Earned Creative, Revisited

This was based off a talk by the same name by Tom Beckman, the Global Head of Creative for Weber Shandwick.

Transcript below

There’s not that many instances in life that would force you into a complete lockdown, but I guess that’s worldwide pandemics for you. So much time in the same place with the same people. You learn a lot about yourself, your life, what matters to you. For example, I learned that I hate my flatmates.

Some people, apparently, have used this time to learn valuable things. They’ve stepped back and taken a look what’s changing, how they will change with it, or what needs to stay the same. All this, while the rest of us develop a 3pm-beer habit and cry in the shower. Cool, whatever, I’m happy for them.

I did however manage to watch a talk by Tom Beckman on earned creative, revisited. Which means I too have learned useful things in lockdown. Many things, all relevant to our work. I am no stranger to giving myself a good pat on the back, so you can imagine I’ve been having a field day.

Let me preface. I’m well versed in, like, two things: ranking crisp flavours from best to worst, and the Real Housewives of New York. You might notice the fundamentals of creativity, or even just advertising in general, aren’t on that list. But they would be on Tom’s. So quite frankly, it’s going to be borderline blasphemy how I sum up his wise words.

Alas, here I am. And on I type. And if someone could pass on my apologies to Tom, that’d be great.

So here we all are, in the business of creativity. You’d be a beautiful, naïve fool to think that everything happening in the world right now won’t affect or change the way we do that business. Tom looks at these changes from three ways in: The New Normal, The Old New Normal, and The Next Normal. You could be forgiven for wondering what the difference is? I mean I won’t forgive you, but it is a forgivable thing. Let’s discuss.

THE NEW NORMAL

What even is this new normal that everyone keeps talking about? It does seem like, at its essence, we’re being told to go back to our roots, to what it means to be human – care about one another, realise what’s truly important, call your grandparents. As someone who didn’t really grow up with grandparents, it would be very easy for me to sit on my high horse and be all, ‘yeah! When is the last time you called your grandparents?’ And because it is indeed very easy, I do it a lot. And that’s what the new normal is. It’s people like me, making you feel guilty for not being a better person.

For brands, it’s about the same be-more-human view – treat your employees well, refrain from big bonuses, help the helpers, be more about action rather than words. I don’t get to do any of these as much.

Basically, the new normal isn’t new, but instead it’s simply (in Tom’s words) ‘don’t be an asshole’. These are all things that people have expected, or hoped to expect, from brands anyway. In the current climate, there’s only so much marketing can actually do for companies. We’re not going to solve a global pandemic. We can help with education – reinforce messages that are already out there - but we’re not a vaccine.

 So, it’s more relevant to talk about the old new normal – and how the current situation will accelerate everything we’ve learned in the last 5 years.

THE OLD NEW NORMAL

 Politics can’t solve this alone. Nor can business, or culture, or tech. Even Beyoncé herself can’t solve this. 

Everything is blending into each other - brands acting like politicians and vice versa, pop culture changing behaviour – as we’ve seen in the last handful of years. Now that that’s happening to a greater extent, everything we know needs to adapt with it. Which includes our basic industry truths.

Radical simplicity to radical complexity.

Sure, things will always need to be clear and understandable, but campaigns themselves will be more complex. Radical complexity means the bar for our work is higher. We need to understand business, politics, culture, zeitgeist, technology - not just messaging.

Challenge someone to challenge something.

These are the classic butting-heads of Mercedes vs BMW, Apple vs Microsoft – it’s out the window. Straight in the bin. Now, we need to challenge something, because there are so many more important things at play. Here in the UK we see tea brands uniting on Twitter to stand up to racism. You don’t want to be less woke than Yorkshire Tea, you just don’t.

 Boycotting to buycotting.

I enjoy a good boycott, personally. I often do it out of spite, albeit spite from the fact that I couldn’t afford what I am boycotting in the first place. That still counts. But since purchase behaviour is moving slightly more towards buying what we need, instead of actively not purchasing a brand, we’re more conscious in choosing brands that we want to support. Boycotting to ‘buycotting’.

