Phil Lynagh is regional managing director at Tag: MENA
“I was starting the new year by having a cheeky flick through the pages of a famous creative industry magazine recnetly while concentrating on concluding some pressing personal business, when I stumbled upon something quite worrying. No not that, it had to do with the magazine’s contents, namely the ads being presented for my delectation.
Most of them beautifully crafted but more than most without a semblance of an idea and the sheer volume of idea-less work is beginning to alarm me. By the way, this particular publication is a global salute to the best in our business, so it’s a global epidemic, and if the idea of the idea is endangered then we all looking in to the abyss.
I’ve always been a big fan of creative ideas that come to life on a billboard or a Post-it note for that matter. You show me the creative idea and I get it immediately. It should grab me by the short and curlies and slap me across the chops a little bit before making me react in a positive way with the brand advertised. I don’t believe that respect should be given to creative ‘thoughts’ that demand 60 seconds to explain them clearly, or assume that the audience is equipped with a 48-page planning brief. Similarly, if it takes a couple of sentences underneath the actual creative piece in a magazine to explain the idea, then I would surmise that it’s an unmitigated failure.
As the industry careers headlong into this new world of craft over substance and art above advertising, I was contemplating how clients will handle this shift in focus. Then it hit me, and it’s blindingly obvious and simple – like all good ideas should be. I imagine it will play out like this. The client looks at the expensive collage of ill-matched imagery and gloriously re-touched photography, he reads his disjointed impotent copy and searches in vain for his brand proposition amongst the visual cacophony. Finally, in a last gasp attempt to see his brand represented in some form, he will say sheepishly: “Can the logo be a bit bigger please?”