As our industry has been able to adapt to changing paradigms before, I’m sure we will now. Our biggest relevance is creativity and a continuous curiosity. There’s a saying among advertising creatives that you’re not better than your last work. This has never been truer when it comes to the motive of your work. In 2010, when the advertising industry wanted to show a more responsible side, they put forward The Impossible Brief to solve one of the hardest conflicts in the world: the relationship between Israel and Palestine. This was run only as a competition, but many great solutions were submitted from all over the world. The winner “Mutual Blood” suggested they should, “Organise a huge blood transfusion operation between volunteers from both countries… Would you still kill someone who’s got your people’s blood inside them?” Think what could happen if the tens of thousands of agencies and brands across the world used their creativity to solve more of these crises?
If you’re willing to come along, we can do it; and if you aren’t – we’re going without you. As I have argued, no matter where you are in the hamster wheel as a marketer, we can change towards a sustainable and respectable future. We can help people to realise that their effort matters, we can educate and empower. We can call out for a movement of change, because the market cannot succeed alone.
