New World Whine

I mentioned in my last post that I was reading Steve Harrison’s How to Do Better Creative Work. Well I have just finished it and I owe him a "virtual" apology as a few months ago I was talking to someone about the book. My friend had been to the book launch and it was the same day I had a read an extract in Campaign. I can’t remember exactly why I thought this but I had got the impression from the extract that Steve was stuck in a groove and the world had slightly moved on from this viewpoint. Well, I misrepresented him in that conversation and I should set the record straight.

I had intended to read it after that but I intend to do a lot of things. It was only because I pass by a new bookshop called Clerkenwell Tales on my daily walk to work and one day I noticed his book in the window display that I resolved to buy it. The first thing I noticed about it as someone who has had arguments with publishers about pricing of my own books that it was being sold at just under £15. This is definitely a plus point – nobody wants to pay £30-£35 for a book of this type. I also liked that it was well designed inside. Anyway it was a good read, offered real insight and a good breadth of case studies. I would recommend it to anyone engaging with the creative process. Don’t get me wrong, though. I did not always agree with his way of going about things but you don’t get to be one of the most awarded creative directors in the business by appealing to everyone all the time.

The reason why I mention it here again is that I had a lot of sympathy with his concluding chapter in which he encouraged people not to throw out the communications rulebook with what currently seems to be a new age in communications. I am no doubt misrepresenting him again because what I call the rulebook he would probably describe as the sum of valuable learnings gained along the way since the communications industry started to mature.

I think back to April this year when the IPA Excellence Diploma essays were published and the likes of Alex Dunsdon from M&C and Matt Sadler at Euro RSCG got us to think about the consumer communications landscape in a different way. I was genuinely excited about having the chance - through those essays - to think a bit differently about customers, communications and how agencies will need to gear themselves differently around these challenges.

You might think that some of the IPA essays were in direct conflict with what Steve is promoting. Well I am not so sure. There is no doubt that the consumers’ world is changing but we need to look for new approaches through the filter of some of what has gone on before. Our emotions and behaviours have not totally changed – they just have a new contemporary context. Steve’s heroes of Ogilvy and Bernbach did not have our historical perspective. They used their intellectual curiosity, rigour and instinct to master their particular moment. We need to do the same for ours by embracing the new but not throwing out all the old - something we could easily do just because we don’t have the imagination to update its guiding principles to cater for a new challenge.

What that means is that we have to take a look at a number of areas. For example, how does the sacred cow of the brand idea work in this new context? As I am currently in danger of creating a "supersize" posting, this is something I am going to return to in a subsequent blog.