In the post-digital age of multi-dialogue, multi-channel, multi-platform confusion, our profession has to reassess the nature of its driving force. Creativity, the power to turn “what if” in “what is” has to adapt in order to survive.

1. Every Age Gets the Creativity it Deserves.
In the post-digital age of multi-dialogue, multi-channel, multi-platform
confusion, our profession has to reassess the nature of its driving force.
Creativity, the power to turn “what if” in “what is” has to adapt in order to
survive. We face a reality today where our “creativity” is being extended but
not as much as its structural domain. The challenge and the responsibility of
today’s communicators are to extend the nature of “creativity”, rather than
merely its application. To put it simply, if every era gets the creativity that it
deserves, what kind of creativity does our age deserve?
Perhaps because the fashions and tactics that creatives use change so
quickly, we are left with the impression that “creativity” changes every year.
Yet if we stand back and look at the history of modern advertising (‘modern’
being defined, roughly, as the period since the mid-50s), we can see that it
has basically gone through three stages. Each stage was born out of the
cultural and economic environment of its time, but each has matured into a
school that has complemented, rather than replaced, its predecessors. Of
course, creatives will always argue that their ideas are forged through the
intersection of all of these creative schools, but in reality each idea tends to
have its center of gravity in only one.
Let’s look at the evolution of creativity and argue why a new kind appears to
be emerging.
The “Product-led” Creativity
The post-war economic boom (1950s) mainly in the United States saw a
proliferation of consumer goods and the sudden increase in choice meant
that ad guys had to work hard to differentiate brands one from another. The
need for differentiation also put pressure on manufacturers to innovate,
product innovations had to be communicated and that gave birth to the
school of “Product” Creativity. The high priests of this era were vastly
different in terms of style but in absolute agreement in terms of subject. At
one extreme David Ogilvy aspired to tame creativity according to his rules
and observations. Ogilvy’s polar opposite was Bill Bernbach, founder of the
“revolution” who wanted creativity to be free, a product only of intuition. Yet
despite this fundamental difference, the two agreed completely that the
subject of creativity should start and end with the product. Bernbach’s
maxim for creativity could have come from Ogilvy, “The magic is in the
product.” and Ogilvy’s advice could have come from Bernbach, “You ‘ve got
to believe in the product”. Bring in mind, or Google, ads like Volkswagen’s
“Lemon” or Rolls Royce’s “Clock” and you will see what I mean. The
“Product” creativity is still very much alive and well, and many ads fall into
some variation of this category.
The “Consumer-led” Creativity
Theodore Levitt introduced the now accepted notion that business needed to

2. be focused on the consumer, not the business, in his seminal article
“Marketing Myopia”. Even though Levitt published his article in 1960, its full
impact on advertising was not to be felt for more than a decade (1970s). The
most important was the rise of the marketing department in both size and
prestige. One of the main tools that these newly empowered marketing
departments used was market research, particularly in the development of
advertising. The most important discovery that the researchers made was
that consumers’ motives for purchasing were a lot less rational and a lot
more emotional than had been previously thought. These discoveries
resulted in a shift in creative emphasis, from what the product did to how the
brand made you feel. There was a general realization that while the product
could be imitated the brand could not, so portraying the consumers’ feelings
towards the brand was the key. One of the most famous early consumer
based ads was Coca-Cola’s ‘Hilltop’ commercial of 1971. The story of its
creation is revealing. Bill Backer, of McCann Erickson, was delayed for a
flight and saw his fellow passengers together drinking Cokes. His epiphany
was that Coca-Cola was about human relationships, not really about the
product at all.
The “Competition-led” Creativity
In the 1980s a third school of creativity emerged. This new school was
created, out of the limitations of “Consumer-led” creativity, as an answer to
consumer cynicism and media clutter. Consumers became more
sophisticated, routinely used marketing jargon in focus groups and were
generally skeptical of advertisers’ claims. They had also become adept at
mentally screening out these messages that threatened to overwhelm them.“
Positioning” as it was articulated by Reis and Trout became the marketing
mantra of the 80s. The basic idea was that brand building did not work in a
vacuum, but had to take into account what competition both direct and
indirect has planted in the consumer’s mind. Positioning seemed like an
answer to the new problems of clutter and cynicism. Translated into
advertising terms, this put a huge premium on being different. What
characterized this school was the defiant way in which the advertising
disrupted the conventions that form each market category. Ads that belong
in this school have surprise as their most salient feature. The ad that created
and defined this school is Apple’s epic “1984”. The zenith of this school
arrived with the dot.com revolution of the late 1990s, when hundreds of new
and often directly competitive brands where launched overnight.
There is no doubt that the 3 schools are still alive in the 21st century and that
creatives are chasing the holy grail of an idea that is forged through the
intersection of the 3. And on rare occasions they find it. The Apple “I am a
Mac” is a good example of a campaign that manages to combine the merits
of the 3 schools. But things have changed. As before, it will take some time
for the changes to take full effect, but the signs are here.

