CREATIVITY IS ALIVE AND WELL
Welcome fellow creative seeker! Thanks for being a part of our new blog series celebrating the very best in creativity across the globe. It’s good to have you on board! My intention in this series is to call out and commemorate the bold, the brave and the brilliant creative work that forms the bedrock of our industry, and beyond.
Before we go any further, it’s worth acknowledging that it hasn’t been the easiest time for creatives (or for anyone working in the creative industries) over the past couple of years. We’ve been berated by the bastions of fear who reside in the dark corners of our world - unhelpfully, but with great gusto, informing us that we’ll all be rendered redundant in a matter of years, months, days, hours (depending which source you read) as creativity falls at the feet of technology.
Frankly, I think this is bullshit. Technology isn’t the enemy. Substandard, inarticulate, inoffensive work is the enemy and we must fend this off with all of our might, our will and any leftover dragon glass...give us a shout if you have any going spare, John. Technology, after all is neutral. We have the power to use it for good or for bad. And, anyway, didn’t technology all start with a creative spark of an idea…?
“So”, I hear you ask, “is creativity alive and well?” Great question, thanks for asking.
YES, YES IT IS. Attending The Drum’s Chip Shop awards at the end of last week, I witnessed first hand an incredible room of powerful, purposeful and pretty terrifyingly good creatives producing moving, meaningful, proactive and prospective work. The Chip Shop awards are here to celebrate pure, unadulterated creativity with no limits. In creating such a ceremony The Drum has built the perfect platform for big thinking and brave execution. It was humbling to be in the presence of such brilliant work. So, from the salacious to the sublime, here are just a few of my fav’s from the night - each one carrying an abundance of creative difference via a simple, strong point of view...
Congrats to Martin Flemming for picking up the Grand Prix on the night with this beautifully simple and different work for Specsavers.
Congrats to Olly Cooper for picking up the Best Charity nod with this moving campaign for Amnesty International.
Congrats to Cube 3 LTD for picking up The Chip for Best Ad Which Really Should Run (That Hasn't) with the excellent, Halloween, for Durex.
I’m incredibly proud that Splash also picked up two awards on the night.
Our irreverent, prospective sales campaign for Virgin Atlantic, which provocatively poked fun at The Potus, earned us The Chip for Best Political Ad:
And we took home a ‘Condimentdation’ for our different take on the tongue-twister we all grew up knowing - positioning The Royal Mail as the only service when it comes to parcel delivery.
To check out the full list of winners on the night head over to The Drum. I hope, like me, post one in this new series has left you with that feeling you get in your gut when you experience brilliant creative work. Fear not everyone, Creativity Is Alive And Well.
See you next time.
Chris Goddard
Global Creative Director
Disclaimer from The Drum:
It should be assumed The Chip Shop Award entries do not reflect the views, policies or strategies of any organisation living or dead.In fact it has mostly been created without the knowledge of those the work purports to either promote or parody.
Brilliant.