A creative revolution is at hand!

In the latest issue of Creativity Magazine, Nick Law, CCO of R/GA, writes an interesting article about the future of advertising. Here are some excerpts.

"Storytellers will keep coming up with "big ideas" as they've always done, but instead of putting them on TV, they'll figure out a way to "extend" them on the Web."

"You can't divorce the message from the medium (or, in this age of portable personal screens, the medium from the audience). Each time the medium changes, our relationship to the message changes. And in case you haven't noticed, the medium has been changing a lot lately. This has, in turn, complicated advertising."

"The copywriter and art director should now be a part of a flat, flexible, and modular creative team that understands technology and how the customer relates to it."

And in the same issue, Iain Tait, Founding Member and Creative Planner for Poke, London, says:

"Digital anthropologists, people who really understand what cultural change is happening as a result of people adapting to ubiquitous digitalness-will help agencies stay ahead of the game."

My take:

Brands have been telling stories for decades. But something new is happening. The brand stories these days have to be conceptualized not only to the target audience, but to their medium of choice as well. What does this mean? It means the storyteller/copywriter needs to be locked in a room with a technology whiz where they can work on new and inventive ways to express the brand story. Not only that, but they have to create a story line that the customer can interact with. It's not enough to simply tell a entertaining, clever, or funny story anymore. The creative team of the next generation has to welcome the audience into the story through interactive elements, allowing them to be actual characters in the narrative, and at times even giving the them the storytelling pen so they can write their own story about the brands they love.