Ben Kay on life, the universe and promoting
So Creative Review is celebrating its 40th birthday (champagne emoji plus the one that could be a high five). I have visions of how things will go in the future and maybe cover a new font by ˆ˜∫˙˙∆∫ © √ © ƒ © çƒ © ç, the great Mars designer, and Elon Musk's 85th child.
If CR has managed to remain relevant for four decades, the practice of creativity must contain something fundamental that interests millions of people. Advertising and design have changed enormously, governments have come and gone, we no longer say "bling-bling", but the good old CR has stood the test of time.
When I started advertising, our work really only appeared in the press, posters, television and radio. This is clearly no longer the case. Advertising agencies were considered specialists who offered something that nobody else could do. Now everyone, from post-production companies to in-house agencies, has taken large chunks of this cake. In the past, money flowed with far less accountability and pumped into the magic factories to enable their miraculous performance. Now budgets of a few thousand pounds have gone from ridiculously rare to ridiculously regular.
If CR has managed to remain relevant for four decades, the practice of creativity must contain something fundamental that interests millions of people
But how many of these developments are trends and how many are blips? Can media continue to fragment? Will your newspaper dealer or bus conductor start offering conceptual advertising? Are budgets reduced to pocket money?
Astrophysics tells us that this is unlikely. Initial theories about the creation of the universe suggest that it will start from the Big Bang and expand further ("In what?" Is a fascinating question for the hallucinogenic drug users among you). However, this was then replaced by the big bounce theory, which suggests that the expansion will eventually contract, possibly to another tiny entity that will then be brought back to life.
The world shows us again and again that this expansion and contraction is not confined to the entire universe: mobile phones got smaller and smaller until we insisted that larger screens were actually better; Drainpipe pants were the literal contraction of torches; The British Empire is an apologetic shadow of its former self, while tiny Singapore has become a global giant. This means that the current circumstances are unlikely to continue. If so, how close are we to the next big change and where will it lead us?