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The pandemic changed the way commercial creativity works. Suddenly, everyone was working remotely, dialling in via Teams or Zoom, and doing several things at the same time. More machine than creative craft.
That process had in the past involved a lot of non verbal communication. Meetings via computer chips didn’t.
And if you thought the pandemic was a smack down for creativity, the resulting hybrid working has its own set of unique issues for creative teams.
Scott Huebscher, executive creative director, VCCP: “For me, the pandemic started off as a blow to my personal creativity because like all of us -- it meant staying home and not getting out in the world.
"Not being exposed to fresh stimuli, not meeting with friends, not walking through the city, not being able to go and sit at a restaurant -- and a big one for me personally, not being able to escape all of these things and driving to the snowy mountains for fresh air and backcountry fly fishing.
“After the novelty of Zoom calls went away, the pandemic was initially brutal for my creative process. As a writer, the only thing worse than staring at a blank page is not being able to walk away from that blank page. And that's what the pandemic did. It forced me to look for other things to take my mind off the blank page. It made me look to new things for creative inputs -- as well as creative outputs.
“In a way, the pandemic just accelerated what was already well underway in the world. In a digital ecosystem and a digital marketing mindset, the scales are fast tipping away from the classic long-term brand-building disciplines to a colder, more measurable, short-term orientation.
“And there’s ever-increasing pressure on creativity to deliver more immediate commercial outcomes (traffic, lead generation, sales, sign-ups, etc). So, what has changed, or is changing, is that the central challenge for creatives is to build brands – and by this, I mean driving relevance, distinction, emotional connections, meaningfulness - in this context.
“Brand-building can no longer be seen as separate from these activities. Big, bold, emotive creative ideas need to start at the middle and bottom end of the funnel. And this is challenging.”
Mike Spirkovski, now former chief creative officer, Saatchi & Saatchi: “You have to get out there and talk to people and look through their eyes, get their reaction.”
And the pandemic has dampened this process, kept people inside, cramping style, closing pathways of understanding.
“I think the pandemic has impacted one thing on a mass scale, and that's culture,” says Spirkovski.
“As humans we're social creatures, we're meant to be together. Our senses all react to each other. We're designed to react to pheromones and moods and all sorts of stuff.
“And when we can't see and touch and smell each other, it's a problem because then we don't necessarily know what's going on. So we feel disconnected because we can't feel it.
“I think that's been the biggest struggle, which we as people have in this business, and everywhere, been impacted by it. And our culture has suffered because we've lost the banter, getting out there, in person anyway, and sniffing the cultural airways.”
Spirkovski struggled with the pandemic restrictions. Didn't creative people need to be in a room together, to help them and support them? “I didn't think it was possible to make great ideas working from home.”
But he was wrong. “I started seeing great work coming through the pipe and I was watching my team’s chitter-chattering. Normally they'd sit across from each other, and now they're doing the same thing, but on a screen. They adapted.
“The world of ideas hasn't stopped. They are in fact getting better and better. We've adapted to the challenges of production, as you can see from ads like LandCruiser. That was made right in the heart of the pandemic and shot in Victoria, even though we wanted to shoot it all around Australia.
“It was still made and made really, really well with the challenges that everyone faced. And that is just an indication how we can still make big pieces of communications and highly entertaining work from our local town or from even a screen. I've sat and watched productions happen in front of me on a split screen, on my computer from home. I've heard of directors directing from the UK or the US an ad in Australia, and it works. It's not perfect, but it works.”
Julian Schreiber and Tom Martin, partners and CCOs at Special Group Australia, have spent their careers working in cafes.
Tom Martin: “Even when we were creatives in an agency, we pretty much used to spend all our days in the city at a cafe in Melbourne called Journal (which I went back to the other day and the guy hugged me because we literally spent every day there for years).
“I don't think we've ever been in a position where we expected creatives to be sitting at their desk. We never had this thing where we thought, ‘Oh God, what's everyone doing now that we can't actually see them in the space?’
