Roy Murphy | Creative Director

Monkey say Monkey do and the new demographics

Is anybody else getting completely “newwebbed” – (patent pending) out? I know I am. From the creative after perspective I think it’s about time our industry is finally eating at the big boys table. Now that Rupert, Bill and friends are truly on board and have, for now, made their billion dollar purchases and have temporarily stopped hopping about trying to figure out how to monopolise the web 2.0 environment, things are beginning to clear. This means we can again think about real users, real problems and offering useful, engaging digital solutions. As opposed to the current sorry state of affairs where the growing noise of snake oil salesmen masquerading as web 2.0 guru’s is becoming ever more intrusive . Interactive TV anyone?

If we can forget about the quick buck merchants and think positively it leaves the field wide open for us creatives to continue flexing our muscles in ever varying ways to see how far we can push new technology and what new, undiscovered ideas might come as a result For every netvibe, flickr, last.fm out there are a bundle of poor imitations, most of them adding very little weight apart from the of the wagon creaking under the weight of the clod-footed, me-too opportunism. This is my major gripe. Clients are already getting sick of the phrase web 2.0 and I feel are beginning to view its exponents as cheap con artists.

I’m hoping that out there aren’t lots of new digital creative pitches beginning with. ‘It’ll be fine, well web 2.0 it to up, make it really sexy’ but I know for sure this isn’t the case/ as creative professionals I suggest trying to understand the implications of shifting technology on a client by client perspective. Rather that blather on about Ajax, atlas, social networking, the new youtube and other tired buzzwords to our clients we’d rather the creative elements worked in conjunction with the technology to contribute to the whole. This includes running digital projects the old fashioned way – proper planning and IA, usability, accessibility, user journeys allied with cutting edge creativity equalling useful, creative solutions to a client problem. If these elements are in place it’s a much easier task to develop full-on customer centered solutions instead of bolting on the latest buzzwords to give a poor solution credence. Now here’s the thing, the customer is now empowered with changing, adding to and sometimes even improving our best ideas. These technologies are the creative building blocks for the industry to push ahead and raise our profile from the boom and bust headlines to create some great content with solid, ongoing ROI

The creative challenge is not spewing out clichéd buzz phrases it is this. Engender trust from our clients in our industry as a whole, by keeping away from and lazy targeting and damaging recommendations. Advise from a position of expertise, even if that advice is not to use a particular technology. When each and every user is the customer, reviewer, critic, publisher and creator of content. Operating not just creatively, but effectively within these new boundaries is where my money is going in terms of the most exciting, challenging creative environments just don’t get “newwebbed” out before we truly understand how powerful and creative these tools can be.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 5th, 2007 at 12:05 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.