The Rise And Continuous Fall Of Creativity.

The reason why the standards of creativity have dropped is largely because those involved in the creative process that results in the creative product don’t know that standards have dropped.

Somewhere along the way, the savvy and maverick thinking of “Mad Man” Don Draper, where many of his ideas and presentation skills were built around the innate ability to know how to read the room, and intuitively know where the pieces fit, most of which have disappeared from what used to be called advertising.

Once upon a DDB or a Leo Burnett or JWT, being in advertising was a career, where one had to take steps and learn how advertising works before going straight to Number One with a bullet and believing that the technique or, these days, the technology is The Idea.

A friend of mine used the term “shambolic” recently to describe the modus operandi of a certain organisation.

Having worked with the same shambolic organisation, my friend was being way too polite.

There’s a jungle of clutter out there with the art of communications reduced to something like lard and with no one accountable for what goes out there and with the buck not stopping anywhere and in free flow.

I nearly choked on my cornflakes a few months ago when thinking out aloud amongst a group of people and blurting out, “But what marketing does she actually do?” and being told that she was very helpful in helping people get a table for lunch at a certain restaurant in a certain humongous organisation in Hong Kong.

I doff my hat in this lady’s direction for her well rehearsed survival kit of looking busy and to be seen to be doing something when everyone who knows anything knows that she’s doing nothing and is gainfully employed very probably because of her height and knowing what shoes to shine.

And this is how things have collapsed into a heap, where everyone is a “digital creator” and something like Artificial Intelligence has created an artificial product lacking a brand personality because it’s not, well, real. And no one really cares.

I was reminded of how pitifully mediocre the standards of everything are these days when receiving a Christmas card from Stasch, a good friend from my ad days.

Stasch had taken the photo, written the simple message and which was sent using the perfect typeface. It was based around the KISS Theory of Keep It Simple, Stupid.

How many know about typeface or what even is an effective visual and why Stupid is back in vogue?

Think The Big Orange in the White House that every day becomes more and more garish knows or cares?

Personally speaking, style has gone out of fashion, and in this world of “influencers” and the need to shout out how wealthy one is, we- the world- has lost empathy, compassion and the ability to communicate with each other.

Often, I believe that we have become a Gary Larson cartoon about Neanderthal man, but without the humour and the creativity.

#creativity

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Born in Ceylon, Hans Ebert is an award winning advertising executive whose powerful campaign to gain the Right Of Abode in the United Kingdom for ethnic minorities in Hong Kong won Gold at the London Advertising Awards.

He also helped launch McDonald’s in Hong Kong, created the Happy Wednesday brand for the HKJC, was part of the team to launch STARTV and MTV in Asia plus ran the International divisions of Universal Music and EMI Music in Asia.

As a journalist, he has interviewed every iconic personalities from Billy Joel, legendary music producer Quincy Jones, and actor Peter Sellers to working on music for David Bowie, Robbie Williams and Gorillaz.

He also coined the term Canto Pop when writing for Billboard magazine.

He has a penchant for women who remind him of Diane Keaton.