Let’s Bring Back Creativity in Advertising and Online Digital Display

There are a billion articles you can find online rife with advertising definitions. Of course, it’s super important to know your industry’s terminology. But sometimes, even for the blisteringly creative types, it’s all too easy to get wrapped up in deadlines, budgets, sales goals, and stakeholders. This, in turn, causes us to lose sight of the initial creation of the campaign. A campaign we had only moments ago so perfectly envisioned. Things get added, over-written, rewritten, crossed out, and diluted. And that’s, of course, a result of the life we signed up for as advertisers. But when we came across this article on creativity in adland, it struck a chord in our hearts.

Let Creativity Flourish

Laurence Green, an executive partner at MullenLowe London, discusses the importance of allowing creative ideas the opportunity to flourish and bloom on their own. Flourish without having to sustain the inevitable, and often immediate, addition, subtraction, and division that ad creatives often go through in order to sell.

“The best commercial communication […] always has creative integrity at its heart: the unmistakable whiff of a vision realized rather than negotiated into life. Its parents and sponsors have somehow resisted the siren call of adding things and may even have taken some out to honour the core creative intent.”

And if you ask us, the phrase “vision realised” is precisely where our ads and creatives should be coming from.

Is Online Digital Display Advertising an Over-Saturated Market?

A simple Google search on advertising will return articles that, among other things, talk about the over-saturation of the market and the increasing adoption rate of adblocker technology. And while some of that may be based on truth, we believe that to change this, we, as advertisers, need to change what we’re offering the world’s internet users. We need to push ourselves. We need to push our clients. And we need to push our fellow creatives to open their minds to out-of-the-box concepts.

It’s been the norm for advertisers to take up massive amounts of ad real estate. And muscle eyeballs with their messaging and retargeting placements. That worked for a while. But just as the advertising world has changed, so has the audience to which they speak. And that audience is dictating that the creative ad needs to change as well—which they have, to an extent.

Create a Personalized Creative Advertising Experience

We now have programmatic advertising. This makes it easier for us, as advertisers, to create a more cohesive, personalised ad experience. And we can do this across platforms and devices. It also allows us to display the right ad in the right place for the right person. And with the addition of dynamic creatives, we can offer even more personalised, pertinent information to each user in their different locations, catering to their various interests. But as Rob Gatto writes:

“[W] hat’s the use of better targeting if your arrow has no point?”

Touché, Rob.

Add value to Peoples’ Lives with Creativity in Advertising

The magic of creativity in advertising isn’t the technology behind it; that’s only part of it. The real magic is what we do with the medium we’re using and the format we choose to show it with.

Creative ad content that engages audiences across platforms, devices, and activities will create a brand relationship that transcends the digital landscape. It can and should fit the customer’s context, experiences, beliefs, and interests and the big one – add value to their life. 

Of course, all this is much easier said than done. And we know that championing the allowance of creativity to flourish in its own natural path isn’t feasible when you’ve got a board meeting at 3 pm making you sweat.

But allowing yourself, or your team of creatives to create with limitless abandon for a little while is one of the best guarantors of a brilliant, customer-driven, successful and creative ad we can think of.

Long live unabashed creativity!

Are you struggling with creativity in your advertising campaigns? Then contact TBM today. We are ready to help you get your digital display campaigns out the door!