Digital discussion series debuts at 2010 AICP Next Show

The Digital Discussion Series was a new segment to the 2010 AICP Next Awards. MC Kevin Roddy, Chief Creative Officer at BBH, sat down with three influential advertising people to discuss the changing brand marketing landscape. Roddy was first joined by infamous Aussie transplant David Droga whose Droga5 marks the culmination of his stints at renowned agencies all over the world.

David Droga and Ty Montague share their experiences

Droga said that his experience at myriad agencies taught him different aspects of the business. He laid his creative roots in Australia, built his work ethic in Singapore and learned the business end in the UK. The discussion was laden with entertaining banter between Roddy and Droga, but aside from asserting that the digitalization of advertising is giving small agencies a legitimate fighting chance, it yielded very little insight into the machinations of advertising in the digital era.

Next, Roddy spoke with Ty Montague who is the former Chief Creative Officer and Co-President at JWT. Montague shied away from discussing a project of which he and Roddy seemingly had a private conversation about, which resulted in a somewhat stinted conversation. Nonetheless, his interesting background, views about creativity, and willingness to tackle what frightens him most shed light on the often opaque business of advertising.

As a high school and college dropout, Montague worked as a bartender and mailroom clerk before working his way into an agency creative department. The audacity to ask for job that he had little to no training in apparently stems from his philosophy of always doing that which scares him most. His non-traditional professional trajectory also instilled in him a sense of humility that uses in his professional life. “Walk in dumb every day,” he said. “Don’t walk in thinking that you know the answer; be open to learning.”

Bob Greenberg predicts the decline of metaphor

The last person to share the stage with Roddy was CEO and Global Chief Creative Officer at R/GA Bob Greenberg in judging from a Google Image search appeared to be trademark all black attire. His clothes, soft-spoken delivery and calm demeanor may have appeared to some as a cliche of the creative person archetype. But Greenberg made a few interesting statements about the direction of creative advertising that were if nothing else polarizing.

Greenberg began by stating that the consumer has changed as a result of the ubiquity of web-enabled devices. There were be more advertising as devices continue gain momentum as the most important platform for advertising. Greenberg also avowed to the tenets of the Bauhaus movement, which emphasizes a minimalistic approach to art. A proliferation of creative content paired with a less-is-more ethos will certainly challenge advertisers to create their best work.

When Greenberg claimed that the metaphor is a dying construct, however, the audience’s ears perked up. He explained that creating an ad that asks the audience to connect the visual metaphor to the product is the wrong direction. For example, Comcast’s “Rabbit,” one of the 2009 AICP winners, relies on the metaphor of a rabbit gaining attributes to increase its speed. The audience is asked to make the connection that the rabbit continually being modified is like Comcast internet, at least speed-wise.

The opposite of the metaphor model is the utility model, topic we covered in an article about Kip Voytek’s editorial in Boards. Greenberg didn’t explicitly say that he subscribes to the utility model, but given his preference for Bauhaus and aversion to metaphor, something like the iPhone ads that Voytek alluded to in his article may very well be the future of advertising in Greenbergs view.

Overall, the Digital Discussion series was a good first attempt at such a format. Roddy was a humble moderator with a well-rounded knowledge of contemporary work. If the format survives, we might perhaps set the bar a little higher in terms of doling out hard advice instead of food for thought.