“We always did have that trust, but I do think a lot of big agencies will have a massive awakening … they realised that you can actually trust creatives.”
Julian Schreiber: “Something that we're all contending with is that it's really easy to be 100% present in real life or 100% on Zoom but it's really hard to have half, half where some people are on Zoom and some people are not on Zoom.
“That's really challenging because it's almost like you understand the ground rules of this style of communication right now. Because we're all like taking turns and we're all on screen and talking to each other.
“But if you have like six people who are in a room and then you have three people who are on Zoom, those six people are having a really engaged, dynamic conversation about creativity and you very quickly become a passenger on screen and it's really important to figure out.
“This is going to be the ongoing challenge that we are facing this year. I don't think we're going back to a world where everyone's in the same room.
“How do you make sure that you work out a level of communication and a level of clarity where everyone can participate? So you get the best result creatively.. Right now that's the bridge we're trying to cross … from being locked at home to being somewhat in the office and getting the best results.
“There are moments when we're in the half world where you almost go, ‘Why don't we just all open computers in front of us?’
Tom Martin: “Jules and I look at our calendar in the morning and work out where we're meant to be that day.
“If we're meant to be in LA and Melbourne most of the day, where our meetings are, it's inconvenient going to the office because we take up meeting rooms that other people need.
“Some days we just stay home because we're literally going to be in LA, Melbourne, Melbourne, LA, and Melbourne, Melbourne, Melbourne.
“It's probably been a lot harder for young creatives and more junior creatives because you have to have the confidence to stop a conversation and talk in a Zoom and you could be doing that in front of a lot of people.
“I do feel like a lot of younger creatives have probably struggled because they don't have the confidence to feel like, ‘Oh, everyone wants to hear my opinion on this thing.’
“It's very hard to mentor and it's very hard to make sure they play a contributing role in conversations on Zoom because they can just get a bit lost in the mix of faces and then the people with bigger personalities and the extroverts take over.”
Julian Schreiber: “Our industry is definitely built on the premise of people shadowing other people to learn. And I think that the COVID world has made that very hard. It's very hard to shadow people when you're in this removed from reality situation. I think that there's going to be a window of time where everyone has to step in and do some pretty hardcore mentoring to drag people back up.”
The creatives who are natural extroverts do better in an online world. They speak up and make sure they are heard.
Tom Martin: “But I do think there's a lot of more introverted creators and creators that are a bit more in their own head that probably did struggle with this world because you have to have the confidence to speak in this vacuum, which is not the easiest thing to do.”
Julian Schreiber: “Creativity has changed obviously in the last two years in the way it's operating. I think that probably the good side of it is that the same kind of thinking that went into coming up with all the creative solutions to the client problems and all that sort of stuff pretty quickly got turned to like, how do we actually still function to do creativity in the biz overall?
“Everyone started adapting and trying stuff and changing stuff and leaning on systems that were probably nice to have before, like Zoom, and making them just absolutely normal and working out things like remote versions of doing shoots and working out what all the protocols were for that. And everyone moved pretty quickly.
“Early on in the pandemic, it was accelerated by the fact that people didn't really know what was going to happen with their business.
“There was a moment where we were doing a pitch for Horticulture Australia, where we did a pitch, wrote the work and actually went into production and made the ad all in the space of three weeks. And that was only possible because everyone had figured out how to come up with ideas together on Zoom, do an entire pitch on Zoom, and then go and do production and actually shoot an ad on Zoom.”
Tom Martin: “I don't want to say this because you don't want to benefit anything to COVID, but the move to being online and the move to Zoom has actually helped our business quite a lot in the last two years.
“It allowed us to grow. It allowed us to move into other markets where we couldn't otherwise because we weren't there, but suddenly just moved online. We grew in Melbourne and we grew in LA.
“The struggle is that a lot of what we do is all based on the incidental conversations and chats and as a creative, you distract yourself and then you come to work, you come to ideas through distraction and chatting and interesting conversations. All that vanished.