3. What’s happens now?
It is an undeniable fact: The digital revolution combined with the global
economic crisis has created globally a greater level of consciousness across
all ages and genders. We can’t go back. We have heightened our perception;
we are awake, alert, aware, —whether we like it or not.
Consumers are still an audience, but they aren't necessarily listening to you.
They're listening to each other talk about you. The digital revolution is
dramatically changing the way consumers shop and gather information on
products and services. The implications for marketers are profound, as
consumers increasingly research products, compare prices, tap into the
opinions of other users, and solicit advice from friends at all points in the
shopping process (sometimes even while shopping at a brick-and-mortar
store). New sources of trusted information are emerging as more and more
user-generated content makes its way onto the Web, and the conversations
among consumers and companies are shifting from one-way to
multidirectional, including direct exchanges among consumers. Social
networking sites are convening communities of consumer advocates and
replacing traditional information sources. Consumers now know more,
communicate more and can be persuaded less. The information abundance
is reversing the communication order and now everybody is both a sender
and a receiver. The strong power of persuasion has given its place to the
benevolent power of advocacy.
In many countries, anxiety about the future is approaching or surpassing
levels seen only in 2009, at the height of the downturn. The economy may
indeed be coming back to life in many affected markets, but it doesn’t feel
that way to many consumers in Europe, India, and China, where anxiety has
risen. No doubt the crisis in Japan, economic turmoil in Greece, Ireland,
Portugal, Spain, Italy and unrest in the Middle East have taken a toll on
consumers’ peace of mind. In some regions, unemployment remains
stubbornly high, real estate markets are expected to fall further, and many of
the factors that contributed to the financial crisis of 2008 are still very much
in place. As a result, in the U.S. for example, the proportion of survey
participants1 who said they have been personally affected by the downturn
increased 8 percentage points (from 49 percent in 2010 to 57 percent this
year). Without easy access to credit and with depressed property values
bringing a diminished sense of wealth, consumers in the U.S., Spain, and the
U.K. are reluctant to spend as they once did. The recent economic downturn
catalyzed (and, in some cases, accelerated) a shift in what matters most to
consumers. These changes are continuing to have an effect on how
consumers think about spending and saving. Despite increasing economic
stability in some key markets over the past year, the world is experiencing
heightened levels of uncertainty stemming from a torrent of political unrest,
natural disasters, corporate scandals, and product scares. A new consumer
consciousness is being forged, the choices we are making are definitely
1
BCG Consumer Sentiment 2011 – “Navigating the New Consumer Realities”

