DDB’s Creative Index values creativity at $580bn for Australia’s top ASX200 companies

As part of this year’s Rigg Design Prize, DDB has created a live stock index, ranking Australia’s biggest listed companies on what it calls the nation’s greatest resource: creativity.

Speaking to Mumbrella at a pre-screening of the exhibition, executive creative director at DDB Group Melbourne Psembi Kinstan said when the brief was put to the agency, he and his team thought “we need to create or show a metric that all Australians will understand” that shows the true value of creativity.

While the thought of putting a dollar figure on creativity in itself is “not totally revolutionary”, said Kinstan, it is the idea of saying “this is something we can objectively track, this is how much it’s worth to our economy right now.”

“And when you’re having a conversation with anyone in the country and they say ‘why should the government invest more in the arts? Why should it champion creativity or innovation in business?’ You have a bulletproof answer in saying, well creativity is worth $580 billion to our economy.”

Psembi added DDB’s aim was not just to affect the people that will walk through the halls of the NGV show at Federation Square’s Ian Potter Centre, but for the significant proportion of Australians “who perhaps don’t have the same cultural experiences growing up, or don’t know what advertising is, don’t necessarily know what design is, or certainly don’t know what careers in design look like”.

DDB Group Melbourne ECD, Psembi Kinstan

After reaching out to investment banks and financial analysts to figure out the quantifiable measures to give creativity its objective score, the agency matched up with Jarden, local market analysts and financial experts.

Working in conjunction with Jarden’s team of analysts, it measured the ASX200 companies back to 2012, as far back as the data metrics would stretch.

The result saw companies including SEEK, Cochlear, Medibank and more, as well as media companies Nine Entertainment, oOh!, Domain and Carsales show up on the Creative Index, “selected for prioritising creative thinking to drive their innovation and growth”.

The index shows creativity to be one of Australia’s greatest resources, as the work in conjunction with Jarden found the Creative Index has a live market value of $580 billion.

Since 2012, ASX-listed companies on the Creative Index have outperformed the market by 56.9%, DDB said.

The result is twofold said Kinstan. Some companies, like Seek may use the index to celebrate creativity within its business at this moment in time. “The more interesting one is when they start to use it within their own reporting,” he added.

Kinstan added that if some listed companies start including the Creative Index appearance on annual reports, they would likely strive harder to maintain that status, “to make sure we keep living up to those values”.

“That’s where it gets really interesting,” he said.

Often the conversation around award-winning advertising work returns to ‘is this an ad, or is this art’?, and in the case of this year’s Rigg Design Prize, the agencies including Clemenger BBDO Melbourne, Frost* collective, Gilimbaa, Leo Burnett Australia, TBWA\Melbourne, The Royals and Thinkerbell alongside DDB were asked to create a campaign that articulates the potential of creativity to accelerate positive social, cultural, economic or environmental change.

“I think if the brief is to create art for art’s sake, I think we’ve done that terribly,” joked Kinstan. “We probably ended up doing something that I hope is actually very rational, and though it should inspire at the end of the day, I don’t think it’s necessarily the most impressive exhibition, but it actually might be adopted by businesses, and in a way that actually creates some type of change.”

“If we’re going to invest a lot of time, energy and money doing this because we believe in it, it sure as hell better be real in the real world.”

“I think part of the job we’d like to do is have people redefine creativity, so that creative thinking is a skill that should be championed at every level of schooling, education, and business.”

The campaign itself emphasises the value of creativity in Australia’s economy, with billboards that read: “Coal. Commodities. Cartoon Dogs”, “Tin. Telcos. TikTokers”, and “Australia’s bull market is not in oil. It’s in ideas.”

DDB Group Australia chief creative officer Stephen de Wolf added: “We know the impact industries like mining, technology, manufacturing, and finance make on the stock market. But for too long, the value of our greatest resource – creativity – has been seen as cultural, not economic.”

“The Creative Index changes that. It is tangible evidence that creativity has incredible commercial value. And it proves that creativity is the most powerful force in business, worth the investment.”

The Index is now live, as DDB aims to continue updating it well into the future.