Digtal media is a slippery, slidey thing morphing faster than a Terminator CGI. Just when you think you have a handle on it it changes before your eyes. When I first got involved back in the dark ages of new media (1990’s) it was a dark art, the preserve of strange hybrid creative geeks and bored (or visionary) graphic designers. When I tried to sell it commercially, the most common rejection I received was, ‘We don’t know who is looking at it: probably some 13 year old kid in Uzbekistan’.
Then a tsunami of metrics hit us, and digital became the most measurable medium available to marketers and communicators. Classically trained marketers loved it… and stats ruled over creativity for a while.
Then creativity returned with a vengeance riding on the back of rich media. When I started as a young creative in a Manchester ad agency the chance of working on a TV commercial was a remote day dream. Rich media attracted passionate creatives who were already cutting their teeth on social internet. On-line became the most exciting area for creatives to work.
Today we are seeing a convergence of measurability and creativity. Marketers, particularly those involved with brand issues are seeking qualitative as well as quantitative measures. Click through rates are no longer the end of the story… or even the beginning. I’m not suggesting the on-line arena has matured and the factions are now living in happy harmony: as I said at he outset… it is a formless, changing beast. What I do applaud is a return to creativity and a chance for every aspiring creatives to produce stunning, provocative solutions and snap at the heels of those with multi million pound budgets. And, an opportunity to use the stats to demonstrate that brave ideas actually do deliver in a crowded, media-rich community.