“Creativity is actually maintaining relationships with each other. And how do you make sure that we have a relationship beyond just critiquing work all the time? That's the thing Jules and I have probably struggled with the most. We've spent two years where our only relationship with most creatives is just critiquing work.
“That's actually been quite a hard thing because usually you're having a lot of incidental conversation in the office and you get to critique work or you talk about work, but the last two years it's … present work, critique work, present work, critique work.
“I do think that's probably impacted the creative culture a lot. I think it's always been a fun culture, creativity and being a creative partner. I think a lot of that has probably gone in the last two years. I think it's become a lot harder for creatives.”
Matt Lawson and Adrian Mills at Deloitte Digital had to think up work arounds when producing commercials in lockdown.
In Best Cars in the Universe, they could only have one talent on set, so they created a lonely man on Mars, laughing at memes from earth, wishing he was there.
Matt Lawson: “When I'm thinking about ideas, it definitely doesn't feel like work. Everything else feels like work, but not sitting down thinking of ideas.”
Adrian Mills, a suit, tackles the business side with a creative eye: “There were two things that really came to mind during COVID. The major issue was learning, particularly for the young ones. They weren't around to absorb through osmosis how you manage just being a white collar or professional worker, let alone a creative in an advertising sense.
“That was one of the regrettable parts of COVID for anybody starting their career in particular. Hats off to those guys who really did come through. I was really proud of our grads.
“Secondly, I was really proud of the creative teams who were actually able to organise themselves. They had to work more independently than they had done in an agency setting with suits, creatives and other administration support.
“That isn't to say they're not capable of that. I was really impressed with our leaders, in particular, for stepping up and taking on those challenges, which we knew.
“And I think the fundamental challenge that we probably didn't even realise that we were going through, was when we actually came back and saw each other again.
“The feeling that we got from each other was that we'd forgotten the energy that we create and give to each other
“This was probably why we were so lethargic and tired all the time.”
Matt Lawson: “You need people and so do I. That's probably true of most creative people. We usually do things for an audience and when that audience is taken away and hidden even behind a screen, it drains the energy out of all rooms.
“You will think of better ideas when you're happy and people make you happy. Although we’ve had quite a prolific couple of years, it is much easier when you can intermittently see people.
“But there are benefits to being out of the office. And this was echoed by a few creatives. When I look at work that I'm proud of over my career, I go: Hammock, hammock, beach, fishing, walking to work, walking to work, walking to work, hammock. Hammock, hammock, hammock.
“It's rare that a breakthrough has been made in a cubicle or in an open-plan office. And I'm more just talking about the lone thinking, not group thinking.
“We had time to just be away from the office and think the best way we thought possible. That was liberating.
“We've got a more of a flexible, hybrid culture now. You don't have to go back into the office if you don't want to.
“It's up to us to try and understand how we think best. It's hard to institute formal guidelines for ideation … between these hours and they happen in this exact way.
“I think that sense of freedom will breed greater creativity. But, as Mills said, you miss the magic of just interacting with people and there's real energy that comes from that.
“There's also learning by osmosis from each other. There's a joy that brings great ideas. Fun as a fundamental for thinking of good ideas is so important. At the very least, if you haven't thought of anything, at least you've had fun.
“The last two years has shown that we can trust people and we can trust creatives. A lot of cotton wool was wrapped around creatives and they weren't treated like the mature professional, business people.
“The pandemic showed that, left to their own devices, people will not only do the right thing, but the great thing.”
Adrian Mills: “As an MD, I used to think: ‘Oh, these people who want away from home. They're the cunning ones.’
“But when everybody is out there, and in the same situation, they rise above expectations. There's a real maturity and pride in the output when it's firstly under duress, and then it's, secondly, under faith.”
Independent creative Adrian Elton: “As ‘story whisperers’ we advertising folk have this sweet little suite of artistic and creative skills that we routinely draw upon to express our pantheon of ideas.
“So we make beautiful things. Provocative things. Hilarious things. And occasionally tasteless or puerile things.
