Time to love this recession

At its worst, this post can convert a lot of my friends into enemies. And yet the ancient adage of ‘nothing ventured, nothing gained’ encourages me to write on …

Recessions are good for the advertising industry because they force us to chase creative effectiveness rather than creative efficiency.

It is only appropriate to start from the point - what is creative efficiency and creative effectiveness, and how are the two any different?

Creative efficiency is the capability of the communication to be comprehended (either by its specific audience or across all audiences). In other words, creative inefficiency is the loss in the black box between stimulus and response. If you decode and comprehend all that I wish to tell you, then the black box loss is zero. But that is rarely true!

Creative efficiency is decided by the context in which the communication is placed. This context is mostly the socio-cultural zeitgeist, but could also be more individualistic in the frame-of-mind of the person at that given moment.

Creative effectiveness, on the other hand, is the capability of the communication to arouse its specific audience (to think something) in a way that gets them to act (desired behaviour). And this makes it a much more tricky matter.

Creative effectiveness depends on the big ‘I’ - the quality of insight one has into the audience. Some argue that the best insights are relevant, fresh and contemporary. But then, some insights are universal and timeless.

It would be safe to say that, there will always be some loss between comprehension (efficiency) and motivation to act (effectiveness). The lesser this loss, the more successful the messaging. Which is why, I guess, planners still have a job because on their shoulders is the tricky job of predicting which insight will minimize this loss.

Unfortunately, most of my creative friends chase creative efficiency while marketers expect creative effectiveness. I dread the poor planner, who is expected to straddle the two worlds.

Seen through this frame, categories where creative efficiency and creative effectiveness merge (for example – beverages, confectionary and beer!), see the most bonding between creative and client.

One can see a sharp contrast in categories where creative efficiency and creative effectiveness are the most apart (for example – toilet cleaners, computers and departmental stores!) No creative person (worth his salt) wants to touch these categories with a barge pole.

The power of a good recession lies in that most categories begin to seek more than just awareness and clutter break-through. Traditionally efficiency driven categories start clamoring for effectiveness. To justify marketing dollars, everybody demands demonstrable results.

The other side of the 'recession' problem is an opportunity to respond to the need of the hour with more than just cosmetic cost cuts and lip service to integrated communications. Now is the time for us, the advertising industry, to re-invent ourselves around creative effectiveness.

Change was a freight train till it got some rocket boosters last quarter. High time, we all start loving this recession.