“Digital creativity has yet to produce its masterpiece”. Discuss. Using, perhaps, 140 characters or less.

Thus spake one of the bosses of the digitally-focussed agencies I’ve been working with recently.

It’s fascinating. Digital media are so clearly the place to be if you care about innovative marketing – but a lot of people struggle to come up with a list of what you might call great creative ideas in that field.

Seeing as how the whole nature of digital is built around interactivity, maybe the concept of an “idea” is somehow antithetical
to how it works.

Strategically speaking, Obama’s campaign WAS a massive masterpiece. Not only in its use of social media, but in the whole pull-not-push approach.

(It was the LACK of concrete “messaging” that was actually brilliant.)

And it had elements of brilliant creativity in it, like The Great Schlep.

But in terms of pure creative concepts, I guess most people would say that the best digital idea we’ve seen has been Subservient Chicken.

(Alternative answers on a post, please.)

So it takes a brave man or a fool to disagree with the guy who came up with that.

(And, since everyone who knows me, knows I’m a coward – I clearly fall into the second category.)

But I do want to look at what Benjamin Palmer, the highly gifted founder of Barbarian, said recently.

I may be quoting him out of context, but Benjamin was being asked about crowd-sourcing in Adweek and he said “I’m interested in the high end of marketing creativity and production, and don’t think you can get anything high end [in crowd-sourcing].”

He went on to add “By definition you’re asking people who are not at the top of their field.”

Now, as in many complicated debates, I can see both sides of this. (Ouch. This picket fence is sharp.)

I agree that only a few gifted people can regularly come up with really great ideas.

I just don’t think they’re all inside the tiny walled garden of the ad industry.

And I think a huge number of people can bring one-off fresh solutions to a problem

I introduced crowd-sourcing at TBWA a few years ago and we got some fascinating stuff back, including an adidas poster campaign and some great short films for Skittles.

I’m actually building a website with some friends right now to explore all this further.

But I don’t think crowd-sourcing is the answer by itself. You also need strong, experienced creative direction – something which I don’t think any of the current crowd sites have.

Not just to filter the answers, but also to put the right questions out there.

However, it does really tantalise me. Out there, somewhere, are really fresh ideas, rather than the stale formulas and Youtube rip-offs that clog up most marketing campaigns.

What I’m interested in finding are the ideas that nobody else could come up with.

Genuinely unique ideas.

And talking of that, I was chatting to Tony Kaye the other day. One of the most talented people to ever work in our industry. He’s giving a talk on Friday, and I can’t think of anyone better equipped to talk about creativity in this country.

Tony, like Benjamin, comes up with original creative ideas as effortlessly as most agency bosses can conjure up their financial targets.

If you had a creative department filled with people like that,  you wouldn’t need crowd-sourcing. But, even then, I’d want to give it a go.

Because it seems to me to be at the very heart of digital.

And just a very interesting thing to do.  

Tony told me he’s also got Sir George Martin and Geoff Emerick (the producer and engineer on Sgt Pepper) turning up – but with Tony you never know what you’re gonna get.

So I promise you.

It will be great.

It’s in Brick lane. Details and tickets at nissancubestore@borkowski.co.uk