I fully identify with all those who complain about the enormous distance between day-to-day life and what goes to a festival, when it comes to advertising creativity and commercial messages.
It would be great if consumer activists united to demand that advertisers and advertisers deliver a creative product that is more entertaining and respectful of their intelligence. Can you imagine that? The activists’ banners could read: “Don’t bore me with your ads,” “We’re not stupid. We know how to read”, “I prefer it funny. Make me laugh”, “Don’t tell me the whole story.”, “No more shouting and encyclopedia salesmen”.
The consumers of our countries do not know as much as the advertisers of the best in the world, and for this reason, possibly they accept as inevitable that in the commercial break come the sales messages, those that interrupt, those that treat me as something to buy, those that just insist on their virtues (as if I did not know that they are paid messages), and of course, those that insist on the bargain, the promotion, the free, the discount, the two for one or buy one get one free lolipop.
From day to day to the festival there is a stretch to which we have to give a name: the shame gap. It is the space that is generated between the talent to connect, entertain and provoke, with shyness, emotional limitation and lack of guts. It is the gap generated between those who prefer the security of the known to the risk of the creative. It is the difference we find between betting on innovation and paying for the deceptively reliable. It is the empty space between those who believe that a prize pays the light or their Christmas bonus, forgetting that the favor of the creative is owed to the brand and the advertiser who hires us.
When we see the talent that wins in a Pregonero or a Volcán, to cite cases from Costa Rica, it is difficult to understand why it is denied to the public in everyday advertising. Perhaps because we advertisers have made a differentiation, and the first shy ones are ourselves, as there are many of us who assume that for a festival we do one thing, and for the day to day, another thing entirely, as long as it receives the client’s approval. Of course, there are many clients who do not give space and therefore, by approving only the square or the conventional, they restrict their own options and limit the enormous contribution that could come from stimulated, encouraged and fearless creatives.
Let’s look at just one space and let’s all go check out the automobile category. At Tribu for years we have handled leading, world-class car brands, as in the case of many of our competitor agencies. And while we know how positive it would be to differentiate our communication, the category is a permanent tide of similar advertising. The difference between what we would do for them at festivals, with what we publish on a daily basis, is a gap that we must eliminate, because we know that this way we will make the greatest contribution to our clients, as well as ourselves, forced by circumstances to be even more daring and risky.
Clients, advertisers and advertising creatives, we all have to bet on innovation, abandon the deceptive security of what has already been done and bet on the extraordinary performance that comes from impacting, attracting and connecting. In these times of global financial crisis, more than ever, creativity is the way to overcome it.
From day to day to festival there is a gap to bridge.
