CREATIVE

An open letter to the creative industries: Let’s Make Sure We’re Bringing The Love

In this month’s Creativity Is Alive And Well, Chris Goddard - Global Creative Director, pens an open letter of love to the creative industries. 

Throughout August I’ve been feeling the love. Since the start of the month I’ve been working in The Netherlands with our fantastic Splash Amsterdam team. I arrived in the city at the start of the month and just a few days later the Pride Jubilee celebrations hit the canals. I was blown away by the love that the locals (and tourists alike) threw around one another to form a beautiful cloak-like celebration of humanity. 

It got me thinking. Deep down I believe that we’re all good people, doing the best we can, with what we have. We all want to live to the best of our abilities. And, for the most part, we want to bring others along with us on the journey. 

The Creative industries, particularly the Advertising and Communications worlds, are built on tension - and that’s great. Brilliant minds, from different disciplines colliding together to smash past the past in search of The New. 

As we all know, this can mean that we don’t all always agree (we shouldn’t, we should always be looking for The Different). But disagreements don’t need to mean disaster. Let’s throw freedom on the fear of the unknown. Let’s explore the delicious and divine what-could-be’s. Let’s run forward together - looking to always celebrate one another's exquisite and unique sparks of genius that occur in our collective prefrontal cortex’s.

Because being creative (in all areas of business, not just the Creative Department) can be a scary, daunting, lonely place. An Adobe Data Study on the perception of creativity around the world once told us that only 25% of people believe that they’re living up to their creative potential. While over half (52%) of respondents to the study, in the US alone, considered themselves as creative. Clearly there’s a disconnect. 

The key point is that we’re all creative and we all need to support one another in channeling our creativity throughout our daily endeavours. Because creativity is what discovered the theory of relativity; what wrote Strawberry Fields; what beamed the lunar landing around the world and what drove Kylie Jenner to become the world’s youngest self-made billionaire. 

Put another way, according to the World Economic Forum, Creativity is related to nine of the top 10 skills that global executives say is essential for 2020 and beyond. 

Creativity is important and I, along with my colleagues at Splash, believe that fostering creativity by bringing love, support and belief to all briefs that we work on is fundamental to creating brilliant, bold, beautiful thinking for our clients and partners. 

So in the spirit of celebrating I’d like to name a few of my inspiring work-heroes that have shown me support over the years:

Natalie Winford

Caroline Pay

Genevieve Ampaduh

Anya Goddard

Seb Weller

Ben Shaw

Jason Gonsalves

Andy Williams

Martin Clark

Mark Bulmer

If you’re reading this, show some love to your team today. You might just help to create the next Winfrey, Gates, Knowles, Rowling or Obama in the process.

Beyonce gig

Onwards, Creative Minds.