Creatives Kick Ass, Pat Backs, Toss Fluff

Preconceived notions the session entitled "Kick Ass Creative" would be drenched in self-congratulatory praise for pet creative work and new age strategies were clearly confirmed. The session, led by Ad Age Publishing VP and Editorial Director David Klein, included panelists Carat Interactive EVP Creative Director Mike Yapp, Agency.com Creative Director Dorian Sweet, Avenue A/Razorfish ECD Brooke Nanberg and Organic Inc. ECD Colleen DeCourcy.

There's no question, the creative work shown during the session was quite good. Yapp kicked off with work done for 1-800-Flowers which, in part, contained a guy-focused game that removed the stigma of flowers by turning the promotion into a game that let guys shoot flowers. Sweet, who began with a quote every creative would appreciate, "conception is so much more fun than delivery," showed some creative for child protection site NSPCC that involved handbag.com page takeovers that left a lone image of a nervous girl on the page followed by the pay off.

Nanberg offered five important points to consider when conceptualizing any piece of creative: consistency, surprise, value, customer-centric and multi-dimensionality. Decourcy, who ill-advisedly, began her presentation by stating she had 48 Powerpoint slides, slogged through the intricacies of an offshoot of culture jamming she called + media jamming. She defined the concept as one which provides the entire creative experience to the person no matter where they are as opposed to the current practice of driving traffic to other places such as a website for creative fulfillment.

Unsurprisingly, the first question from the audience centered around metrics and gauging the success of a particular creative execution. Nanberg provided the fluffiest answer by saying, in effect, creative is successful if it makes the person feel good about it.