By Ernie Schenck
For a very long time, a lot of us believed we knew what made great advertising. We knew it because giants like George Lois, Jeff Goodby and David Droga were making it every day. Ideas were God. Concepts were king. We knew what they looked like. We knew what they felt like. And that was that.
Now, you’re an over-30 creative director and a millennial creative team walks into your office and lays out an idea that challenges all of it. What do you do?
You might remember truth, the anti-smoking campaign created by Arnold Worldwide and Crispin Porter + Bogusky for the American Legacy Foundation. Where previous campaigns had tried to scare us all into giving up smoking, truth took a different approach by telling us to look at how these big tobacco companies are exploiting us. With radical stunts like laying out hundreds of body bags in front of a tobacco company’s office building and ballsy spots comparing cigarettes to popsicles laced with shards of glass, the campaign was huge. The idea of going full frontal against Big Tobacco was wickedly disruptive and, by most accounts, pretty effective.
We understood the power of the truth campaign. We could feel it. We were on the same creative frequency. If you were one of the CDs who worked on truth, I’m pretty sure you could organically connect with the many ideas brought to your desk. Why? Because the work had a focused, singular concept that we, as a generation of creatives accustomed to the sensibilities of the Bill Bernbachs and the Lee Clows and the Dan Wiedens of the world, could get our heads around.
American Legacy is still around; truth is still around. But, oh, how things have changed. Gone are the body bags strewn about the streets. In their place, a new music video with the prerequisite microsite. It’s called “Left Swipe Dat.” By now you might have seen it. It’s based on Tinder. You know, the dating app that has you swipe right if you like a potential hookup and swipe left if you’re, like, ewww. If you haven’t seen it, go check it out on YouTube, then get yourself back here, and we’ll talk.
So here’s the question I recently put out there on my Facebook page. Assuming you’re an over-30 creative director and one of your 20-something teams trotted out an idea like Left Swipe Dat, how exactly would you judge it? If you’re like a lot of the CDs around the country whom I spoke with, your first-blush reaction might be a negative one. Not exactly the kind of raw, punch-you-in-the-face power we’re used to seeing in PSAs. Not by a long shot.
So how do you respond to an idea like that? On the one hand, you don’t want to green-light a bad idea just to prove how cool and in touch you are. On the other hand, you don’t want to look like you have one foot in a bed at the Home for Clueless, Out-of-Touch Creatives.
Droga5 CCO Ted Royer has this approach: “My points of reference have been steadily sliding out of relevance with my mostly millennial creative department. Some of them hadn’t even seen Star Wars. Star Wars! So I throw out vague words and wait for someone else to assign a cultural point to it. Where once I might have said Brady Bunch, I now say ‘wholesome and cheesy’ and wait for someone else to chime in with a Full House or Saved by the Bell, to which I go, ‘Yes, exactly!’ and pretend I’m still in touch for a few more years.”
Former Mullen CCO Edward Boches now teaches advertising at Boston University and might know more about millennials than anyone else in advertising. “I’m not sure a lot of 40- or 50-year-old CDs use Tinder. But they need to if they are to understand how it works and what it feels like to get swiped right and meet up. If you’re a CD today in an ad or digital agency and have no reference point for social apps like Tinder or for YouTube stars and how they emerge, develop followings and get big, you have no right to be a CD.”
In the end, it’s a generational thing. Like everything else, we’re staunch believers in what we’re comfortable with, what we came to know as great advertising. But advertising can mutate. It can morph into something new. And unless you’re willing to push yourself into a corner of our culture that you know little to nothing about, as Edward Boches says, then you have little to no chance of recognizing it when the change ultimately comes.
Tinder, anyone? ca
Now, you’re an over-30 creative director and a millennial creative team walks into your office and lays out an idea that challenges all of it. What do you do?
You might remember truth, the anti-smoking campaign created by Arnold Worldwide and Crispin Porter + Bogusky for the American Legacy Foundation. Where previous campaigns had tried to scare us all into giving up smoking, truth took a different approach by telling us to look at how these big tobacco companies are exploiting us. With radical stunts like laying out hundreds of body bags in front of a tobacco company’s office building and ballsy spots comparing cigarettes to popsicles laced with shards of glass, the campaign was huge. The idea of going full frontal against Big Tobacco was wickedly disruptive and, by most accounts, pretty effective.
We understood the power of the truth campaign. We could feel it. We were on the same creative frequency. If you were one of the CDs who worked on truth, I’m pretty sure you could organically connect with the many ideas brought to your desk. Why? Because the work had a focused, singular concept that we, as a generation of creatives accustomed to the sensibilities of the Bill Bernbachs and the Lee Clows and the Dan Wiedens of the world, could get our heads around.
American Legacy is still around; truth is still around. But, oh, how things have changed. Gone are the body bags strewn about the streets. In their place, a new music video with the prerequisite microsite. It’s called “Left Swipe Dat.” By now you might have seen it. It’s based on Tinder. You know, the dating app that has you swipe right if you like a potential hookup and swipe left if you’re, like, ewww. If you haven’t seen it, go check it out on YouTube, then get yourself back here, and we’ll talk.
So here’s the question I recently put out there on my Facebook page. Assuming you’re an over-30 creative director and one of your 20-something teams trotted out an idea like Left Swipe Dat, how exactly would you judge it? If you’re like a lot of the CDs around the country whom I spoke with, your first-blush reaction might be a negative one. Not exactly the kind of raw, punch-you-in-the-face power we’re used to seeing in PSAs. Not by a long shot.
So how do you respond to an idea like that? On the one hand, you don’t want to green-light a bad idea just to prove how cool and in touch you are. On the other hand, you don’t want to look like you have one foot in a bed at the Home for Clueless, Out-of-Touch Creatives.
Droga5 CCO Ted Royer has this approach: “My points of reference have been steadily sliding out of relevance with my mostly millennial creative department. Some of them hadn’t even seen Star Wars. Star Wars! So I throw out vague words and wait for someone else to assign a cultural point to it. Where once I might have said Brady Bunch, I now say ‘wholesome and cheesy’ and wait for someone else to chime in with a Full House or Saved by the Bell, to which I go, ‘Yes, exactly!’ and pretend I’m still in touch for a few more years.”
Former Mullen CCO Edward Boches now teaches advertising at Boston University and might know more about millennials than anyone else in advertising. “I’m not sure a lot of 40- or 50-year-old CDs use Tinder. But they need to if they are to understand how it works and what it feels like to get swiped right and meet up. If you’re a CD today in an ad or digital agency and have no reference point for social apps like Tinder or for YouTube stars and how they emerge, develop followings and get big, you have no right to be a CD.”
In the end, it’s a generational thing. Like everything else, we’re staunch believers in what we’re comfortable with, what we came to know as great advertising. But advertising can mutate. It can morph into something new. And unless you’re willing to push yourself into a corner of our culture that you know little to nothing about, as Edward Boches says, then you have little to no chance of recognizing it when the change ultimately comes.
Tinder, anyone? ca
Ernie Schenck (ernieschenckcreative.prosite.com) is a freelance writer, a creative director and a regular contributor to CA’s Advertising column. An Emmy finalist, three-time Kelley nominee and a perennial award winner—the One Show, Clios, D&AD, Emmys and Cannes—Schenck worked on campaigns for some of the most prestigious brands in the world in his roles at Hill Holliday/Boston, Leonard Monahan Saabye and Pagano Schenck & Kay. He lives with his wife and daughter in Jamestown, Rhode Island.