The best example that shows both of this is Nike’s partnership with Kaepernick. There was a group of people, loud people, people that tend to type in all caps, that weren’t happy. There were photos and Tweets riddled with oh my god so many typos showing them burning their Nike footwear. But they didn’t react. Because these weren’t coming from anyone under, say, 30. Or anyone outside of America. The brand knows who is wearing their shoes – but more importantly, they know who is making them part of street culture. So, the boycotting inadvertently led to even more buycotting.  

Make it stick to make it stick and make it count.

This has always been the job, and will always be the job, to make things stick. It’s just now, it’s not enough.

Nobody has money to spend anymore. And yet I still go out and get an £8 sandwich every day. Why do I do this? I usually don’t even finish it. And prosciutto certainly does not have a starring role in the everyday food pyramid. But I digress.

 If you invest in advertising, or sandwiches I suppose, it better count. Because at the end of the day, it needs to move products. Which I guess, in sandwich terms, means it needs to fill me up until dinner time.

Agencies need put the priority back on taking responsibility for effectiveness. Also, they really need to teach their creatives about personal finance.

Basically, everything we thought we knew is changing. We’re now in a situation where the global economy is collapsing because people are only buying what they actually need. I know, I didn’t say this was going to be an article full of fun facts. Our industry has always created need and invented problems, so that we could always make up a solution. Now we have real problems – recession, society’s malaise, the fact that I can only seem to find British Marmite and not the Kiwi version - so we need real solutions.

 
THE NEXT NORMAL

If the ‘new normal’ isn’t so new, and the ‘old new normal’ is just slight shifts in what we’ve learned the last five years, what exactly is the ‘next normal’? Maybe it could be called the ‘newer new normal’? Maybe not. That’s just more confusing. Next normal is probably better. Kudos.

Back to my question: what is the next normal?

As far back as I can remember, which is concerningly not very far at all, we’ve cared about the climate crisis. We’ve expected brands to do something about it. To an extent, they have. Not quick enough for anyone’s liking, but nonetheless. Has COVID-19 thrown a bit of a spanner in the works on this development? Will it change our priorities?

Will we care less about the environment, and more about our environment? Less Greta, more nurses. We want to shop at the local store, not help out the big brands. It’s easy to see why; these problems are happening, in the wise words of Fatboy Slim, right here, right now. The climate crisis is imminent, sure. But it’s not today. We can’t afford to pay more for reusable, recyclable, responsible, if we’re in a recession.

Now I’ve got Fatboy Slim stuck in my head. That’s the last thing I needed today.

Another potential shift has to do with the post-truth era we’re living in. We’ve seen a death of journalism, rise of influencers, death of science, rise of alternative facts, death of democracy, rise of populism. But a global pandemic is putting science back into the limelight again – at least, in some countries. An indication that we’re moving away from post-truth is the fact that traditional media is on the up, with 40,000 new subscriptions to The Time and BBC viewership up 53%. Are we shifting into a post-fake era? We can hope. To be honest, I get all my news from The Onion anyway, so I never really noticed the change.

The last projection is to do with capitalism. Now if I understood The Big Short correctly, and I certainly did not, then capitalism is the villain. We’re probably going to see a shift to capitalism being the victim.

I suppose since the ‘08 recession, ah those were the days, the reports were always about how rich men had created this problem. But this is a worldwide pandemic, so it’s largely out of our hands. The difference is we now want to save and help local businesses, and at the same time, we’re seeing more political action to save big businesses.

These are just three shifts that make up the ‘next normal’, and a handful that make up the ‘old new normal’. I’d recommend watching the talk if you want some actual substance to them all, rather than my ‘explain it like I’m 5’ version. Overall, while it might sound like everything’s changing, when it comes to our work, think of it as a revisit, not a complete rehaul.

It actually kind of reminds me of one of my favourite Mitch Hedberg jokes. “I saw a commercial on late night TV, it said, "Forget everything you know about slipcovers." So I did. And it was a load off my mind. Then the commercial tried to sell me slipcovers, and I didn't know what the hell they were.”

It’s not new, it’s getting back to basics. It’s not forget what you know, it’s adapt what you know. It’s still a slipcover, it’s just a sustainable, locally made, and morally sound slipcover.