the most attention and why with a representative UK sample, as well as sharing them in the social networks to the same purpose.

Both actions will seek simple responses and opinions through both closed and open data capture.

Ultimately we are seeking one or two ideas with the potential to develop into a greater scale of everyday conversation using socially dynamic communications and advocacy strategies to wildfire those conversations.

BONFIRE OF THE HUMANITIES

The creative jag in CAR endeavours to act like a repeated finger tap in the centre of the academic ‘chest’ – a way of bringing the science into the moment, connecting it in visceral emotional and social terms to the everyday Now – an intense injection of populist framing and storytelling for those somewhat consumed in the Academic Lag.

In that way, the advertising Jag acts as a form of ‘Mindfulness’ for the scientist, academic and clinician deep-diving into the world of the genome – providing a ‘Look Up’ orientation strategy for them to use while potholing in the caves between what is know and unknown.

Therefore Creative Action Research aims to use a complimentary fusion of:

Academic Lag – Reason – utility, interrogation & measure – resilience – the individual

+

Advertising Jag – Emotion – identity, expression & impact – desire – the crowd

to scale the conversation and socialise the Genome.

CAR accepts that there is no simple black & white answer here. It will take time and the attentions of both the Laggers and the Jaggers to get to the scale of conversation this deserves and needs.

In some ways, as with our DNA, it might just prove that the things that unite us are greater than those that divide us.

In finding a way to socialise the Genome we might just find a way to both educate the populous and socialise academia. And perhaps that is not a bad thing at all.

In the meantime lets pop on our Bordieu T Shirt – and be a great destroyer of Either/Or.

Creativity, Troubled Spirits & The Art of the Commercial Creative Tantrum

04 Tuesday Feb 2014

Posted by Thin Air Factory in Uncategorized

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Advertising, Cannes Lions, Commercial Artists, Communications, Creative Excellence, Creativity, Mad Men, Seymour Hoffman

Image Part 1 (of 3)

Creativity. What a cursed word this is. Its stain and shadow seems to riddle anyone truly touched by it with a silent screaming see-saw yaw of insecurity and brilliance so profound it staggers them to a deathly stop, sooner or later.

And when I say truly touched by creativity, I am talking not of the noisy swaggerdaccio of  commercial creatives who you’ll find buzzing around the ad agency, digital content and brand consultancy hives of most major and supposedly civilised cities.

That kind, my kind, are simply echoes, re-percussions in its truest sense of the dark, glittering, brilliant bangs and crashes of those truly blessed and cursed with creativity.

When I speak of creativity I speak of those people who carry their creativity deeply within themselves, not worn as a badge of entry to the latest and so, so self consciously flagged eatery as metered out on any latest given social network living or virtual.

Perhaps it was the news that Seymour Hoffman was found with the needle sticking out of his arm still, dead of an overdose that enraged me enough to wish to write this piece.

Seymour Hoffman to me was simply a reason to think that there was a god.

An actor whom I found to be so audacious in his characterisations, so breathtaking in his personification of characters whom, until he lit a torch inside them, lay across the page, inert and inhuman. His rendering of legendary and well-documented Characters like Truman Capote, surely an impossible task, simply allowed Seymour Hoffman the opportunity to be more Capote than the man himself. He has utterly delivered on the concept of a performer and performances that transcend every possible preexisting point of reference or comparison.

And for that I feel he deserves a prize as great as any our druid forebears could give to any man or woman who could encapsulate the human condition under the gaze of he gods in such a way as to enable every observer to learn something profound, however small and in such a way as to improve their own.

His bravery in putting out there what he felt to be the prima version of what was expected of him reaches so far beyond the cowardice of the average commercial creative it is hard to even begin to measure the distance between them

The renaissance nature of him – his ability to reach into corners – his breadth depth and well of influence was simply staggering.

The depth of his creativity – of observation, on human nature, the tics and flinches of human behavior, its emotional eddies and whip-pools, its penchant for small tragedies played out in the inane and banal – and the wealth of invention required to conjure all of that into a moment under the cruel and unforgiving gaze of the camera. That is what I call creativity. It is naked and raw, and spiritually incapable of being repaid.

