Desperately Seeking Creativity
Russell Pander paused . . . and for a reason. He had just been asked whether he thought the promotion business lacked creativity. Pander is creative guru of Ryan Partnership, an agency well respected for having taken promotion creative up a notch or two. He paused and then said, “No, for all the lack of creativity, there is also excellent creativity.”
Lon Schwear, chief creative officer of TLP East, was somewhat less hesitant, but still reluctant to claim over-the-top creativity in the promotion business. “Great creative is spotty in this industry,” he admits.
Before posing this question to Pander and Schwear – two of promotion’s best-and-brightest creatives – we had tossed around the question ourselves. We started by attempting to list promotion’s top 10 creatives. We stalled almost immediately. Then we tried to list our top 10 creative promotions. We’re sure there are hundreds, but for some reason the only one we could think of right away was “The Soviet Union Going Out of Business Sale.”
Is promotion truly lacking creative juice? Compared to advertising, promotion falls short most of the time. Classic ad campaigns are just about housed in places of worship. But are there any classic promotion campaigns? The Miss Rheingold Contest, perhaps, but that was back in the Fifties.
Maybe you think it’s not fair to compare promotion creativity to advertising creativity. Promotions are tactical, about making less look like more. It’s the kind of creativity that puts more of a premium on how a promotion is structured and executed than how it looks. It’s not a “pretty pictures” kind of creative, right?
Go ahead and think that if it makes you feel better. But listen to yourself. It’s not exactly news that advertising and promotion have been doing more than integrating during the past 10 years; they’ve been – shall we say – cross-breeding?
“The double-win is when you can find a promotion that drives sales and builds the brand,” says Robin Raj, executive creative director of Highway One, San Francisco. “That’s when the good promotions really step out.”
Promotions, the good ones, motivate purchases. That’s what makes them promotions. But promotions, everybody now agrees, also must build brand equities – so the creativity must include the communication in total, how it affects all five senses, potentially. It should connect emotionally with the consumer and persuade that consumer that yours is the brand to buy – not only because of the promotion but because of the brand itself.
“Advertising creativity and promotion creativity will never become the same, but they are similar,” says Pander. Schwear agrees.
“Both promotions and advertising need to build a brand, so they both need to communicate brand essence,” Schwear says. “The difference is that promotions have an actionable communication versus the image communication typical of advertising. But now, they both need to build brand image. You can’t separate promotion from advertising because they both need to do the same job.”
Of course, certain realities can get in the way. “Good is good enough if it meets the budget,” says Pander. Creativity, however, is not limited by a budget. Comments Raj, “It has been proven that strong ideas can be implemented on a minimal budget. It just means that the idea has to work harder.”
Then there is that risk-averse creature otherwise known as “the client.” It should be noted that for promotion agencies, relative to ad agencies, the client is generally at a much lower-level – like a brand manager. Rarely a president.
Marketing Pharmacists And often, instead of gently persuading clients to look at other options, agencies accept a client’s concept, even if they know it is not the best. “Some agencies exist to fill the order, almost like taking a prescription and filling it.,” says Raj. “Others exist to challenge their clients as partners. Healthy contention creates good ideas and good clients welcome that.”
The challenges of making promotion creative a newborn reality instead of a well-worn oxymoron are many. The best in our business are making it happen. But they will also remember that promotion is not only about making the brand look good, but also making the sale. “Good creative in the absence of a good idea or a good idea in absence of good creative loses something,” says Pander.
We agree. And, in the meantime, we’ll keep thinking about who else should be on our list of promotion’s top 10 creatives.
