What is the secret of today’s creative leap?

By Robert Wheatley

One of the most endearing qualities of AMC’s Mad Men series is its slavish devotion to authenticity – and not just the period dress and behaviors. The Sterling Cooper milieu is recognize-able for many in the agency business (PR or ad) even now, who can literally live alongside Don Draper in their creative strategy conversations and presentations.

We’ve Been There…

We resonate because of its relevance to our own business lives and experiences. We listen to Don and his minions discuss a client problem and know the thread of the conversation, because we’ve been there so many times before. Sure the work and its final execution exudes the sensibilities and cultural axioms of its era, but the mental activity around solution-building bears similarity to the leaps we work so hard to make – leaps that fall from deeper insight about consumer needs and desires.

Recognizing the Culture of Creativity…

Our organization is built around daily walks down the creative PR path. We dig for insights, we work very hard to unearth ideas that blow past the limitations of product features, to translate benefits in more powerful ways. In Mad Men this happened wonderfully in a dramatic meeting with Kodak and the launch of its eponymous “Carousel” slide projector — a revolutionary idea in its day.

In the show, Kodak reps wax on about the gizmo’s “space-age” technical achievements and capability. Naturally they think these things constitute its chief selling proposition.

Then, along comes Don and his innate ability to make the leap. In the agency’s creative presentation he says: “This is not a spaceship. It’s a time machine. It goes backwards and forwards, and it takes us to a place where we ache to go again.” This statement conveyed while images play of his wife and family in happier times.

It was a moment of vintage leap to be sure. The presentation gently forced the Kodak guys to rethink what they we’re really selling. So, fast-forward. What constitutes the leap in 2009? What is the essential shift in our current world that must drive creativity and ideas?

Relevance in the World of Permission

In Don Draper’s day, you told the consumer what to do. Quite often they did it. Hence the era of mass-vertising, shotgun publicity strategies and their efficiencies propelled by routine effectiveness. Controlled messages were conveyed broadly. Repeatedly. Broad-based publicity efforts drove coverage across large swaths of media territory – millions of impressions racked up in various channels and to great impact on the awareness meter. Clip books were a mile thick.

Now the consumer holds the reigns in the equation, and the marketing world is dominated by unique “tribes” and narrow markets of consumer self-interest. Paid media has lost traction because consumers have tuned out what they perceive to be an interruption. Media itself has splintered into thousands of channels. The strategy is peer-to-peer more than message delivered to gazillions of aggregated eyeballs. It’s about the quality of conversation not quantity of heads exposed to a message.

Brands must now earn permission for a consumer relationship through ideas, acts and programs that “help” consumers realize their personal lifestyle dreams and aspirations. The Leap falls from a new form of understanding: strategy flows from a businesses’ ability to understand the fabric of lifestyle relevance and mine it. The Kodak moment transcends to enabling different, unique communities of shared memory and experience. Kodak should have invented Flickr.

Mad Men is a curious mirror for agency folk. Our work today is in many ways the same: know thy audience. And in many ways different: we don’t dictate, persuade or compel. Instead we invite, converse, help and demonstrate our willingness to earn faith and trust.

What do you think?