Influx

If the ad business does not understand the new world of conversation, there’s nothing like an awards show to get them interest, when egos are at stake, everything changes.

In response, to my last post on the Adweek poll debacle, @bigspaceship pointed me to one of the longest discussion threads in recent memory involving creative people.

Who knew they had the time?

Pulled together and encouraged by Ben Malbon over at BBHLabs, it’s amazing to see the enthusisam for the debate from Ben, Ty Montague, Kevin Roddy, John Windsor and a host of others.

While the initial spark to the discussion might have been the Andy’s Elect a Jury inititative created by Big Spaceship, the debate touches on a number of key issues around the evolution of creativity and the crowd.

Some highlights:

“If “technology” needs greater representation on this jury, what form
should that take? Bloggers? Critics? “Creatives?” There’s a real debate
to be had here about who is best qualified to judge the creativity of
others.”

Kevin Roddy

“Crowd sourcing is still in its infancy, sure, but it seems odd that so
many of our debates on the subject seem to stop at the (clearly
semi-heretical) use of the crowd. The best experiments surely strike a
balance between FRESH inputs from the crowd, with RESPONSIBILITY for
decision-making ultimately taken by a few.”

Mel Exon

“We also wondered if people who were really active in social media would
exploit that and run away with the election. we wondered if we would
wind up with a 100% interactive and digital group of judges. That
wouldn’t have been a disaster, but imbalance in any direction was
something we wanted to try to avoid. The opportunity was certainly
there. But clearly that hasn’t happened.”

Ty Montague

“I, too, would like to see the award juries evolve to include more than
art directors and copywriters and better represent marketing creativity
today. At CP B, Technologists and UX designers sit in our creative
department and play a huge role in guiding creative strategy and
execution for the agency and our clients. I’d like to start seeing more
people like Scott Prindle, Executive Creative Technology Director,
CP B, John Mayo-Smith, CTO of R/GA, and UX leaders from around the
industry appear more often on these juries. And I think that
categorization is a good thing. What qualifies as great and effective
marketing is changing before our eyes in real-time. And in the digital
age, it just so happens that there are more people sitting at the
creative table, from producers to technologists to UX designers to
interactive strategists. Why wouldn’t the creative people making the
work also be the ones judging it?”

Winston Binch

Posted by Ed Cotton