On Creative Conviction

Ok, I am using the iPad Ad as a jumping off point, but I am not going to opine on the ad itself. I think Ben Thompson in Today’s Stratechary (The Great Flattening) covers it very well and is slightly contradictory, or perhaps, more expansive in his thinking than the outraged masses about what, at the end of the day, is a subjective piece of creative.

It’s frustrating, because I do think the ad missed the mark, how people feel is how they feel. I am frustrated because equally, as Thompson says in his article “… the reason why people reacted so strongly to the ad is that it couldn’t have hit the mark more squarely.”

He goes on to astutely articulate through aggregation theory, how and why. He then applies the same to a lot of modern tech and media.

The article then goes on to rather nostalgically look back at Steve Job’s emotional introduction of Garage Band and as Thompson interprets Jobs’ position “teenagers the world over are potential musicians, who might not be able to afford a piano or guitar or trumpet; if, though, they can get an iPad — now even thinner and lighter! — they can have access to everything they need. In this view “There’s an app for that” is profoundly empowering.” (See a trumpet and piano - among other things - being squashed in a hydraulic press).

So, two things can be true at the same time.

But The Great Flattening resonated with me today for a slightly tangential reason - and this is really what I want to talk about. I went with a good friend to see a band play on Friday night (both Leo Moore and our other pal Ciarán Norris are more than a little responsible for my ever expanding taste in music.)

Anyway, we saw Hurray for the Riff Raff. I could do a thousand words on the gig itself, but I’ll keep to four…it was truly fantastic.

It got me thinking about beauty and art and culture. About art as the truest form of innovation and disruption.

This is why so many creatives were, I think, upset by the apple ad. Because art is hard, it’s graft, and it’s risky and sometime dangerous.

I, for one, don’t think about art as much as I used to, which is why a show like Friday’s was so impactful, I spend vastly more time thinking about technology and delivery of “content”.

Content.

There’s word for ages. Content. It’s kind of flavourless. A white label for “filler”. It feels like something with a job to do.

As Thomson points out in his post today, and slightly contrary to Jobs’ ideal - “The prerequisite to the commoditisation of everything is access to anything, thanks to the smartphone. ‘There’s an app for that” indeed[.]’”

Commoditisation, over-supply and the homogenisation of everything (see every cafe looks like an Instagram ready cafe (see Kyle Chayka’s excellent Guardian Long Read from January “The tyranny of the algorithm: why every coffee shop looks the same” ) seems to be a second order effect of The Great Flattening. I am Gen-X, and grew up on John Hughes films among many others. I look at youth culture today and I don’t really see the skaters, the stoners, the jocks, the punks, the goths - I see, to some degree, homogeneity. I am not saying sub-culture is dead, but it seems less overt. Flattened even.

Art exists, of course, it’s everywhere, even in your smart phone, your streaming app and among the myriad diverse youth cultures (see what I did there) and art is innovation and disruption - compare this years Eurovision (scandals aside), to the Eurovision pre-internet (but that’s another post) . But innovation takes courage and daring.

Now I am not saying the iPad ad was the best ad and we’ve covered the response. However, I am not sure Apple should have apologised or pulled the TV buy.

I am all for proper comms responses, but I also want marketers, their business partners and creatives to be daring and innovative and have the courage of their convictions. Sure some saw this as the antithesis of the 1984 Ad, sure some thought it felt better in reverse, and I know many believe that Apple is now “anti-creative” but I like the debate.

And if you think that one ad spot, The Great Flattening and “content” are truly the end of art and creation - go see a band, go to the cinema, read a book, go and see what people who have no choice but to create are creating.

Art should be controversial - even if it’s commercial.