Web Exclusive | Creativity in tradigital times

Tradigitial creatives is a term used by David Armano to capture the transition generation that is the most watched category in the ad space today. These are folks who are unlearning the analog creative ways and donning a digital mindset.

For the sake of establishing a better understanding, there are three different camps:

* The traditionalists (TV-hai-toh-idea-hai-guys)

* The digitalists (new-kid-new-medium-new-creatives)

* The tradigitalists (analog-roots-digital-wings-guys)

The traditionalists are the big orchestraters in the agency today but are unlikely to define the creative signposts of the future.

The digitalists are few in number. They mostly thrive in digital agencies and can be found in marketing companies, mobile content/ VAS companies, etc. They are unlike analog agency creatives.

They might still be a small tribe, with a minority voice in analog ad agencies, but they surely are the voice of tomorrow. Which is why it becomes crucial to figure out how tradigital creativity will be different from its traditional variant.

Voices not Eyeballs - The biggest paradigm shift in ‘tradigitalism’ is to stop treating people as eyeballs! On the internet and the mobile consumers are living, breathing and thinking voices with a scarcity of time and trust.

Voices have their own stories (user-generated-content) which often are more interesting than branded communication. The tradigitalists are learning to listen to them and having an open, honest conversation without corporate spiel. Consumers expect their favourite brands to be in constant twitter mode.

Experience not Messages - Tradigitalists fret about creating brand experiences not merely brand messages. Because the consumer is saying out loud – ‘I do not only want to hear you, I want to interact, play and do-my-own-thing in the environment which you/ I have created."

Community not Communication - The new digital creative is about creating the community not just communication. And communities generally don’t form to discuss shampoo and cola brands. They do to discuss music, movies, sports, politics, relationships and life.

The tradigital creative must not only ask how can I build a community around my brand (client brief) but instead should focus on whether her brand is worth being in an existing community. What role would it play there? Would her brand be a listener, a facilitator or an active participant.

Utility and Solutions not Cleverness- The tradigital creative spends more time making the creative product more useful to the consumer rather than fret over whether the idea is ‘clever’ and ‘never-done-before’

The most important shift is one from ‘great-copy-small-font-size-laid-in-beautiful-artwork’ creativity to ‘creative business solutions’.

In the digital world, simplicity, utility and navigability works best and not layered, clever creativity alone

Collaborative not Silo Thinkers - The tradigitalists need to be fast collaborative thinkers and not silo-smarts. Waking hours must be spent in seeding ideas, scaling up an existing idea, conversing with the consumers in real time, co-creating the next campaign.

Even strong brands like Vodaphone with brilliant TVCs and OOH campaigns must learn to converse equally well. The repetitive 30 secone one-way messages easily bore and tire the 1% influencer digital audience.

Tradigital creatives on such accounts then will have to focus equally on micro-conversations that the brand can have with the influencers.

Manish Sinha, SVP, Mudra Marketing Services and head of strategy, Tribal DDB

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