Destination: Creativity Enhancing Our Creative DNA

Business has changed quite dramatically. Aspiring globals have become truly global: Disney, Nike. Heretofore locals have developed global aptitudes: UPS, Nokia. Established globals have been slowed down by the strong headwinds of lifestyle relevance, nationalism or poor press: Levi’s, McDonald’s, Coca-Cola.

New technologies, convergence, e-commerce and dot-coms (not to mention perennials such as mergers and acquisitions) have become the lexicon and syntax of a brave new world of business, where Wall Street, not cultural currency, reigns supreme. Gone are the PanAms and Easterns, the Wangs and Benettons, the Gimbels and Frigidaires, to mention but a handful.

People have changed, but less than we think. They still wake up, brush their teeth, eat breakfast, go where they need to go, do what they need to do, return to base, eat and drink, play videogames and entertain themselves -- and go to bed again.

They travel, shop, make choices, have sex, have children, absorb and exude data, buy and sell things - - through new channels, perhaps; more contemporary methods of payment, perhaps; seduced by a more sarcastic, terser selling message, perhaps; but in the end it is still about “how do I improve the way that I feel right now” (not “today”, or “these days”, or “in general”, but “right now”, as distinct from “a minute ago”, or even “a minute from now”).

The world, as we used to not know it, has actually seen substantial change. And while our ground level view may be fuzzier, our satellite view is clearer.

From a marketplace point of view, countries have transformed into constituencies. There is a language out there for which there isn’t a dictionary yet. A fluid, fickle language, subject to manipulation and interpretation. A language in which words have given way to icons. Globlish. Money isn’t necessarily an object because that is what it has become, an object. Having it is a present tense proposition, not a long-term preoccupation.

What is near may never be visited; what is far can be accessed at a moment’s notice. Choice isn’t about having choice, it is about believing there is choice. Showrooms and supermarket shelves and e-commerce websites are landscapes surrounding a choice that, in many cases, has already been made.

Consumption habits start with what media you consume. Psychology and sociology are trailing behind technology, at least for the next 15 minutes. In a world geographically and economically borderless, emotional borders rule.

In this New Globalism, where the conventional lines of demarcation between what’s local and what’s global are drawn in quicksand, the opportunities for Global Brands abound. They are the oasis, the idyllic island to which gravitate.

The mission, for the Global Brands that choose to accept it, will be to relentlessly predict how consumers will feel and act next, as opposed to obsessively dissect how they felt and acted yesterday. Thus armed, they will need to interact with those consumers in the most creative and effective manner.

A Global Brand that does it relevantly and compellingly, faster and better than the other guy, will prosper. Locally and globally, as these terms of the past increasingly become one and the same.

Most successful Global Brands have become global because they possess a clear and unequivocal DNA. Future success, however, depends on their ability to remain true to and/or evolve that DNA.

DNA? ethos ethos values values personality personality uniqueness uniqueness

Brands Have A DNA  American Express  Mercedes Benz, Jeep  Harley Davidson  Nike, Adidas  Gillette  Coca-Cola, Pepsi  McDonald’s, Starbucks  Concorde, Singapore, Virgin  Guinness  Budweiser  U-Haul  Revlon, L’Or é al  Kellogg’s  Tiffany  Crest  Xerox  Rolex  Perrier

It’s Easy To Lose It:  Mustang  Benetton  Howard Johnson’s/IHOP  Sergio Valente, Jordache et al et al  Max Factor  Dairy Queen  Miller High Life  Nabisco  Pan Am, TWA et al  Polaroid  Helmsley

Some Find It Again:  Apple  Sears  Ray Ban  Chrysler  Audi  Barnes & Noble  Gucci

Corporations have a DNA:  UPS  Johnson & Johnson  Prudential  GE  Disney  Hallmark  Boeing  John Deere  IBM  Microsoft

In these times of media convergence and ever-expanding interactivity between makers and users, only relevant and memorable messages that create or reaffirm interest and trust on the part of consumers, will succeed.

Advertising, as we know it, isn't just going to disappear off the face of the earth. It will reinvent itself, something borrowed, something new, until it becomes what it will be next.

But, to repeat the cliché, newspapers and magazines weren't erased by radio, radio wasn't turned off by television, and television won't be deleted by online communications. Everything gets repositioned and continues to play one role or another.

Creatively, interactivity will play a key role in involving consumers: voluntary, compliant voluntary, compliant embedded, organic embedded, organic

State-of-the-art, graphically enhanced one-way communication will be less intriguing than information that must be decoded before it is consumed. Challenge before beauty.

The creative mindset finds it more gratifying and rewarding to design challenging communication for the screen than for the page.

To remain current and exciting; to earn and retain a place in both the strategic and the media plans, magazines need to transcend their powerful medium status and transform into powerful alliances of the creative workforce. Excite the creator and you will excite the reader.

At the McCann WorldGroup we believe this transformation is well underway. We are making sure creativity is the very essence of our DNA.

That is why our people and our tools -- our companies -- embrace every medium that communicates and recognize all ways in which consumers interact with Brands and Products. We believe in effective creativity that generates consumer response.

Sells and Excels In this era of convergence, it will be the persuasiveness of the work -- and the unique contribution of your medium to the most impactful and qualified delivery -- that advertisers will be looking for. Delivery that...