AUTO-PILOTS AREN’T CREATIVE
What do Buddha and Bill Bernbach have in common?
See if you can notice a similarity in these two stories.
Thousands of years ago, Buddha said what was keeping people’s minds enslaved was worshipping wooden idols on top of alters.
You can’t think for yourself while you’re letting someone else do your thinking for you.
All you can do is try to copy what they thought.
Buddha said people should free their minds..
They couldn’t become enlightened until they stop worshipping idols.
The people knew Buddha was a great and wise man.
In fact, they thought that Buddha was so enlightened that maybe he was a god.
A man like that should be listened to and obeyed.
So they made statues of Buddha.
And put them on alters.
And worshipped them.
Do you get the feeling, as I do, that they missed the point of what Buddha was saying?
Many years later Bill Bernbach took a look around advertising and saw people worshipping conventional thinking.
All the rules that produced the same old dull, boring, hard-sell advertising.
He said we should change it, free our minds up to be more creative.
To question the way everything had been done.
To do things differently.
One of the first things he questioned was why the copywriters sat on a separate floor to the art department.
He thought he could put art-assistants together with copywriters.
To make a two-person creative unit, a ‘team’.
It had never been done before, and it worked really well.
Gradually everyone copied it.
And it stopped being unusual and different.
It became conventional thinking for the advertising industry.
Every advertising agency creative department in the world is now made up of ‘teams’.
In fact nowadays, you can’t get a job unless you’re part of a ‘team’.
Art schools put their students into ‘teams’ before they even let them graduate.
Their end-of-degree shows are done in ‘teams’.
Last week a student told me that an agency had said they wouldn’t even see his portfolio unless he could find a partner and become part of a team.
Do you get the feeling, as I do, that they’ve missed the point of what Bill Bernbach was saying?
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completely, I have just been offered a job at a good agency…
on the basis that they find me a writer. I’m now unemployed and in limbo until they find another member of staff to hire so they can hire me.
Now try explaining that to people in the pub.
Dear Mr Trott, I love this post. I agree we do have a tendency to worship the creed and forget the message as humans beings.
I’m a middleweight creative and no matter how much agencies like my book (which I did on my own), they all asked me to get a partner.
Frankly, I find it disappointing that I just can’t get hired on my own merits. It’s absurd.
Americans don’t have that problem. They’d take, individuals, teams, people with 2 noses, etc. They just don’t care as long as you have the talent to produce brilliant work. They seem to ‘get it’.
One last thing, if Bill Bernbach were alive today and he’d be looking for a job in the UK, no one will hire him on the basis that he wouldn’t have a partner.
Does that make any sense?
but there are people that work by themselves, you see them in every agency, how does that work?
Love it. Only thing is, it seems Buddha was advocating replacing those statues with nothing. Do we replace creative teams with nothing? Surely not. So what structure works better? There isn’t one at the mo, is there?
Hi Scamp.
The point is no one can tell you what to replace it with.
As soon as it’s that, it isn’t that.
That’s what creativity is, you have to create it fresh every time.
You can’t look at Buddha or Bill Bernbach and copy their answer.
You have to re-invent the wheel all over again.
That’s what makes it tough.
That’s why people don’t do it.
Hi Scamp,
I once read “The time to worry is when the avante-garde becomes the status-quo.”
Bhudda and Bernbach were both rebelling against the establishment.
Their rebellion then became the establishment, exactly the thing (complacency, smugness) they were rebelling against.
In one of the radio shows, Sid James once said to Tony Hancock “Why are you wearing that beret, sandals, and Breton fisherman’s jersey?”
Hancock says “I meet with a group of people, and we show our individuality by refusing to wear the bowler hat and suit unifiorm of the bourgeousie.”
Sid say “And what do all the others wear?”
Hancock says “The same as me, that’s how you know we’re rebels.”
It’s very hard to be creative.
It’s much easier tro copy someone who was creative.
And let’s not forget people’s insecurities. It’s easier to share the blame between two people when things go sour.
A key concept in Buddhism is the notion of impermanance. So logically, existence means ability to cause change or be changed. Therefore, what is
changeless is unable to do work and therefore does not exist. Watching MadMen (yeah i know its exaggerated but…)and seeing how little the advertising industry has changed in 40 years. well, y’know.
just stumbled on your blog, by the way. stirring stuff!