The best time for creativity.

A few days ago, one of our professors surprisingly stated that working in advertising is not exciting enough to grab you like it did to him back in the day. I brutally disagree. I think (although it may be a cliché) that this is the most exciting time to work in anything that involves ideas and communication. Call it advertising, branding, content, production, entertainment, digital engagement. Whatever. With the economy being what it is and "consumers" loosing faith in spending, the game just turns more interesting; we have to be smarter about how much we spend in advertising and communications, but we also have tools we didn't have before that enhance messages that go directly to the people we're trying to reach. We have realized that it's not only advertising (what you say) that affects a brand, but the way it behaves (what you do) is as important. Packaging, logos, store displays, retail architecture and design, web design, events, these are all things that are open for creative companies to concept around with. Twenty years ago you made an ad and put it on TV or on a national magazine to reach a small percentage of people inside a much bigger audience. Millions of dollars where unnecesarily spent trying to reach people by the frequency system. Today, nobody wants to spend that much, so we carefully choose the media that's most adequate for the idea and the brand, we make the media part of our communication, it plays a bigger role. So we don't create headlines or TV ads, we create ideas that live anyhwere. Like John Hegarty said when he was here last year: "The best media is the one between someones ears." And today's world enables the use of the mind so much better. You can't get away with writing a great TV ad and walking away like a super-hero anymore. Maybe you'll get an award for it, but you will do a better job when you make that TV ad make sense inside a bigger integrated idea.
It's a more interesting world, more complex, more options, with more chaos and less money. This is the perfect place for a creative mind to work in. I read in Time magazine this morning an interesting article about how with the end of ER this week we close an era in entertainment when big networks with big shows, big ratings and big money ruled. But it opens a door to smaller shows in smaller networks and cable, and this means better quality and filtered content, where your TV options are not only the big names anymore but you have the option of choosing your entertainment by what interests you. Proof of this is not only TiVo, cable and digital TV, but websites like Hulu.
This is the world we are living in today, and it's an exciting time to come up with great ideas for everything that can touch people's hearts and minds. So yes, this is something you can be passionate about.