Cannes Special: All Great Creative Work Falls into One of These 5 Buckets.
This is what makes them memorable
In honor of Cannes week just ending, let’s simplify how to look at all the creative. After a deep-dive into an extensive amount of advertising over many, many years, the majority of work pretty much lands in one of the following buckets:
1. Funny. You’ve got to see this, it’s absolutely hilarious. There are many ways to be funny, slapstick, witty, sarcastic, random. For that reason, this bucket is packed with work.
2. Moving. You cry, you hurt, you love, you empathize, you buy. These pieces raise the emotional bar. They go all out to get you to feel something.
3. Beautiful. These elevate the predominantly commercial endeavor of advertising to an artistic level, where it’s no longer an ad, but a work of art. They are often driven by art direction and speak the universal language of beautiful.
4. Smart. These are the great thinkers, the sharp and intelligent, driven by a brilliant insight, a clever headline or an ingenious product demo. If the “moving” ads make you feel, the “smart” ads make you think.
5. Shock value. Holy sh#t, look at that. Naked, offensive, bloody, there are many ways to shock, and these do it best. A small percentage of work falls into this bucket because a small percentage of advertisers are willing to go there…to turn off some in the hopes of really turning on others.
It is truly hard to win at Cannes.
If you’re going for funny, you better be pee-your-pants, I-have-to-share-this-immediately funny. If you’re going for beautiful, you’ve got to be stunning, stop-you-in-your-tracks beautiful. Because there are a lot of really funny and really beautiful things out there and a boatload are entered. If yours is kinda funny or sorta beautiful, it has zero chance to cut through.
Then, it ends up in the sixth bucket, the largest of all, pretty good.
