The peak of creative excellence
By: Louise Marsland
From Big Foot to the worst loo in the world and vampire fish, Ogilvy Johannesburg executive creative director Gerry Human used a ‘mountain' analogy to talk about the best advertising in the world – that peak of excellence, the weird and the wonderful, this morning, Friday, 29 February 2008, at this, the final day of the 11th annual Design Indaba.
Showing examples of award winning campaigns to illustrate his point, here's what he thinks of global advertising...
- Americans do ‘funny' better than anyone else, excluding the joke they have for a president (his words).
- The Europeans are doing ‘craft' better than anyone else, with elegant, intricate advertising.
- South America is known for its visual drama.
- Australians are champions of brutal, in your face, honesty that hits you in the gut with its message.
- Asia is home to simplicity, the strong message often delivered in one word or a sentence.
So what does our home continent, Africa offer?
Says Human, “Unless your message has some kind of local relevance, no one is going to listen. African advertising has taken some time to come into its own, but I think it has. And we have our own distinct local flavour.”
Scaling the highest peakStaying with scaling the highest peak in creative work and all that, he turned to Antarctica – the continent which defies our idea of what a continent should be – to illustrate how advertising that is completely unexpected is the advertising that makes a significant impact. “The bottom of the world is a bit of an upside down kind of place, but is home to the kind of advertising that defies what advertising should be. The unexpected.”
From our continent, Africa, for example, came the award-winning Nedbank ad with the world's first solar powered billboard that generated solar power for the entire school on whose ground it was placed, supplying hot dinners to learners and lighting the classrooms.
Getting to the summit of all these advertising styles is the challenge for all creative folk, Human says.
A formulaAdvertising allows us to do all kinds of things. Here's his great advertising formula in a nutshell...
Humour
Craft
Visual Drama
Honesty
Simplicity
Unexpected
There you have it. Go scale your own creative mountain already.
For more:
More by Louise Marsland
More...ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Louise Marsland is editor and editorial director of Bizcommunity.com, Africa’s leading provider of daily media, marketing, and advertising news and information. She is also the South African joint-coordinator and founder of the Trade, Association, Business Publication International (TABPI) Editor’s Chapter. She has recently also been appointed to head up the Magazine Publishers’ Association of South Africa (MPASA) Business-to-business Media Sub-committee. A journalist with 21 years’ experience, Marsland started in daily newspapers in South Africa in the 1980s and has specialised in media strategy and B2B and online media in the last decade, editing and launching publications in the main in the marketing and FMCG retail market, both print and online. She recently researched the sustainability of the B2B media sector for her Masters in Commerce degree: Strategy & Organisational Dynamics, through the Leadership Centre of the University of KwaZulu-Natal. She is currently researching a book in her field and develops training programmes in the B2B media sector; and marketing communications arena in knowledge management from a media perspective. Contact her on:
editor@bizcommunity.com.
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