Serengeti The migration of creative game.

A Maurs ADictive paper

Two ECDs are reviewing campaign work. First they analyzed the usual art and copy craft. Then they moved to discussing brand attributes, customer aspirations and engagement.

What’s extraordinary is the fact that both of these ECDs area deft programmers capable of writing and compiling computer programs at will.

This is the cognitive migration of capabilities that today’s agency craves if it must survive the new, digital wilderness

Like the seasonal migration of Gnus and Wildebeests, the compulsion to migrate for survival is not only instinctive, but also intuitive.

Darwinism is seemingly evolving. There’s no assurance for the fittest, biggest or strongest.

Leave or stay, one fact is certain…

the cognitive acquisition of new skills, the mastery of art and science to achieve new creativity is prerequisite to survival.

Thus, by creative migration, we do not simply refer to the exodus of talent in search of greater relevance but more significantly, the deliberate mental or systematic drift towards acquiring renewed relevance.

While advertising is to the creative industry what a bull elephant is to the thriving jungle…

..today’s concrete jungle demands a competence driven by speed and velocity over size and enormity.

The model for creative talent is changing.

An agency either has the right 21st-century talent, or It doesn’t.

Technology comes, technology evolves but the art of story telling is forever timeless.

Employees either understand digital, or they are actively pretending that they do

Age of the creative marketer is upon us.

The advertising industry is in transition.

Spotlight has shifted from what we know… to what we need to know.

Prototype gets more attention than the brief.

Big-idea people are no longer the singular hot

commodity

Employees who understand platforms,

media, technology, trends, data, and “how to generate and make

ideas” are the new model for talent.

Statisticians, mathematicians and computer scientists with commercial intuition to

develop online trading platforms;

Network engineers and behavioural scientists to create and develop new insights, management systems and

user experience models to link communications

economists and econometricians with an interest in the communications mix to demonstrate the business impact of

alternative strategies and tactics

biologists, psychologists and sociologists with an interest in human behaviour to develop new models of

segmentation and channel navigation

physicists, philosophers and linguists with an interest in developing ways of doing

business that are socially and commercially viable ways of doing business

Today’s Agency Creative Force. To mention a few

Creativity is multicolored “A colour is more than just a colour when it helps a brand stay in tune with it’s time”

Jon Coen for Crayola

The same goes for talents, agencies, more so marketers. While monochromatic prowess may help you thrive in your core habitat, everything changes, even your environment.

Psychedelic handiness are the new “hands and heads” in today’s kaleidoscopic world.

“Strong Understanding of Digital and Social Media, Knack for Versatility, Solid Storytelling Abilities and a Good Heart”

Advertising Age.

What creative COOs look out for in talents?

“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn. ”

Alvin Toffler

Creativity is multicolored

With the advent of Social technology, the advertising world and by extension the global creative industry has had to evolve it’s creative process model, giving credence to talents with “diagonal thinking” set of skills that the prevailing competitive landscape demands.

Evolve or Die Devolving.

The new rules for attracting and retaining talent.

Understanding technology.

Embracing new talent

Making things, not just imagining.

Evolving traditional agency practices.

Leveraging new ways of working.

It’s about redefining 21st-century agencies’ competitive advantage.

Evolving is learning.

Few traditional career tactics train us for an era where the most important skill is the ability to acquire new skills.

Fast Company.

Age of the Creative marketer

Survival Of the most co-creative.

“If Mad Men advertising hotshot Don Draper was operating on Madison Avenue today, he would find competition coming from more than just other ad firms.”

Sarah Jane Gilbert, Harvard Business School.

All eyes on the consumer.

A recent study by Harvard Business School professor emeritus Alvin J. Silk and colleagues finds that more companies than previously thought are developing in-house advertising capabilities, especially in technology-oriented and creative industries.

Clients are flexing newly discovered creativity and innovation muscles–muscles encouraged by the new digital and social worlds and focused on driving their businesses forward.

They are having fun and becoming very good at it. They are building direct relationships with the best media and technology companies.

More importantly, clients are grooming and building in-house creative units. An emerging business model called “Vertical Integration” precipitated by structural changes in the advertising industry.

Convergence. A new haven.

Survival for today's Advertising Agencies lie in convergence marketing or confluence business model, a corporate culture where things merge or flow together, where the obsolete gets sloughed off and strengths naturally evolve as the core becomes enhanced. Confluence culture is multidisciplinary, nimble, and creative

Kim Bartel Sheehan, Deborah K. Morrison, (university of Oregon) Journal of Interactive Advertising.

•  New emphasis on account planning within the agency process •  Forming and reforming of media planning and media buying systems •  The explosion of digital media prompts agencies to evolve and change platforms •  Agencies buy small digital firms or create add-on agency units to think digitally for clients.

Confluence culture thus suggests that agencies as units and the advertising profession as a whole face numerous challenges to their traditional ways of operation as they grow and morph and react to cultural shifts, particularly when it comes to creativity and ideas.

Characteristics of Talent Intensive Organisations

•  Their principal assets (talents) do not appear on the balance sheet

•  These key assets are mobile. Despite contract, they can simply walk away

•  Rely particularly on creativity and imagination

•  The success criteria for talent intensive organisations stretch beyond the accountant’s bottom line. Winning a Nobel prize, an Oscar, a fashion design award or the FA cup may weigh more than profit or cash flow does

Philip Sadler Finding and Keeping Top Talent Business, the Ultimate Resource, (2006)

Case review: Google 5.

Case Study: Google 5.

•  Google Creative Lab calls for gifted students from Ad & design Schools

•  The original plan consists of a designer, art director, writer, a film maker & a programmer

•  Out of 400, 5 multi-dexterous students were picked for the year long program

•  Google 5 are immersed in live projects under intense, enabling environment

•  After 1 year, The 5 are released as catalysts into the mainstream advertising industry to change the system from the inside.

•  The 5 achieved huge successes with hits like “Persian Love” & “Super Bowl;”

•  After a year, a fresh breed of Google 5 emerges after the original’s tenure.

The Google 5 program objective/ vision.

Even if the Nobel Prize remains elusive, the Lab can successfully claim to be creating a new template for the “creative process” as much as it's creating work to burnish the Google brand.

“The 5 initiative was motivated by two things namely getting fresh, awesome talent in the Creative Lab," and "fueling the ecosystem of the industry.”

Robert Wong Executive Creative Director Google

Google 5 Creative process.

Our job is to manage and steward the brand, find new ways to communicate the company's innovations, intentions and ideals, and do work of which we can all be proud. We want people ambitious and crazy enough to think we can actually change the world…”

Robert Wong Executive Creative Director Google

…the shorter version: "Do epic shit”

End

twitter handle: @mauricechike - LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/mauriceugwonoh

Maurice Ugwonoh is a creative writer with a passion for strategy, brands and content development.