4. more deliberate, but the exact decisions we make are personal, context-
dependent, and relative to the day or the state of our lives and mindsets at
any given moment.
From Divide and Conquer to Unite and Prosper.
Marketing executives often look to books written by military strategists when it
comes to describing how to win in the marketplace. All these war metaphors
taught us to launch campaigns, position our brands and gain territories in
consumer’s mind. The whole marketing paradigm is based on an “either-or”
mentality. In these cautionary times, fueled by a weakened global economy,
political uncertainty and technological complexity dividing the world into
friends and foes seems natural. As budgets “right-size” and new product
launches decrease, taking sides and saying that you will do this “OR” that,
may feel safer but it is actually a more dangerous time to do it.
In an era of growing consumer expectations, scrutiny, and skepticism of “
green-washing”, joining up marketing and sustainability makes sense so that
the overall strategy can be more efficiently communicated and developed,
claims Unilever’s CMO, Keith Weed. Adding such dimensions to marketing
requires a new way of “joined-up thinking”; where all communications,
whether marketing or editorially based, are driven by the same motivations of
cultural understanding and transparency.
If we examine which ideas managed to attract the many not the few, we will
see that it was the ideas that managed to unite instead of divide. It was the
ideas that refused to be trapped by the tyranny of the “OR” and submitted
themselves to the genius of “AND”. The world’s greatest brands are built on
those premises. In a reflective moment Steve Jobs, after the launch of the
iPad, mentioned Apple's DNA. He said:
"Technology alone is not enough. It's technology married with the liberal arts,
married with the humanities that yields the results that makes our hearts
sing."
The celebration of those “odd weddings” is essential despite the difficult
environment in which we are operating, or rather, because of it. A stagnant
economy won't grow again with a chorus of naysayers in the background. It's
time to lean into the storm and show how and why our ideas -- and our ability
to execute them -- matter more than ever. It will take some ingenuity and
fortitude to create and maintain an “AND” culture when nearly every headline
tells us to hunker down. Today, more than ever, in a fragmented world where
everyone is seeking signposts, we need big central ideas that serve as
bridges that connect the many not the few.
It is time not to divide and conquer but to unite and prosper.
Populist Creativity
In this age we can’t treat people as consumers anymore. Calling them
consumers assumes they are willing and able to consume, and we all know

5. that they aren’t. The world doesn’t work that way anymore. Commercial
communication does not follow the old sender – receiver model. We are not
broadcasting selling propositions to passive audiences. We inhabit a
marketing ecosystem demanding that we all listen to the conversations our
customers are engaged in, that we cede control in order to gain it. People
form an audience, and they're using your products, your brand names, your
iconography, your slogans, your trademarks, your designs, your goodwill, all
of it as if it belonged to them. Now that everybody has become a sender and
a receiver, we need to understand audience behavior, earn their attention
and invite them into our brand story. Commercial communication has
become a conversation and brands rather than orators have become
moderators. A speech is an oral (and visual) presentation by one directed to
a group. Conversations on the other hand, are the ideal form of
communication in some respects, since they allow participants with different
views on a topic to learn from each other. This crucible of our time gave birth
to another school of creativity and we at Lowe & Partners have coined a term
for it: Populist Creativity.
Populism, defined either as an ideology or a type of discourse, has taken left
wing and right wing definitions often associated with ‘demagogy’ and ‘catch-
all’ politics. In our case, the word “populist” is meant in its purest form, as
the kind of ideas that are intended to represent ordinary people's needs and
wishes2. Ideas that engage the many, not the few. Ideas that bridge the
2
Cambridge dictionary.

6. divide between high and popular culture, digital natives and digital
immigrants, the haves and the have-nots. Ideas that breed in hearts and
minds, not on product attributes, positioning charts or loyalty indices. This
kind of creativity doesn’t view consumers like consumers anymore. They are
fathers & mothers, brothers and lovers, tutors and pupils, neighbors &
citizens, trusting only what their families or closest friends say, and its
purpose is to get brands into that tight circle, and make sure they are trusted.
Populist creativity unravels codes, identity and myth making, and creates
cultural icons through brand movements. The best example yet of this new
school of Creativity is Volkswagen’s “The Force”. In the ad, upper-middle
class car drivers are viewed as fathers and the product attribute showed,
was ultra generic in the category but the ad made it in the inner circle of
trust. The ad became pop culture by tapping into popular culture. Star Wars
is one of the few cultural touchstones that nearly everyone in the world has a
relationship with. And the “Force” found a way to turn that into something
new and uniquely ownable to Volkswagen. The success was amazing. Before
airing on TV, “The Force” had over 13 million views on YouTube, was the
most shared Super Bowl commercial and experienced the highest pre-game
ad buzz on Twitter, with 2,800 tweets. After airing, VW was the #2 brand in
post-game buzz, and “Darth Vader commercial” was the top searched ad
and 4th highest Google search term. Three weeks and over 32 million views
later, it had over 24,000 comments, 86 posted copies, 73,400 tweets.
Creativity has always been a magnetic force uniting people; a force to
transform people’s behavior. A force to make good things happen.
May the force be with you.
Antonis Kocheilas
Managing Partner / Planning
Lowe & Partners
Mail: antonis.kocheilas@me.com