But perhaps in the cruelty of the lens lay a black truth. Maybe that was the masochist at work in him. Throwing himself relentlessly at the feet of an unforgiving master – one whom he knew would ultimately never let him go.

It is when I look at creativity at work in people like him that I wonder at what seems to pass so often otherwise as creativity.

I am bored with the wannabees and the almosts. There are times when the crippling truth of the real deal should make us draw breath and admit for perhaps even the most fleeting second that the pure genius of those that truly have it make those of us who simply exist in their slipstream, small and recondite in nature.

And then I view creativity through the eyes of the scientists, the poets, the architects and the mathematicians and then look through the rear view mirror at the communications jonnies and wonder where their arrogance came from.

No Cloths of Heaven. No Suspension bridge. No Higgs Bosen. No Rubik. No 3D printers.

What in god’s name have the commercial creatives given us that illuminates our life in such exceptional and poetic manner that they deserve one passing second of attention beyond some Cannes obsessed self gratifying accolade?

That we, the Ad kids think that creativity demands eating the last 10 D&AD annuals and spewing forensic facts about who won what for typography or platinum content really matters: that both being difficult and using the comedic sums of money that we’re paid to buy some more toys to throw out of our pram.

Like we really do exist in some rarified existence with the answer to anything bar selling 100 more txts and minutes packages and 2 million more 7 blade razors with pointless emollient strips.

Have we ever considered the beauty and commitment that it requires to deliver a Caravaggio into the world? That we might consider for even a moment what the exceptional requires of us beggars belief.

That I have seen the most average of creative thinkers claim some primary space in the world based upon the mediocrity of what spews from them troubles me to my core.

Their only reason for existence is that they feed the creatively inert business ambitions of the corporate gristle that pays their bills. That it should succor their self-belief is a weak and ultimately nihilistic pursuit and an exercise in self obsessions.

The creative people that I value in my life are indeed the butcher the baker the candlestick maker. The real creators in this world we live in.

And I add to them the performance artists that make me stop, heart racing, befuddled and illuminated by their capture of the human condition.

I also add those that disassemble the scientific condition of our existence. Creating new intellects and formulae for understanding.

And I feel it is time to call it on the idiots and the fakes. Lets hear it for the true creators and let the rest go to overpaid hell.

If you ever walk into a room with a budget in your pocket for creativity and purchase some distant echo of what purports to be it, please call it as so.

How many more times do we need to sit in a room and listen to a commercial creative play a youtube clip, show an artists work, stream a song, or catwalk the work of a designer far, far greater than they and be told ‘it’ll be something like that’ and asked to pay top dollar for it?

I say go to the source and buy it pure.

If you need this fix to drive your business or your ambition forwards, die on the needle of purity or stop pretending.

And if you are some Byron obsessed creative with your self-destructive, insecure (but strangely enough never ultimately critical) tooting and gacking crutch, or your strategic side kick who believes that you have a god given right to be heard in your creative mewling, be true and be real and die on the commercial sword of what you suggest.

Never expect someone to expend hundreds of thousands of pounds on something you barely believe in yourself beyond what It might bring to your own personal glory.

If glory and recognition is what you seek there are a myriad collection of garrets and studios in lost forsaken places populated by people earning nothing fighting for their art.

If that is what you seek stand up and next to them and take what comes.

But if you are the person who endeavours to commercialise the creative process, remember, just prior to your next tantrum, that in greater footsteps than yours you travel, be respectful, and endeavour to be as close to the pure genius of them as your pay check allows.

Remember greater creative spirits than you die with a needle in their arm. God help them and god thank them for the price they pay for what you imitate in a room somewhere and for which you will never ultimately pay the price.

If this makes me a Wyndham Lewis, damning my own ‘creative’ class, I’m OK with that. Why? Because they’re fine. They are Ok in their tower, never really having as their only option a mine shaft, a production manufacturing line that steals their life, a trawler boat that goads their nerve and heart, or the banality and drudge of Till 3 on the check out at 4pm on a wet wednesday. 

The Needle and The Damage Is Done. 

 

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