COMMENT: Bravo - Mi9 tackles the elusive media and creative conundrum

Thumbs up. Mi9 has done what no media company has really tried for a long, long time.

Yesterday at its "Imagine" industry briefing, the online publisher had a go at tackling the disconnect between the creative and media industries. Long overdue.

As part of its line-up of speakers, Craig Davis, the former chief creative officer at Publicis Mojo and worldwide creative boss at JWT, gave his take on how media owners can start playing in the mysterious arts.

Davis made some good arguments, some of them borrowed from global benchmark studies among CEO’s from IBM and Adobe, both of which identified "creativity" as the number one trait which company bosses said they needed to unleash growth in their business.

The trouble with creativity, of course, is that it is often born out of chaos rather than process and as Davis observed, media companies, at least on the commercial side, tend to be pretty focused on process.

“Creativity is decidedly messy and chaotic,” he said. Indeed. It’s not a buttoned down sort of linear event. Corporates are not that fond of such unpredictability but somehow they need to make room for it.

Davis cited plenty of Einstein to back up his case: “Imagination is more important than knowledge” was one from the scientific master mind.

Davis wasn’t hard-selling the need for media owners and creative agencies to break bread – it was more about individuals in the room having a better appreciation for creativity as a concept and where it comes from – typically in the 80% of what we don’t know we don’t know.

I’m not sure how much of it sunk in to the audience but without doubt more of this sort of dialogue is critical for the industry if it is to get beyond the medium or channel as the only universal truth to advertising and marketing effectiveness.  

And if Mi9 can do it, surely there’s a few other media owners that can start wrapping the theme into their market presentations and, critically, how they develop ideas worth pursuing. Even Einstein knows they need it.

Paul McIntyre
Editor in chief
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