segunda-feira, 30 de março de 2009

Primavera

Luc Ferry - Environnement

Selon le philosophe contemporain Luc Ferry, il existe deux écologies. L'une privilégie la nature ("deep ecology") et estime que celle-ci a une valeur intrinsèque , l'autre ne considère la nature que dans sa relation avec l'homme ( écologie environnementaliste). Le seconde , qui est humaniste, est plus modérée et préférable.
L'une et l'autre demandent évidemment que l'on prenne ses distances à l'égard des idées cartésiennes:
"Si l'animal n'était qu'une machine, comme le pensent les cartésiens, la question de ses droits ne se serait jamais posée. Ce qui peut éveiller à son propos le sentiment d'une obligation, au-delà même de la compassion et de la pitié qui relèvent de la simple sympathie, c'est le caractère non mécanique du vivant qu'il incarne. [...] Bref, tout se passe comme si la nature, dans l'animal, tendait en certaines circonstances à se faire humaine, comme si elle s'accordait d'elle-même avec des idées auxquelles nous attachons un prix lorsqu' elles se manifestent dans l'humanité.
[...] Car c'est bien la nature elle-même qui fait signe vers des idées qui nous sont chères, et non pas nous qui les projetons en elle: à l'encontre de ce que pensent les cartésiens, il semble raisonnable d'admettre que les cris des animaux qui souffrent n'ont pas la même signification que les sons égrenés par le timbre de l'horloge, que la fidélité du chien n'est pas celle de la montre. De là le sentiment que la nature possède bien cette fameuse valeur intrinsèque sur laquelle s'appuient les "deep ecologists" pour légitimer leur antihumanisme (1. Mais d'un autre côté, et c'est là ce qu'ils manquent, ce sont les idées évoquées par la nature qui lui donnent tout son prix. Sans elles, nous n'accorderions pas la moindre valeur au monde objectif. Bien plus: c'est parce que la nature, souvent, va à l'encontre de telles idées, parce qu'elle est aussi génératrice de violence et de mort, que nous lui ôtons aussitôt la valeur que nous lui attribuions l'instant d'avant, lorsqu'elle nous semblait belle, harmonieuse, ou même, dans l'animal, intelligente et affectueuse."

A Lenda de Jorge Bum

Gordon Torr "Managing Creative People"

Good ideas cannot happen in the abstract. They are born out of specificity. Only individuals can have ideas. Groups can't. It may seem counterintuitive, therefore, but in the case of global brand ideas the only good ones will come from creative people working to real life briefs with real life consequences in real life geographies and in real life markets. And they need real life clients with real life pressures.  Local specificity is the agar in the petrie dish of the imagination. The pressurised air of a business class cabin is not a workable substitute.
 
But that doesn't mean you have to rely on luck.  It is quite possible to manage great global ideas into existence. It's just a question of knowing when and where to apply the pressure. 
 
There is a simple solution, but it demands a deep understanding of the creative process, which in turn demands the kind of patience marketing and advertising people seldom have space for in their diaries.
 
During his international tenure in the advertising industry, Gordon Torr worked with an extraordinary variety of creative people on many of the world's largest multinational brands. From teas to telephones — he created campaigns for a challenging variety of clients including Unilever, Ford, Nestle, Kellogg’s, Kraft, Kodak, Philips, Shell, Vodafone, ABN AMRO, De Beers and the Diamond Trading Company as well as Smirnoff, Baileys, J&B, Malibu and Tanqueray for Diageo.   
 
Gordon believes that his book, Managing Creative People, could not have been written without the extensive experience he gained working  as Global Creative Director on these brands. All of these clients wanted global advertising ideas. The most liberal of them were happy with local brands working within global strategic templates. Others wanted single global executions. There is no simple answer to which approach works most effectively for which type of category, but there's a rule of thumb that suggests that if your brand isn't in Duty Free you're better off looking at meta-ideas, that is, generalised concepts that can be reworked strategically and creatively at the local level. 
 
The problem with looking at things globally is that you start seeing the world from the window of a 747, and you forget that geography still matters. Most people on the planet — the vast majority of the consumers of these goods and services — live in particular places and cultures, so they view brand communications and brand experiences through the prism of their language and locality.
 
There's an obvious wisdom in "think globally, act locally", but it clearly hasn't helped the majority of clients or their advertising agencies to solve the problem or where these big brand ideas should come from. Centralist agendas favoured by marketing or advertising people with global hats on are unlikely to succeed as long as budgets are held anywhere outside the centre.  The collaborative approach, which has local marketers nodding to the global PowerPoint presentation in a basement conference room in Florida, only exacerbates the divide. Local ideas get patronised; global ideas get ignored. 
 
The default way to solve the issue is to appoint a network agency, or a network creative director, to police the planet on behalf of the global marketer, a practical enough idea on paper but a recipe for inevitable political disaster.  Centralized creative resource makes the problem worse, not better.  Global creative gangbangs are an enormous amount of fun but rarely produce anything other than great Facebook photos.  So sooner or later someone - or everyone - gets fired and the whole process starts over again.