Last night I randomly opened the Age of Conversation/2 and landed on Ernie Mosteller’s “The New Creatives Get It” article. Wow. Here’s his take on the two fundamental differences between new and old creative, which I think really gets to the heart of the creative sea change.
- Information first, entertainment second. It used to be that creative led with entertainment to get our attention, and then served up product information. Today people are looking for information, so effective creative leads with information people are looking — even if they’re looking for entertainment.
- Elegant complexity vs. clever simplicity. Old advertising focused on simplicity. But, Ernie warns, “on the Web simplicity fails. Miserably.” Today great creative is telling an intricate story, but in ways that are interesting, fun and compelling to prospects.
Is you organization in the new creative mindset — or the old?
(I love the line on Ernie’s blog: “The medium is the audience.” Oh yeah.)
