Thought-provoking piece from Alan Wolk at his Toad Stool blog hammering home the message that the traditional definition of creativity (as understood by most established agencies) is way too narrow:

“Now these changes do not signal the death knell of creativity, but rather the narrow definition the ad industry bestowed upon it. Creativity is a much broader term these days, as it encompasses everything from a media strategy to a product development cycle to the content strategy on a Facebook page. And the agency of the future is going to have to jump on all these loose threads and tie them together into some sort of cohesive something.”

Alan’s post has already drawn some interesting comments, notably from Dave Wilkie of Where’s My Jetpack fame. His riposte:

“The more people involved in the production, the more watered down the product. Trust someone, or at the most, TWO someones, (one from the Creative side, one from the Account side) to create something that grabs – and sells. Social Media is one thing, but let’s not try to turn everything, including brand strategy and ad creation, into some “everyone gets a say” democracy.”

Where do you stand? We like to sit on the fence here at Agency Future and so we agree with both Alan and Dave. Ad agencies are changing for the better (witness the rise of the creative technologist) but we also recognise the risk of an overly touch-feely approach where nobody’s wrong and everybody’s right.

A separate question that I’ve been wrestling with recently (though still vaguely relevant to this post) is how genuine visionaries will fare in the future agency ecosystem. How will they fit into an agency where the traditional notion of creative teams with prescribed roles doesn’t exist? Who will be willing to back their ideas? Will flatter hierarchical structures actually create more visionaries?