“And while we often make things for our own amusement or pleasure, in a bid to put schnitzel on the table and mead in the flagon, we also trade these skills with the commercial world in a bid to help them tell stories about the things that they make.
“The intersection between the commercial and creative worlds goes far beyond advertising though as there are so many deeply creative people across the swathe of various industries.
“From architects, to industrial designers, to cinematographers, to audio production specialists, etc... The honours roll call is nearly endless. And while there are certainly vast numbers of zombie box-tickers, pen-pushers and timesheet-fillers, business at the highest level is fundamentally creative.”
Already working from a home studio space, the changes for Elton were far less amplified than they would have been for those working, as he describes it, in juggernaut global agencies which suddenly had to ‘pivot’ like a possum negotiating an arcing electricity line.
“For me it was really the swivel to Zoom meetings, the greatest feature being that I could finally share a screen, and therefore a presentation, without fretting that a client might skip forward through a PDF that previously needed to be sent through first,” he says.
“First world problems. While I would usually prioritise the opportunity to 'press the flesh' and eyeball my clients for real, I liked the way that Zoom ironically removed the masks and humanised us all.
“Indeed, how many times did shut doors get opened as toddlers toddled into shot and jumped upon pyjama’d knees to see all of the ruddy faces populating those Brady Bunch grids?
“And while I know it wasn’t the case for everyone, I was incredibly fortunate to have remained incredibly busy right across the pandemic with an inspiring slate of projects.”
Sharyn Smith, founder and CEO, Social Soup, and director, The Influence Group: “I think creativity is more important than ever in the post pandemic world, as people are looking for something more real and authentic, and creativity is the best way to deliver this to audiences.
“There have been significant shifts in our behaviour through COVID – one of those being the incredible rise of TikTok which is a platform completely driven on content and creativity.
“I think the old way of influencing was lost over COVID as people don’t want to see copycat images with brand placements or flat lays (yes, the death of flat lays!) anymore. They respond to an influencer doing something interesting with a brand or telling a story about a product in an interesting way.
“Our role is to come up with the overarching strategy, and as part of this, deliver a well-considered creative brief for the influencers in the programs we run. Sometimes it’s the same creative brief for all – if we are working with a large set of micro creators – but we develop more bespoke briefs for larger creators that are working under contract with higher creative fees.
“Content creators like to have a brief with some creative constraints as this actually allows them to be more creative and gives them something to work with; it’s really difficult for them to be given a very general brief and asked to be ‘creative’ which happens more often than you’d think in the industry. Some of the best work is created when we really challenge the influencer.”
Luke Martin, executive creative director, 72andSunny: “Diverse experiences and perspectives colliding together - that is when the best creative ideas are born. During my time at Apple I would often hear people quoting the late Steve Jobs - ‘creativity is just connecting things’.
“This always rang true for me… but what really struck me over the years is that it’s not just enough to connect the things I know, have seen, or believe in, it’s about connecting other people’s experiences and perspectives as well.
“At 72andSunny we believe that ‘great relationships lead to great work’. At the heart of this belief is listening and learning. If you embrace everyone you are working with, from the agency team to client partners to production partners, they will contribute their experiences and perspectives to make the product better.
“Looking back over the past few months, four of our campaigns that standout as evidence of this type of thinking, and creative approach is, the ‘Google; Helping you help them’ films from 2021 and 2022, ‘Google Pixel 6; Real Tone’ film featuring Genesis Owusu, and the ‘Little Creatures; All Creatures Welcome’ brand platform. All these projects came together because a diverse group of strategists, creatives and makers, brought themselves to the project and together we all connected things.
“So what is creativity? It’s life. It is people with different lives coming together to make things, and the more perspectives, and the greater the diversity of life experiences, the more impactful and innovative the product will be.
“Technology has helped us collaborate in new ways during the pandemic, which is something that has helped shape our business and gain access to amazing talent, since location is no longer a barrier.
“We’ve found remote working enables quicker, more efficient communication - more jamming and less reviewing. It creates more deep thinking time, which you just don’t get in an agency space.”
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