The Creative Forum Just another WordPress weblog

Your views on DM and creativity in a recession – add them here please.

Spending a lot of time talking about measurement at the moment. A career development which is rather unforseen.

The good news is that clients in a recession are more and more interested in a) getting a response and b) proving it.

But when your client is emailing, mailing, advertising, running a Facebook group and a Twitter feed, doing face-to-face and door-ro-door and word-of mouth, and when consumers are refusing to respond to your communications via the medium you want them to, how can you know what’s working and what’s not? In planning speak, how do you attribute a particular response to a particular channel?

The best answer I have heard yet: “It’s complicated”.

Reuben

There can only be one reason that the overwhelming majority of the Creative Directors (23 out of 28) who are registered authors of this blog have never written a word on here. After a whole year of struggle, debate and hard work, we got The Creative Forum blog up and running. One and a half years on, only five people have bothered contributing to it.

You know what – you actually don’t HAVE to write anything on here, ever. You can continue working your arse off in your agency day after day, night after night, weekend after weekend and forget sharing the knowledge. Bollocks to it – I’m too busy – no one reads this stuff anyway. And perhaps that’s true. Perhaps if Simon Veksner had thought that when he started Scamp, we wouldn’t have his entertaining, enlightening blog now. Or perhaps there’s nothing in Direct Marketing worth talking about. Perhaps it really is the poor relation to Mr Veksner’s brand advertising - the dirty side that no one really likes to admit they work in, so why would they write about it? By identifying myself with a post on here, aren’t I giving the game away that I work in dirty Direct?

When I sit and judge creative awards with my fellow CDs, the words flow fast and furious. It can be glorious, it can be brutal, it is never ever quiet. Everyone has an opinion and voices it with sincerity, experience and passion.

Shame they don’t have the same passion for soap-boxing here.

The industry is desperately in need of new thinking right now. Students are absolutely crying out to know how to get a job and where. Agencies are dropping like flies. Clients are walking all over us. DM is dead – long live Digital – yeah right. If there was ever a time to speak to the masses about positive directions and the learnings from experience, surely it is now.

Or have you lost your voice?

Chris Catchpole
Executive Creative Director
Domain

P.S. When looking for an image of a sewn up mouth for this post, I found one in Google images on the International Free Press Society’s website. Spookily, none of my browsers could access their site. Is this truly the end of free speech?!