Draft on creativity and accountability in advertising

Global - The words creativity and accountability do not typically hang out together in the advertising world but DraftFCB chairman and CEO Howard Draft told attendees at last week's Microsoft SAS 2007 event that it is imperative to make both work hand in hand.

"When two powerful forces come together, they create pressure and friction. Will we survive the collision?", Draft says.

According to him, today's agency structure has to change with the market factors of the empowered consumer and technological advances. The agency has to be a true business partner of the client, there has to be increased accountability, and fair profits for both sides for increased shareholder value.

The four forces at play here are media, consumers, marketers and agency: media owners have to be more accountable, consumers are now creative partners and marketers need to find uncommon insights from common data. On the agency end, Draft says "if we can't track it, our clients will not treasure it."

He also gave his views on how to create the elusive 'accountable' agency. He says the two main points to note are 'return on ideas', which should give clients an increased chance of success, and the 'insight to incite' - changing consumers' behaviour, hard wiring discipline into the agency teams, generating more creativity, and having less risk.

In closing, he asserted agencies are "walking away from creativity" and that has to change.