'The Idea Catchers' and the Commoditization of Creativity

Ideas are an agency's assets.

But agencies have started using them as bait, giving them away like swag at a conference or letting them die with a single "no" from the client.

It has made the act of creating ideas less valuable because the creators — and those who profit from the ideas — place little value on them.

To combat the commoditization of creativity, DDB Group Asia Pacific's Andy Fackrell created "The Idea Catchers," a type of PSA for the advertising industry. He compiled more than 30 advertising campaigns — from Volkswagon's "Lemon" to Apple's "1984" to Volvo's recent "The Epic Split" — and wrote a script that challenges the industry to value its work. Here are a few highlights from the video:

Creativity takes time. The best solution is never the first one, the obvious one. But the beautiful ones, they just look that way in hindsight.

We are not machines that churn out five-minute headlines on top of Getty stock. It’s about life experiences resulting in an idea you’d never have thought of, yet totally wished they had.

How do we value those people? Who think best in the shower? Who can recount a movie they watched when they were seven, or read comics at 34.

Who will study people as they wait to board their plane, and scour every page of the inflight magazine.

Who endlessly daydream. Living on alien planets, in other people’s shoes.

http://youtu.be/ifnfZXcxUb8

Check out the blog post on DDB's Limelight.