Australia’s successful arts community offers a lesson to adland and creativity’s future
The arts community is thriving in Australia and adland should look to it for a guide to its own future says One Green Bean’s Carl Ratcliff .
I read Tim Burrowes’ lament recently, in Mumbrella, about Naked’s facing, ‘the sad fact that clever doesn’t make money any more’. And he posed a reasonable question, ‘Where is the next model-busting agency going to come from?’
Tim’s enquiry got me thinking because I worked at Naked (and loved it) and because now I work at One Green Bean (and love it). Appropriately, both agencies enjoy a healthy regard for the future. And its potential.
It got me thinking also, because of course, Tim has a point. The paid creative model is creaking. There would seem to be lots of ‘creative’ businesses doing the same thing, more or less, similarly. At last count, across Australia, there were 1,250 businesses trading as marketing experts; thinkers and makers, thinking and making.
Carl the last three paragraphs lost me – I was loving the read but couldn’t put it together can you spell it out a bit.
Recruit passionate curators, Adam. Their passion drives and helps sell creativity. Listen to the Brian Eno podcast, if you haven’t already. It’s excellent inspiration.
Just to keep things real Carl, individual members of the so called “sucessful arts community” are far from finacially sucessful. Even many of the “names”are funded to the hilt by taxpayers.
I’m sure no-one in an advertisng agency is gonna buy into that.
@ Peter Rush.
Keeping things real is what it is all about. Financial success is not important in the case of creativity, in fact, there is a an argument against .
What the ad world needs is creativity to drive the means of financial success, not the financial success of creativity. There is far too much emphasis on the commercial aspect and not nearly enough concentration on the art of creating. When I worked for the NZBC back in the 70s, the radio drama department in which I worked, was known throughout the entire organisaton as “Fantasy Land.” People would stop talking when ever I, or anyone from my department entered the lift, we were considered to be weirdos, lefties and poofters.
These views have changed, but they have never died, only the quality of creativity has dwindled. This may be one case where the isolation was an insulation that fostered success.